Roses still sleepy but awakening

‘Clotilde Soupert’ is the early riser of the garden, up and at ‘em at the crack of dawn. Everybody else takes after the gardener for whom 8AM is really early. So it’s looking like the old clock on the garden wall is saying about 6:30, maybe quarter to seven. ‘Leonie Lamesch’ is not only awake but cheerful. She’s just off the patio, and I can see her from the back door, dotted with her small but happy red/pink/cream blossoms. She appears in the next four photos. She’s only been in the ground for about a year and only has two mature canes, so though she’s strikingly pretty, she’s not a candidate for a full bush just yet. You can guess that I love her foliage.






‘Mrs B R Cant’ is really lovely this spring compared to previous years. Being on Fortuniana rootstock, last year I followed conventional wisdom and pruned her quite hard, including removing leaves. Then last season she grew wacky with eight-foot canes sprouting from five feet high on the bush. She looked like she was trying to be a climber, but those heavy canes just flopped over and laid down on other plants. Growth was going horizontally through the bush, and she wasn’t very leafy at all. My excuse for her was that she’s growing way under two huge oaks and deprived of enough sun. So last month when I was on my pruning rounds, I could not make heads or tails of her, because she was such a jumble of confused growth. I removed most of her leaves just so I could see what was where. Then I decided to shorten all that long stuff to match the rest of the bush, remove dead stuff and downward growing stuff, and end it there. My conclusion was that last year’s pruning forced contrary growth. Of course, that’s only my observation, one admittedly influenced by my prejudice against Teas on Fortuniana.



Well, she has more leaves and is bushier this year. (She was so non-foliated last year that she was un-photographable.)  See that nearly horizontal line in the middle of the bush? That’s one of those canes I mentioned before. In my experience some Teas sprout shoots at nearly right angles from the original cane, and I believe cutting exacerbates that habit, causing multiple shoots near the cut. So I’m going to see if minimal cutting helps her. I know the pros will strongly differ with me on this, but I’m just trying to achieve some normalcy for her without a clue as to what her normal really is. By the way she's about six feet tall and close to eight feet wide.



She has a lot of buds on her but has been loathe to make any cane breaks down low. None last year or this year so far.



‘Polonaise’ is looking good after this winter’s transplant. She has a good many buds already on her few canes.



‘Mary Guthrie’ surprised me yesterday with this bright flower which is exactly true-to-life color. She was relocated, too, for the sake of these scrumptious flowers. No black spot yet, the gardener said with a wry, little chuckle. HMF says she's fragrant, but dumb gardener didn't know because she has never taken a whiff!



Happily, more bright flowers are coming as seen in this photo.



In my last post you saw the red new canes of ‘Maman Cochet’. Now about nine days later they are almost green and about four feet long. Her middle is looking nicely full.



My in-the-ground ‘Borderer’ is also blooming and filled with buds. She’s quite a small bush – maybe two feet tall and four feet across.



Here’s the full bed. From front to back, ‘Borderer’, ‘White Pet’, and ‘Leonie Lamesch’. ‘White Pet’ has buds but no flowers yet.



This is ‘Francois Juranville’, my rambler that cascades from the rebar arbor. This is his third season in the garden, and being a once-bloomer (though my fingers are crossed for some repeat here in sunny Florida), there were no flowers the first year and literally only a handful last year since he only blooms on old wood. This is the first flower I’ve seen this year. I chose this rambler for its fairly large and double flowers and for the color. It seems most ramblers are small-flowered and white, and you know how much I like color. See those shiny, healthy green leaves? Those are Wichurana leaves. They are the other reason I chose this rose. No black spot. An evergreen climber that would cover my vacant arbor was what I was seeking. Flowers almost didn’t matter. These will definitely be a bonus.



Here’s FJ in February. He’s been bulking up lately, throwing thick new canes all over the place. I keep trying to tuck them in so they go vertical. If allowed to go straight out from the existing verticals, I think he’d be happy to take the whole garden.



