Processing Damask Rose Flowers For Rose Water and Essential Oil
Hello friends,
And welcome to 2025 on my blog. I did a bunch of stuff over the Christmas break, so in the coming weeks you'll see what I got up to crafting and gardening wise during that time. One of the things I got up to in November and December, was to harvest, and then process my own damask rose flowers.
Damask roses hail from Syria, and their flowers have been used to make rose essential oil and rose water for thousands of years, for use in both perfumes and food. In New Zealand, damask rose plants are hard to come by, and it took me a few years to get hold of two rose bushes from small, specialty rose growers. The two varieties of damask rose bushes in my back garden are Duc De Cambridge and Isapahan.
Duc De Cambridge.
Isapahan.
Damask roses only flower once in spring, and their flowering happens over the course of a month. After some research, I found a scientific paper which said that the damask rose flowers could be stored at -20˚C for a month without losing any rose essential oil, in order to collect enough rose flowers to process them by steam distillation. From mid-November to mid-December, I went out into the back garden each morning, and collected flowers from my damask rose bushes, and them stored them in our chest freezer.
When flowering finished in mid-December, I defrosted my damask rose flowers and placed them inside my Air Still pot still for distillation. After filling the still with enough water to cover the roses, I began distilling the rose essential oil and rose water.
After about twenty minutes of heating, the strong scent of rose essential oil gases began filling the kitchen. A minute after that, the combined liquid of rose essential oil and rose water began exiting the pot still.
The distilling process took about an hour, and I was left with 700 mL of combined rose essential oil and rose water afterward. The amount of rose essential oil was tiny compared to the rose water, so I decided to leave the two combined for storage. I split the resultant rose water into two 350 mL containers, and gave one to my sister, who likes to make natural products for her home.
I'm really pleased with the resulting rose water, which smells lovely, and in the coming years as my rose bushes grow, I'll get bigger harvests of rose flowers each year. My plan with the rose water this year is to use it in my cold-processed soap recipe later on this summer.
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
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Another New Rose Bush
Hello friends,
I rescued another rose bush from Mitre 10. The remaining rose bushes they have in stock are now reduced in price by 50%, and I couldn't help but pick up a climbing rose called Newsflash, for along our back garden fence. It is a bright, clear orange rose, with a pleasant light scent.
It's estimated to get approximately 2.8 metres long, and flowers repeatedly all summer long, and my plan is to train it in both directions along the fence to brighten up that area of the garden. As a bonus it is quite thorny, and it will deter the neighbour over our back fence who likes to come over the top of our side of the fence, and try and hack at our plants...
I'm really loving it's pop of colour in the back garden at the moment.
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
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No Really, One Last Dahlia Order, And A New Rose Bush Too
Hello friends,
I have a good excuse for one last dahlia order, no really.
Two dahlias that I was expecting to come up above ground, Cafe Au Lait, and also one of my new dahlias, Wizard of Oz, both failed to sprout, and after much impatient waiting I decided to have an exploratory dig around them to see what was happening.
My Cafe Au Lait dahlia was in the middle of rotting, it was so wet in there that a worm moved into the mushy bits that used to be one of my prize dahlias. My other dahlia, Wizard of Oz, had already started rotting too, and all of its eyes had disappeared during the process.
It was what I had guessed had happened. In October we had a huge multiple day rainstorm that ended up with flooding in low lying areas of Dunedin. Dahlias hate being overly wet, and with all the rain we were inundated with, both dahlias had succumbed to rot.
I was very disappointed about this, and I really wanted to replace my Cafe Au Lait dahlia, so I searched the local dahlia bulb companies, and found that Bulbs Direct still had some in stock. And considering that I had lost two dahlias, I also replaced the other dahlia I had lost. Since they no longer had Wizard of Oz dahlia in stock, I instead chose a Strawberry Cream dahlia.
As soon as they arrived by courier, they went straight into the ground. They both had decent sprouts on them, so I was happy about this. They are now both in place in the back garden.
And while I was away for a short holiday in Lake Tekapo, both Cafe Au Lait, and also Strawberry Cream, both came up above ground. I was so happy to see them. Unfortunately when I got back I discovered that one of my other new dahlias, Bacardi, which I got in October from Mount Mera Botanical, also died from rot. It had a bud above ground when I left to go on holiday, but when I got home, the bud was gone, and the bulb had rotted. I'm super sad about this because it was one of my wish list dahlias I've wanted for years. I'll have to fight it out next year to see if I can get another bulb.
And I also bought another rose too. I was in town the other day, and walked past Mitre 10 which was having a 20% off roses sale. A David Austen rose, Celebration Jubilee, was in full flower, and the antique pink colours were just amazing. I bought it, and took it home with me, and then I spent an hour wandering around the back garden trying to figure out where to put it. I eventually found a space near our new maple tree which will do for now. Later on I can move it elsewhere.
It's so nice to have another flowering rose in the back garden, it reminds me that summer is almost here, and that will mean that my dahlias will start flowering too. There's already some dahlias growing flower buds, so it won't be too long before my favorite gardening time of the year is here.
