What is Britain s favourite garden plant

A.� No real surprises here, the rose (it is the national flower after all). What we all really knew anyway was made official by a survey of gardeners carried out by publishers Dorling Kindersley last year. Those who voted for it included the Prime Minister Tony Blair and newscaster Trevor McDonald.

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Clematis and fuchsia tied for second place followed by equally traditional favourites the tulip and the daffodil not far behind.

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A. It is hard to keep up, but at the last count the tally had gone past three thousand, although that is only a 10th of the 30,000 or so varieties of rose the world over.

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Every year we Brits buy a staggering 12 million rose plants, with 78 per cent of the nation's gardens possessing at least one. Each Valentine's day the nations men buy over two million red roses, despite the fact that it has been established that women prefer white, pink or apricot - anything but red in fact!

A.� Very basically there are two groups, species and cultivars. The species are essentially wild roses that have not been crossed or hybridised.

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The wild roses are always either shrubs or climbers and most bear single, five petalled, fragrant flowers in early summer (June is traditionally known as the month of the rose).

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A.� Yes, on the whole, although they do have their fair share of pests and diseases to guard against.

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The vast majority of roses will do fine in an average garden soil, and many will tolerate poor conditions. As a rule of thumb they do best in an open sunny sight, but again, there are those that will buck the trend.

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A.� Aphids are a common problem and they can also suffer at the hands of sawfly, red spider mite and caterpillars, all of which can be dealt with by organic means or pesticides as long as they are got at early.

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Black spot and rust are common fungal problems to watch out for and again there are plenty of treatments available on the market. However, as with most plants the key to avoiding problems is to keep them healthy with good watering, a mulch in spring and proper pruning.

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A.� Climbers, bush and cluster roses all flower on new growth, so winter prune them back to a framework, cutting back side shoots to two or three buds to promote vigorous growth in spring.

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Shrub, species and rambling roses are the opposite, flowering on old wood, so it is best to cut out the very oldest and then thin back the remainder by around a fifth to encourage new growth to come through. For those that flower just once a year do this in winter to give new growth time to harden in time for summer.

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Climbing, ramblers and shrubs always flower best when trained horizontally.

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