Easy Roses

• Antique Roses for the South (Taylor, 2004) by William C. Welch
• Classic Roses (Random House, 2002) by Peter Beales
• Climbing Roses (Prentice Hall, 1994) by Stephen Scanniello and Tania Bayard
• The English Roses (Firefly, 2008) by David Austin
• The Gardener’s Guide to Common-Sense Pest Control (Taunton Press, 1996) by William Olkowski
• Good Bugs for Your Garden (Algonquin, 1995) by Allison Mia Starcher
• The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Roses (Timber Press, 1992), edited by Mary Moody and Jack Harkness
• Old Roses and English Roses (Antique Collectors’ Club, 1992) by David Austin
• One Hundred Old Roses for the American Garden (Workman, 2000) by Clair Martin
• The Organic Rose Garden (Taylor, 2004) by Liz Druitt
• Rosa Gallica (Firefly, 1999) by Suzanne Verrier
• Rosa Rugosa (Firefly, 1999) by Suzanne Verrier
• The Rose Bible (Chronicle, 1998) by Rayford Clayton Reddell
• A Year of Roses (Cool Springs Press, 2006) by Stephen Scanniello

Some years I start annuals early–like the sweet peas I should have planted after Thanksgiving. They would look fabulous now growing near ‘Buff Beauty’. But other years I am preoccupied with other things.

I love annuals for color in the garden, keeping up the show while the roses and perennials cycle in and out. The garden needed watering, so before putting on the sprinkler a few minutes ago, I sowed generous quantities of the following seeds:

• Salvia coccinea ‘Lady in Red’ (my favorite annual salvia, which is beautiful and not a big vulgar)
• S. coccinea ‘Coral Nymph’ (not as vigorous as ‘Lady in Red’ but nice)
• Eschscholzia californica ‘Jersey Cream’ (California poppy)
• E. californica ‘Thai Silk Fire Bush’
• E. californica ‘Apricot Flambeau’
• Cosmos bipinnatus ‘Giant Tetra Trianon’
• C. bipinnatus ‘Double Click’

All except the S. coccinea came from Select Seeds, which has about the best selection of old-fashioned and worthy modern annuals.

Late-sowing of annuals is a great trick for keeping the garden looking great well into fall.

The June 2008 issue of Fine Gardening includes an article by Suzy Verrier, the person responsible for getting me interested in rugosa roses.

They’re the ultimate class of roses for gardeners who want beautiful results with very little work. Rugosas aren’t great as cut flowers—they don’t have the substance to last very long—but they are fragrant, beautiful, cold-hardy, and disease-resistant. Many offer the additional benefits of colorful fall foliage and hips (the fruit of the rose).

 The article (sadly not available on the internet—or at least I couldn’t find it) mentions a couple of new cultivars that I’m interested in, notably the beautiful ‘Foxi’ (or ‘Foxi Pavement’), a fragrant semidouble rose in a rich, cool pink. Verrier describes it as “an excellently performing new variety . . . [with] a heady fragrance.”

The article’s photos also make me want to try ‘Polar Ice’, which I’d heard of but never seen. The blooms, Verrier says, are “creamy white . . . with shell-pink petals and deeper pink centers.” The blooms, she says, smell like baby powder. Fall foliage is bright yellow.

By the way: Verrier’s book, pictured above, is excellent, as is her Rosa Gallica. First published in the 1990s, both are still in print—a minor miracle that speaks to the quality of the books.

I don’t know why, but pruning seem to generate more angst in rose gardeners than anything else.

Each year when I teach my crash course in rose gardening, I say that the worst thing you can do is give a rose a bad haircut. In other words, even if you prune very poorly, the worst consequence is that your rose will look bad for a season.

Why do we prune?

1. To remove wood that is dead, diseased, or damaged in some way.
    
2. If we’re talking about hybrid teas (HTs), floribundas, and grandifloras, to “open the center of the bush.” If you don’t grow these classes of roses, this isn’t a concern.
    
3. To remove canes that are rubbing against each other (more of an issue with HTs).
    
4. To shape the plant. The key is to work with the shrub’s natural shape. In other words, you wouldn’t give an across-the-top buzz cut to an arching, fountain-shaped bush.
    
5. To encourage growth. This last is the reason Southern gardeners don’t usually prune in the fall—and why everyone stops deadheading late in the year. We want the plant to go dorman, and pruning gives the plant signals to grow.