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
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Flower Garden Update Mid-November 2024
Hello friends,
I'd thought I'd share with you some of the plants flowering in my garden right now.
First up, my roses have finally started flowering, including my favorite, which is Blackberry Nip, and also the new rose in the back garden Gertrude Jekyll. Unfortunately I can't remember the name of the first rose pictured...
My two new Hostas, Purple Heart and Sleeping Beauty, are looking amazing with new foliage.
And the pansies I grew from seed from Emerden Garden, Antique Shade and Mulberry Shade, are looking amazing now they are flowering. I'll let some set seed at the end of summer, and then that way they'll populate the garden in years to come.
My cosmos are now flowering as well. I have two new varieties this year Sunset Tones (Kings Seeds), and Strawberry Blonde (Emerden Garden), are now starting to flower as well.
I still have unknown ranunculus flowering in the back garden, and all my peonies are about to burst into flower soon too.
There's even more plants about to flower around my garden, but that'll have to wait until another blog post. I've even spotted some of my older dahlias beginning to form flower buds...
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
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Our New Backyard Garden Plan and Buying All the Plants
Hello friends,
Six week's after the garden consultant came to our home, we received the garden plan back for our backyard. Overall I was pretty happy with it, but the garden consultant had forgotten some of the shrubs he said to remove, and I was a bit overzealous about which shrubs were to go.
This is the garden plan and plant list I was given, and in the following pictures I'll show the tweaks I've made to the plan so far, as I had time to think about what else I wanted to do with the space. The thing to note about this plan, was that the garden consultant hadn't included the dahlia plants already in the garden, or the small pond we have, so I had to tweak it for those as well. In this plan all the plants and shrubs and trees marked in black were pre-existing plants, and those coloured were suggestions for which ones to put in.
I traced out the plan given so I could have a clean slate, and I've coloured in the plants that we already had, and those I bought and then planted in the garden.
Starting at the bottom left corner of the back garden, I finally purchased a Little Miss Perfect rose bush for my own from Wals Plant Land. Back when I lived in Wellington I bought this rose bush variety for a friend who is also a crafter and gardener, and she sends me pictures of the floribunda flowers. It's a stunning bush with salmon petals, and many flowers. It's also a small bush rose at only 60 cm tall
Next up is space set aside for 3 dahlia tubers coming this spring. Above them is an unknown peony plant that was planted underneath the unknown magnolia further along the garden, that I transplanted.
Above the peony is the Daphne Perfumed Princess in white, that I bought from Nichols when I met with the garden consultant. I have really bad experiences with daphnes, they never seem to grow well for me, even when I treat them with kid gloves. I hope it does well as it flowers over winter which is great for bees.
Next to the daphne is an existing unknown hydrangea bush that produces lovely flowers in summer. Even though it's not in the garden consultant's plan, I wanted to keep one hydrangea in the garden. Beside the hydrangea is an unknown deciduous magnolia tree that is well established in the garden. It's flowers are white and pink.
Next to the magnolia is a space set aside for a hosta plant that is part of the garden consultant's plan. It's a dark shady and wet spot next to the viburnum beside it, but I'll have to wait until spring before shops start have them in store.
Along the left side fence line is an unknown grape vine which produces delicious dark purple grapes. Underneath the grapevine is 4 empty spots to be filled in in spring, along with another unknown peony I had to transplant from elsewhere in the garden.
In the back left corner was where one of the rhododendrons was. As I had taken that out, I decided to fill that space with one of my wish list plants, which was an evergreen evergreen blush Fairy Magnolia.
Beside the fairy magnolia tree in the back corner, is space for two columnar apple ballerina trees. They only grow 30 cm wide, but they grow 3 meters tall. They were supposed to go into the back right part of the garden, but I decided to put them in full sun. The two ballerina apple varieties I chose were Waltz and Flamenco, one is a eating and dessert apple, and the other is a cooking and preserving and dehydrating apple. Between the two of them we should have all the apples we need. The Flamenco variety is already in the ground, but I'm waiting for the Waltz variety to arrive from Mosgiel Garden Place.
Next to the apple trees is a small dahlia I moved from another part of my garden, Keith Hammett Mystic Sparkler. It's a beautifully bright pink and yellow small dahlia that is small in form. I bought this dahlia in Wellington, and before we moved back home to Dunedin I posted this dahlia and others to my sister during winter. She planted them in her garden for me, and then the next autumn once we had a home down here, I dug all my dahlias up, and moved them into our garden.
To the right of the Mystic Sparkler dahlia is another wish list shrub, Mexican Orange Blossom. I've wanted one of these for ages, and I was so pleased when the garden consultant suggested it.
And finally in the middle of our back garden fence, was the space that our maple tree was in. After it was chopped down due to our back fence neighbour on the left blackmailing us, I wanted to replace it with another maple. The garden consultant and I mulled over which variety to get, and he convinced me to invest in an Acer griseum, the paperbark maple. It grows to about 4 metres height eventually, and has bright orange leaves in autumn, and a beautiful cinnamon covered trunk that peels like paper. It's really stunning. I managed to find one out at Trees of the World, and at 2 metres high already, it barely fit in our car on the way home.