The first flower (that I’ve seen) of ‘Duchesse de Brabant’. Only a year in the ground, she’s young and flimsy, but she has at least grown in all directions and is maybe two feet tall and almost five feet wide. She’s in a cooler location than my first DdB which I think will keep her better foliated with pinker blooms. Obviously, being a Tea Rose, heat should not be a problem, but for three years I could not keep leaves on the bush from which this plant was cut. So if she’s more comfortable out of the scorching sun, it’s fine with me.



‘Blush Noisette’ has one open flower and some buds though she’s far from covered yet. She has leafed out some since the hard pruning but not a lot.



You may remember that I love Dianthus chinensis. Summer, winter, it doesn’t matter. They’re green and blooming. This is a new color that I got this winter – in fact, two of them. I love the color! Oh, wow! It just occurred to me that this one is planted at the feet of purple Clematis ‘Venosa Violacea’. Sometimes things just work out, don’t they?



I am so excited about the new scapes on several daylilies. These are the Early Season DLs, and I must admit that I didn’t realize that early meant this  early. This particular one is Bob Carr’s ‘Inherited Wealth’. This is one that I am itching to see bloom. I chose it for its gorgeous and abundant flowers that I had seen in photos even though it supposedly does not rebloom. In my long, long growing season I love and demand rebloomers. So we’ll see about this one. I can always hope it will decide to bloom again, right?



Yesterday I blew the leaves out of the gravel paths, so the garden is tidier. I was feeling like a really low-down garden-keeper with all those oak leaves covering everything. They keep dropping – month after month. I hope they’re done, and I hope I can mulch them up with the lawn mower. So with the garden cleaned up and blooming, I’m almost a happy camper. If some little elves would come and spray the weeds in the front circle gravel with RoundUp, then I would be a full-fledged happy camper. This photo was taken way back in February (apparently when I was pruning), and since the weed is of great proportions, maybe I’ve already pulled it. Let’s hope so.

Easy Roses

(Originally published on December 29, 2010 and accidentally republished today. So sorry.)
After a few attempts to grow roses, that is, hybrid tea roses, I finally decided to treat them like annuals, good for a season and that's it. My experience with azaleas and a few butterfly-attracting plants did not equip me to grow beautiful roses, and even if I had known about spraying for fungal diseases and cutting back to the 5th (or 3rd or whatever) five-leaf set I would certainly have merely failed more expensively. I knew nothing of rootstocks and whether they were good or bad in Florida sand. I only knew they needed sun, and that's why I decided to plant some at my new (present) home. I had lots and lots of sun. So if I remember right, I bought two from Lowe's in 2006, Golden Showers and Showbiz. They were lovely until black spot got them, especially Showbiz.

Trying to learn more about how to keep them lovely longer, I went online to the internet and found The Roses Forum, The Antique Roses Forum and The Organic Gardening Forum on GardenWeb.com. "In for a penny, in for a pound" is how it has turned out - head first into the deep end of the pool I dove, immersing myself in a realm of knowledge that was way over my head. After not much research I realized I didn't have a whole lot of chance of success with roses the way I was going at it, and the more I learned the more successful I wanted to be. So in February, 2007 I bought my first Old Garden Roses from a nearby nursery. Within a month or two I bought a handful of roses on Fortuniana rootstock, mostly NOT Old Garden Roses, and then four own-root roses from an online nursery in Texas. By that winter I had started excavating my front yard, replacing much of the grass with a rose garden I designed on graph paper, and the rest is history as they say.

