A Year With a Rose: Violet Carson

I first saw this rose at the San Jose Heritage Rose Garden a couple of years ago. I really liked its unusual coral-pink color and beautiful classically shaped blooms. It is a McGredy floribunda introduced in 1964. I saw it in Vintage Gardens' catalog a year ago, and could not resist, even though roses introduced at that time were all grafted and growing it own-root could result in a weak and unrewarding rose. I am glad to say that so far, it has turned out just fine:

The picture above shows the first bloom on my little rose this past spring. It is amazing how well-formed and perfect it looks. Wonderful color, no sign of balling, no trouble opening at all. It had good fragrance too, and what more could be wished for?

This rose is fairly low-growing and spreading with weak-necked blooms. Perfect, in fact, for nodding onto my retaining wall:

I love the look of roses against stonework, and I actually put a bench near it so I can sit down and look at these gorgeous blooms.

Even as a young plant it produced generous clusters of blooms, all fragrant and opening well. As you can see on the nodding bloom above, the finish is not great with some spotting on the outer petals, but not bad enough to ruin the overall look of the plant. The leaves are perfect, too, although we don't have blackspot around here (the two pictures above were taken in late summer). Definitely a keeper.