Here’s what’s either in my garden or has spent a season in a pot, waiting for a permanent location:

• Arethusa
• Belinda’s Dream
• Blanc Double de Coubert
• Buff Beauty
• Camaieux
• Chic
• Danaë
• Duchesse de Montebello
• Felicite Parmentier
• Ferdinand Pichard
• Goldbusch
• Golden Celebration
• Grüss an Aachen
• Hermosa
• Honorine de Brabant
• Iceberg
• La Belle Sultane
• Lady Hillingdon
• Louise Odier
• Maiden’s Blush
• Margaret Merril
• Mme. Alfred Carriere
• Mme. Hardy
• Mme. Jean Gaujard
• Mrs. B. R. Cant
• Mrs. Herbert Stevens
• New Dawn
• Oillet Panachée
• Paul’s Lemon Pillar
• Perle d’Or
• Prosperity
• Roserie de l’Hay
• Sombreuil
• Souvenir de Philémon Cochet
• Stanwell Perpetual
• Verschuren
• White Cap 

Last year at the end of the growing season I meant to go around the garden with a notebook and rate each rose’s disease-resistance on a scale from 1 to 5. 5 would mean no visible signs of disease, 1 would be total defoliation.

I never got around to it but will attempt it this year a couple of times during the season.

The worst performers were the miniatures. I’ve never been crazy about minis but decided to give some a whirl. Without exception, they had much more blackspot than any other class. Interesting that one of the cleanest plants was ‘Verschuren’, an old hybrid tea with interestingly variegated foliage. Not a trace of blackspot. Many others looked great as well.

I should mention that I live in East Tennessee, which gets an average of 51 inches of rainfall each year. Abundant rain = blackspot because the fungus spores can’t germinate unless leaves remain wet for at least seven hours.

Admittedly, last year was extremely dry. But because my soaker-hose system had some problems last year, I watered with a sprinkler, which is the worst way to water roses because it wets the foliage.

When I have time, I’ll post a list of all the plants I ordered last year. A few were planted in our new 20’ by 30’ cottage garden; most remained in plastic pots all season. This spring’s goal is to dig a massive new rose bed and get them in the ground.

Here’s a post I wrote last year for another garden blog (which has since gone dormant), detailing what I’d accomplished as of May 27, 2007:

started seeds of

• Salvia coccinea ‘Lady in Red’ and ‘Coral Nymph’
• some sort of hollyhock mix
• various columbine mixes
  

planted seeds of

• moonvine
• lablab
• cardinal climber
• cosmos Vega series
• Coreopsis ‘Early Sunrise’
  
  

potted

• two Mandevilla ‘Janel’ and a whole bunch of coleus that need bigger pots
  
  

planted in the new cottage garden

• moonvines and cardinal climber to grow on separate bamboo tepees
• hollyhock ‘Peaches and Dreams’
• Acanthus mollis latifolia
• ladies’ mantle
• Anemone x hybrida ‘Andrea Atkinson’
• Asclepias tuberosa
• false indigo
• Caryopteris divaricata ‘Snow Fairy’
• Coreopsis verticillata ‘Moonbeam’
• Dicentra spectabilis ‘Alba’
• Dryopteris erythrosora ‘Brilliance’
• Heuchera ‘Obsidian’ and two other Heucheras with purple and silver foliage
• Lobelia cardinalis
• Lobelia siphilitica ‘Great Blue’
• Monarda ‘Jacob Cline’
• Nepeta ‘Walker’s Low’
• Penstemmon ‘Husker Red’
• Phlox paniculata ‘David’
• Veronica ‘Sunny Border Blue’
• roses ‘Blanc Double de Coubert’, ‘Buff Beauty’, ‘Gruss an Aachen’, and ‘Scarlet Flower Carpet’ (Roses growing on in pots are ‘Felicite Parmentier’, another ‘Gruss an Aachen’, ‘Mme. Hardy’, ‘Perle d’Or’, and ‘Souvenir de Philemon Cochet’; still more roses are on order)
• shrubs ‘Snowflake’ oakleaf hydrangea, Cayuga viburnum, and Itea virginica
• vines Clematis ‘Niobe’ and Lonicera x heckrottii ‘Goldflame’
• bulbs Calladium ‘Miss Muffet’, Canna ‘Bengal Tiger’, Crocosmia ‘Lucifer’, Golden Splendor trumpet lily, Regal trumpet lily
  
  

It’s no wonder my back hurts! But in a year or two, it should be quite a spectacle, with color effects I’d never thought of and also some I wish I’d prevented. That’s what shovels are for, I suppose.

I’ve begun yet another blog, this one devoted to my favorite flower, the rose.

Ten years ago I wrote a book (now, sadly, out of print) about rose-growing for beginners, and each spring I teach a noncredit class at the University of Tennessee on the same topic. The class was March 8, last Saturday, and I teach it only once a year, so if you’re interested, you’ll have to be patient. But in the meantime, perhaps I can spread some useful information here.