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The War of the Roses

By Wanda Kelly

It’s a celebration of love, with soft candlelight, music, and a perfectly appointed table in a fancy restaurant. You’ve brought the ring and the flowers—a beautiful bouquet of dandelions. Of course not—you’ve brought a bouquet of roses. Romance and roses just seem to go together. America and the world are in love with roses yet many amateur gardeners are afraid to grow them. They have a bad reputation for attracting diseases and pests and for needing "velvet glove" treatment, especially varieties introduced in the 20th century. Keep in mind, though, that the rose is, in all truth, a survivor.

Roses are ancient plants and, among other things, renowned cross-cultural symbols of both love and war. But the plants that we gardeners treasure have a relatively short history. Old roses started in China and immigrated to Europe before 1800; modern roses were developed in England and France during or after the 19th century. My favorite, Peace, made its debut in a time of war (1945) and was used in the political events that ended that turmoil. Well, here we are in the 21st century and the number of roses available is mind-boggling—short ones, tall ones, climbers, shrubs, singles, doubles, floribundas, grandifloras, hybrid teas, and Knock Outs, to describe just a few. If you’re considering choosing roses for your garden, where do you start?

First, assess your garden’s location and size. Roses love sunshine, 5–6 hours of it per day, and they are quite tolerant of all soil types except heavy clay. You can combine tree roses, shrub roses, and hybrid tea roses to completely fill a flower bed, or they play well with others as an addition to a perennial garden. If your bed is at least three feet wide you can incorporate roses in it to provide a nice show of color. Keep the usual landscape design rule in mind: groups of three work well. Also consider the effect the rose’s pests will have on companion plants and vice versa. Japanese beetles, black spot, powdery mildew, botrytis, and spider mites can be found on some roses. So check the profiles of all nearby plants.

Now that you have the lay of your land, you can find plenty of information about rose varieties on the Internet. In fact, as I write, my e-mail in-box is being bombarded with news from one of the most well-known purveyors of roses—Jackson & Perkins. I’ve always been reluctant to put much stock in recommendations that come with an easy-click order form. So I did some investigation into award-winning roses.

I started with All-America Rose Selections (AARS) winners. As a nonprofit association, AARS is currently a group of nine growers and introducers of roses operating a network of public garden trials to find the best new roses for gardeners. While many of the winners are from large companies like Jackson & Perkins, amateur breeders have been awarded this coveted gold medal of rose creators. Each trial is conducted in a public garden for a two-year period, under strict controls ensuring that the conditions mirror those you would find in an average garden. The group’s Web site, www.rose.org, is a great source of information on choosing and growing roses of all kinds. If you’re starting a search for the perfect garden rose, why not start by looking at those that have withstood the test of time since the 1940s.

Another great source is the American Rose Society, which has local chapters across the United States. This is the place to see what individual rose gardeners are growing. “Roses in Review” is its version of rose trials: a survey to rate how the roses are growing in gardens around the country. Members are given specific rating criteria and a score chart to use to review plants they are growing. Perhaps the most intriguing link on the society’s site, www.ars.org, enables you to contact a member who has volunteered to answer questions via e-mail. These consulting rosarians are listed by state so you can be sure their growing conditions are similar to yours.

I have an old rose bed that I was about to redo as an ornamental grass garden. The roses are woody and they just aren’t blooming. They are in a southwesterly bed that gets sun baked all day, and my irrigation system just quit. If all that weren’t bad enough, the Japanese beetles noshed their way through the collection of roses this past season. Who would blame me for declaring victory and withdrawing from the war of roses? But then I investigated the recent advance called Knock Out roses, and now I am reconsidering my plan. These roses, developed by Star Roses, are care free (no deadheading needed), disease resistant, ever-blooming, nicely shaped, and now available in my favorite color: yellow. I can’t see any reason not to rekindle my romance with roses and grow these beauties—except that they still have thorns. Oh well, I still have gloves, so we’re even.

Wanda Kelly is a frequent contributor to What's Up and owns Rainbow Farm in Salisbury.

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