I now have 96 roses on a .17 acre lot, but that's probably less than half of the roses that I have bought. The rest are gone, mostly due to a very steep learning curve. You see, this is Florida, and things are different here. Who knew that so many plants don't like the state that I love? I didn't. And even trying my best to choose roses that were said to be healthy, many just were not healthy HERE. It did not feel like trial and error. I would never have admitted to that methodology! I was diligently educating myself and making "good" choices based on all the information I could lay my hands on, almost entirely the experience of others, most of whom did not grow roses in Florida. I didn't know then that much of Texas is hot and DRY, not like Florida. I did not know that when California nurseries say their roses are disease resistant, they are referring to powdery mildew and rust NOT black tspot. I didn't know that some roses do not like alkaline soil which is what I have. As hard as I tried to learn from what is written, it really didn't count as much as what I learned from what my garden was trying to teach me. So there were losses, and there were successes, and alas, there were successes that just didn't please me. Most were removed with sadness, and a few were given the bum's rush.

Four growing seasons later I've achieved some equilibrium and confidence in what I'm doing. And that is the reason for this blog. I think there are Floridians who want to grow roses as they did up north or want to grow roses for the first time - simply because they are beautiful, but personal experience or well-meant advice from others has dissuaded them from fulfilling their dreams of a rose garden in Florida. Such a sad and unnecessary defeat. The truth is that there are roses that thrive in our climate and even in our sandy soil, albeit amended sandy soil, but rarely are they found at the local big-box garden centers. These roses are resistant to fungal diseases and don't need spraying. They're the progenitors of the hybrid teas and floribundas of today. They love Florida because Florida resembles their original climate. They are excellent garden shrubs that laugh at our heat and humidity, blooming from spring through the hottest summer and beyond the first frosts. Basically, only hard freezes and lack of water will stop their bloom. These are the roses I want to introduce to those who have a heart for growing them. So here goes.

Just ordered more roses

What can I say? I am powerless and without self-control when I see the words "half off". I feel a little giddy, too, though some might say looney, but what the heck. The roses I ordered are all David Austin English Roses, and since mine is a no-spray garden, this will be quite a test. The scuttlebutt I have heard has not been great as to their disease resistance, but these four claim otherwise.

In case you're curious about who is having such a sale, I'll tell you. Heirloom Roses is who is having this 50% off sale through July 17th. (Just as a disclaimer I am only a customer of Heirloom Roses - not a shareholder.) The roses I ordered are 'Mary Rose', 'Graham Thomas', 'St Swithun' and 'Hyde Hall', none of which I can get from my nearby favorite rose nursery.

'Graham Thomas' (1983) - a tall shrub or 10' climber in warmer climates with a long growing season like mine. I have seen GH growing in Florida, and it stole my heart with it's beautiful yellow color which I don't remember being quite as gold as this photo. I'm hoping it will be healthy. If not, I may take up spraying it.

'Hyde Hall' (2004) - this will be a good-sized shrub, probably kept at 5-6' x 5'. The description says it's shade-tolerant, and that's why I chose it after determining as well as possible that it has good disease resistance by looking it up on Helpmefind/roses.

'Mary Rose' (1983) - supposed to be a 4'x4' shrub but I won't be surprised if it's bigger. I have read that this is a very good rose in Florida. I will keep you posted about it.

'St Swithun' (1993) - a small climber (8') or large shrub. This rose is also described as shade-tolerant and hopefully healthy.

In case some of you haven't ordered roses by mail you might be interested in exactly what I'm getting. They're called bands. A band pot is 6" tall by 3" wide/square. The plant itself is about 6-8" or 8-10" tall depending on the type of rose - Hybrid Teas and climbers are taller than Shrub roses, according to the website. So these are baby roses, and they're growing on their own roots not on another rootstock like Fortuniana. As I've mentioned before, my garden beds are greatly amended with organic matter which hopefully will greatly reduce/eliminate the need for the Fortuniana rootstock as a defense against nematodes. If you want to read all about own-root roses, HERE's a very good description.

Keeping my fingers crossed that in a few days I'll receive an email that they still have these roses in stock and will be shipping them out right away. And naturally, before I pulled the trigger I calculated where they would go in the garden. Sometimes digging holes is a happy event.