Notebook

Dates for your diary . Huddersfield Flower and Vegetable Show.

Coach bag

This is the 69th show and once again, whilst Greenhead Park undergoes its restoration, the show is on today (Saturday) from 1pm to 4.30pm and tomorrow, (Sunday) from 1 1 a m t o 4. 3 0 p m a t Ravensknowle Park on Wakefield Road, Huddersfield. Visit for more details of this and all the other exciting summer events in the Huddersfield area.

Coach bag

. South Crosland and Netherton Gardeners' Association 69th Annual Flower and Vegetable Show.

This year's show at Netherton Methodist Church, Church Street, Netherton is on next Saturday, August 21 with the show open for inspection at 3.45pm.

For a copy of the schedule, with nearly 80 classes, write to Michelle Heeley at 4 Marten Grove, Netherton, Huddersfield.

Tea and home-made cakes are served from2.30 pm. Entry is by schedule or 50p at the door.

How to tame that badly behaved cousin Best of the Bunch Rambling roses SOME people might say that this is what I do when I am speaking in public, but this public speech is about rambling roses that are a much maligned and neglected sector of one of our favourite group of plants.

With a growth habit more familiar to blackberry growers than rose growers and little concern for where it sends its new summer stems or who they scratch and scar as they go, many people avoid this badly behaved cousin of our beautiful bush and modern roses.

And yet, given a large banking, a tatty hedge, an old tree or an old building to ramble over, many of the best varieties will produce summer displays that few other Coach bag plants can surpass.

I have a delightful specimen of Turner's Crimson Rambler on a low fence between our house and our neighbour's and its once a year spectacle helps to offset the problems of being scratched by it as you walk down our front path.

There are so many cultivars to choose from, most with Rosa wichurana or Rosa multiflora in their parentage, that it is difficult to know which to mention.

Here are a few to search out: Paul's Himalayan Muck Rambler, Treasure Trove, Bobbie James, Alberic Barbier, Polyantha Grandiflora, Tea Rambler, Rambling Rector, Dorothy Perkins, May Queen, cheap watches Seagull and American Pillar.

Ramblers usually only need a once a year prune and this involves cutting out one or two old flowered cheap watches stems from the base, rather like pruning blackberries and raspberries.

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Tie in new canes as they develop each year.

To help you source some of these cultivars, why not treat yourself to a copy of Find That Rose ( ) with over 3,500 roses listed. For an easy to use rose book, treat yourself to a copy of The Rose Expert or, for the ultimate, buy the RHS Encyclopedia of Roses.

Your fruit and vegetable update...

1 VEGETABLES - sow a row of winter hardy spinach now and try a short row of Swiss chard or Chinese Cabbage as alternative spring vegetables.

Search out some green manure seeds to use on bare ground over the early autumn period. Sow short rows of mizuna, rocket, radish and land cress to last through to the end of summer. Take cuttings of rosemary, bay, thyme and sage now.

2 FRUIT - check plums for signs of bro