A bouquet of garden roses - Cover Story

Flower & Garden Magazine, April-May, 1994 by Liz Druitt

There Can't Be Very Many people who don't think roses are beautiful flowers. The "queen of flowers" is given as a gift of love and caring; it's the focal point of many flower shows; it even was recently designated as our national floral symbol. Roses offer such a broad spectrum of colors, fragrances and lovely flower forms that they have exceptionally wide appeal. Those long-stemmed, crimson beauties in a box are just the tip of the iceberg, however; roses bred for the gardener, rather than the florist, offer unlimited possibilities in the landscape.

Gardeners want flowers, of course, and a healthy plant to support them. If the plant has its own beauty of foliage and form, so much the better. And if theplant can fill more than one role in the garden, offering variety in size and habit, then it becomes truly valuable. Roses can do all of these things easily. There are so many options available in shape, size and performance that gardeners who are new to roses may feel overwhelmed with the choices. Nurseries now offer time-tested historic varieties in addition to newer hybrid teas, climbers, floribundas and minatures, so the selection is more impressive than ever - and more confusing.

If you're just starting with roses in your garden the following list offers some particularly satisfying varieties that will make you feel like an instant rose-growing expert. If you are already an experienced grower it may be time to give classic beauties another chance to show how they can enhance an existing landscape. Additionally, these selections have better-than-average resistance to disease and insects, and when hey are given normal, healthy garden conditions, they can be grown without a dependence on sprays.

Eglantine, or Rosa eglaneria, is a European wild rose that has been important in gardens since before 1551. Shakespeare and other poets made much of it because of the scented leaves, which smell like fresh apples. This rose flowers in the spring, with five-petalled pink flowers whose innocent beauty is at odds with the multitude of sharp prickless covering the canes. The fragrant foliage lingers until frost, spreading its scent with every rain shower, moist breeze or pass of the sprinkler. Eglantine is a big bush, reaching up to 8 feet in height, so it makes a good backdrop for other plants in a garden. It can also be grown by itself as an eye-catching specimen, or naturalized at the edge of woodlands. Birds love this rose for the abundant hips it produces; they often nest in the shelter of its prickly branches.

Another especially rewarding wild, or species, rose is the chestnut rose, Rosa roxburghii. Introduced from China before 1814 and found today in many historic gardens, the chestnut rose has unique characteristics. Its canes are covered by a thin, papery bark that peels like that of crape myrtle, and the leaves are made up of so many tiny leaflets that they look more like legume than rose foliage. Most interesting are the prickles that cover both buds and hips like moss, leading to the descriptive common name. This rose grows to 4 or 5 feet in a naturally arching form that makes it beautiful when shaped as a specimen, though it can be pruned into a compact shrub for container use. The flowers, produced in spring and fall, are large, pink and very double.

With the introduction of repeat-blooming roses from China, the European rose world changed drastically. |Hermosa,' a complex hybrid of the old and the new, is one of the most delightful results of that change. This little rose was listed in the China class by 1837 and remains popular today. Constantly in flower, the cupped, double blossoms are bluish-pink and quite fragrant. |Hermosa' is a dream rose for a gardener with little space. It reaches only 3 or 4 feet in height and can be easily grown in a container. The perfectly shaped flowers and steady bloom make this roses a good choice as a gift.

|Souvenir de la Malmaison' is another compact bush with pink roses, but it has a very different effect in the garden than |Hermosa.' The flowers are palest pink, well-scented and so crammed full of petals that the stamens are invisible. The leaves have a slightly blue tine, which, when combined with the pale flowers, gives the whole bush the appearance of fine porcelain. This rose is in the Bourbon class, and it has been pleasing gardeners since 1843. |Souvener de la Malmaison' repeats bloom throughout the growing season and its 3- to 4-foot bush works well in the small border or in a container.

|Madame Isaac Pereire' is a Bourbon rose that was developed in 1881. It has flexible canes between 5 and 7 feet long - a potentially awkward form for some plants, but one that works well in a number of ways for the creative gardener. The canes can be wrapped or braided on a post to make a pillar of blooming roses, or pegged back over to the soil in a low arch as Victorians used to do. The rose can even be kept pruned as a chunky 4-foot shrub, if desired. The flowers are mauve pink, almost purple, large, fat and extremely fragrant, so it's well worth the effort to find the right niche for this versatile rose.