On the right center of the back fence we start with the shrub Eriostemon Bournda Beauty. It's a waxy green shrub with thousands of tiny white and pink flowers in winter. This shrub is usually covered in honey bees in late winter and early spring.
Beside it we have the red-stemmed dogwood (Cornus alba Sibirica) that I bought when we first bought our home. It's red stems are stunning in winter when there's nothing much else going on in the garden.
Next door we have a replacement camellia. The previous camellia was an ugly red colour, and it was squishing and blocking out light to my feijoa bushes. I was in Mitre 10 and came across Camellia Avalanche, which is a slim camellia (only 1 m wide) with absolutely beautiful white flowers. It was flowering when I bought it, so there has been some colour in the garden over the last month. As it is slim and tall it won't interfere with my feijoa bushes. I think this camellia would look great in a row as a hedge.
Beside the camellia are my two feijoa bushes, Unique and Kaiteri. Unique has smaller feijoa fruit which are sweet and not grainy, and Kaiteri has huge, sweet feijoa, and it's a very heavy cropper. Whenever I have visitors in the garden in autumn, they are stunned by how big and wonderful the fruit are. They usually go and buy a plant of their own after trying our feijoa.
Next to the feijoa bushes was the space that the two apple trees were supposed to go. When I talked with the garden consultant initially I brought up the idea of getting an pear tree, but it wasn't included in the plan. With this space now free, I decided to go ahead and get a pear tree. After much pondering, I decided to go with the dwarf pear Garden Belle. It only reaches 3 meters in height, but I think I'll keep it trimmed smaller than that. The variety is supposed to be mostly self-fertile, but I know of another pear tree down the street, so it's close enough for bees to cross-pollinate it on their travels.
Next to the pear tree is the stump of a wild elderflower tree. The tree arrived in our backyard from birds eating nearby elderflower berries, and leaving a deposit, and it's so good to have one of our own in our backyard. We had to chop it back hard over summer as it was growing huge, but luckily it survived, and is already budding shoots. From now on I'll take better care of it. It's not in the best spot, but I won't turn down a free tree.
In the back right corner of our backyard is an unknown Robinia tree variety (Black Locust), it's not in the healthiest condition, and it was pollarded by the previous owners. We've never seen it flower, and it causes quite a big mess to clean up in autumn. I'm not sure if I'll keep it, but I'll leave it there for now. Eventually over spring I'll be under planting it with shade plants.
Next to the Robinia is Pseudowintera Red Leopard, which likes light woodland conditions, which is what it gets underneath the Robinia tree. I like the speckled red and green evergreen leaves in the dappled light.
The next shrub along is our Viburnum opulus Sterile shrub aka the Snowball tree. I've always wanted one of my own, and the snowball flowers look wonderful in spring.
Beside the snowball tree is one of my damask roses, Duc De Cambridge, and I bought it for collecting scented flowers, which is used in rose oil and rose water production. Damask roses are hard to get in New Zealand, and it took me two years of searching before I could buy one.
Above the damask rose is our unknown Syringia/lilac tree variety. Lilacs are supposed to be shrubs, but our lilac has turned itself into a tree, and is about 3 metres high. It has beautiful fragrant purple flowers in spring, and I'm very happy with what it's decided to be.
Underneath the lilac tree is our small solar-powered water feature which is enjoyed by both bird and cat life alike. And behind the water feature is our Banksia rose "The Pearl" which runs along the side fence, and you can read more about it in this recent blog post.
Beside the water feature is my other damask rose, Isaphan. I also plan to collect rose petals from this shrub too. As a bonus it'll block out our new neighbour.
Next up is another new plant, Westringia Wynyabbie Gem. It' s a frost hardy evergreen which has beautiful star-shaped blue flowers in spring and summer, and gets to only 1 m tall.
In the bottom right corner of our back garden is our three year old Syrmna quince tree. Last year it produced it's first fruit, and the 5 quince were great poached, and eaten with vanilla ice cream. My plan is to try and keep it to about 3 meters tall so it doesn't get too big.
And finally, next to the quince tree is another plant suggested by the garden consultant. I bought the David Austin rose Gertrude Jekyll, and is tolerant of partial shade conditions, and reaches about 1 m in height with bright pink flowers over spring and summer, which should brighten up that corner of the garden next to the berry cage.
All along this right side of the garden is space for many smaller plants, including dahlias, bulbs, annuals and perennials. I already have 3 dahlias in the ground, which I've had for years: Protegee, Pink Magic, and Arthur Hambley. I've ordered more dahlias for the backyard, but they won't arrive until spring.
I can't wait for spring to arrive, so I can finish planting the back garden. I've already started seed sowing for spring, and it'll continue well into spring. I hope you've enjoyed this rather long blog post, and to see which plants are now in my garden.
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
Want to discuss my post? Feel free to chat with me on Instagram or Mastodon or Bluesky
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