Bush shots

Capturing a rose bush in a photograph is for me the grandest frustration as I may have mentioned once or twice before . In five lifetimes I don't think I could afford the camera that could compete with the perfectly designed optics of a human being, so my photos never please me because they do not show what I see . That being said, the following photos are an attempt to show you a few rose bushes in order to give you an idea of the size and shape of a garden-style or landscape rose bush in a Florida garden , that is, a warm, long-season garden . However, they would only be average when compared with other three and four year old roses . Mine are by no means big by general Florida standards since they're still fairly young . I take some pride in the fact that none of these photos look like green blobs with pink spots on them . They're a little better than that . My further hope is that you will be able to figure out what you're seeing .

Here is my front garden and the bushes I'm going to show you.
1 - Le Vesuve                   2 - Mme Abel Chatenay                    3 - Clotilde Soupert #1
4 - Souv de Francois Gaulain           5 - Clotilde Soupert #2             6 - Bow Bells              7 - White Pet

Below, 'Le Vesuve' ( #1 in the first photo ) is in a six-foot diameter bed and hangs over a bit, making him about seven feet across and five feet tall . Flowers are three to four inches across . Because of his dense foliage, you can't see the wide v-shape structure of the bush . This rose starts out wide and low with canes growing almost parallel to the ground and taking up to two years to start adding canes that grow vertically . 'Le Vesuve' can become a huge bush when it is older . Also, in California there is one still living after 90 or more years . They have different and more favorable growing conditions in California than here in Florida as you can imagine .

 Here is a tighter shot that gives a closer view of leaves and flowers .This rose has a rather boisterous growth manner in that it sends out shoots that grow fairly quickly, and if they run into other canes, they will turn and twist to get around the obstacles, even making u-turns . This habit causes the slender canes to become very tangled, creating the dense bush that you see . I have not seen this on any other roses that I have .

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Above and below, the white rose in the pot is 'White Pet' (#7 in the first photo ). It's about three feet wide and two feet tall above the pot . The fairly round shape is developed when deadheading the last bloom . I have another one in the ground that is bigger though the same age .

Below, you've seen 'Mme Abel Chatenay' ( #2 in the top photo ) many times . Here she is as large as she has yet been, extending her growth high and wide with her blooms at every end . I would say she was a good five and a half feet in diameter and height which surprised me . I thought she was going to be smaller . A word to the wise - roses in Florida are always bigger than you think they'll be . This is her fourth year in the garden, so it did take her a while . She is well-armed with lots of sharp prickles, and her canes are generally straight and not thin, but they have a zigzaggy way about them . When I deadheaded her after this bloom ( as you see her in the top photo ), I removed quite a bit of length from her canes . She can't have the driveway, too .

I'll get to the rest of these bushes in Part II .