Random Rose Reflections

I can't think of a plant, other than the rose, that so many gardeners are so passionate about.

Shön Ingeborg, a hybrid perpetual. Hybrid perpetuals are sometimes said to be more hybrid than perpetual, i.e. they are known more for complex genes rather than good rebloom. This cultivar, however, gives me three flushes a year and its foliage is always healthy.

It has many dedicated admirers and is grown in widely different climates and gardening styles.

Lyda Rose, a modern shrub. Single blooms are usually much more fleeting than more double ones, but there are many more of them too.

It is exhibited, collected and treasured, but also disdained (they all get sick) and avoided (they all are too much work).

Colette, a large-flowered climber

I am sometimes amazed at how many complaints are hurled at this or that rose.

'Hoag House Cream', a found rose. Found roses are usually discovered growing abandoned, and often their identity can no longer be determined.

Knock-Out roses are ubiquitous (and are therefore for the uninitiated), orange roses are gaudy, hybrid teas are vulgar, teas mildew, hybrid perpetuals rust, albas crisp in the heat, gallicas won't bloom without chill, climbers get out of control and as for those jolly green giants with octopus arms and occasional blooms, known to some as David Austin roses... well, I dare not even start on those :).

Fuzzy-Wuzzy Red, a miniature moss. Moss roses are called so because of fragrant moss-like glands covering the canes and buds.

Hearing such blanket condemnation always makes me sad.

A cane of Penelope, a hybrid musk, fell on some osteospermum daisies. I have two Penelopes and am trying to grow one as a shrub and the other as a short climber.

As the estimable Mr. Bingley said in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice: "I would not be so fastidious as you are for a kingdom!"

Elie Beauvilain, a tea-noisette

Here are a few rose portraits I have taken recently.

Magnificent Perfume, a modern shrub

My collection is small and has come together helter-skelter without a particular goal or purpose.

A stem of Queen Mary 2, a hybrid tea. It has a very stiff growth habit for which hybrid teas are often faulted. Its saving grace is superior health, generosity of bloom, and a very strong fragrance reminiscent of bananas. I grow it for cutting.

Despite a variety of colors, shapes, sizes and petal counts they are each lovely in their own way.

Sir Henry Segrave, an early hybrid tea. Not all of them have high centered blooms.

Mme Berkeley, a tea

And what about those indispensable whole bush shots? Surely a rose is more than just a pretty flower?

Félicité Parmentier, an alba

Well, yes, but this is where my photography skills fail me miserably. In the middle of summer, my whole garden is a mass of color and foliage, and I cannot make you see where the rose bush ends and other plants begin.

Basye's Purple Rose, a rugosa, is peeking out from a profusion of summer blooming perennials. My rugosas never get badly chlorotic, even though I don't usually bother to acidify their soil.

With so many other plants growing around and through my roses, even I don't always see the whole bush until winter, when the perennials are cut down and I am pruning.

Rosa californica, a species....

....and its beautiful, multi-colored hips 

For me, it is a good thing. I am much less picky about a rose's growth habit because I never grow roses as stand alone shrubs. Not even in pots.

Cynthia Brooke, a hybrid tea, in a 24" pot. Some canes of Zéphirine Drouhin are drooping behind it.

So, for me, a rose is a rose, whether it has five petals or two hundred, whether pink or orange, a ubiquitous Double Delight or an obscure antique treasure.

Pretty Jessica, a David Austin rose

They are all beautiful and they all give me much joy.

Devoniensis, a tea

However, I do not want to give the impression that I am completely indiscriminate in my selections.

Sweet Pea, a polyantha

My garden is small, and I have to restrict my rose choices pretty severely.

Prinzessin Marie von Arenberg, an early hybrid tea

So here are some of my criteria for buying a rose.

Jude the Obscure, one of my favorite David Austin roses. No other rose matches its unique and powerful fragrance.

 I will not grow a rose that doesn't bloom :) I don't grow many reds because they are not photogenic. And I don't grow roses whose foliage is so sick that it is not recognizably green. Fortunately, that still leaves me with plenty of choices.

April in Paris, a hybrid tea