Spring continues to unfold

‘Serratipetala’ is a Found China Rose, discovered in France in 1912. Its flowers are so petite – an inch and a half across. The petals are serrated, and the blooms have a flat form that darken with age. What that means is that when I went back the next day, this flower was crimson with touches of pink. To me, it’s an incredibly interesting rose. Also incredible is the fact that it grows larger than both HMF and Vintage Gardens report. Mine is growing in a pot and not a large one, because I thought it would be a diminutive, three-feet tall rose bush. I’ve been thinking of putting ‘Serratipetala’ in the ground, but every place I consider may not be big enough. After all, if it grows to a 5x5 bush in a pot, what will it do with the blank check offered by good old terra firma? Another gardening unknown to wrestle with.



Seemingly bunches of daylilies are sporting flower buds. Oh, be still my heart. Some of them are newcomers, and I don’t even know what I’m getting excited about because I have forgotten who they are without my cheat-sheet. It’s simply hard for me to believe that spring is on the move.





‘Mrs. B R Cant’ is beautiful again. She’s not a typical delicate Tea Rose but a sturdy, robust one. Even her fragrance is strong. She has tough, pretty much disease-proof foliage, too. Beauty and brawn.




‘Souvenir de la Malmaison’ has many buds and some flowers, too. This cluster was rather breathtaking to me.



A couple of days ago ‘Polonaise’ was looking like this. This evening there were two gorgeous open blooms. I went running in the house but not for the camera. I wanted DH to see these red roses. With long face and mumbled protests he came out…and enjoyed himself and the garden and the swing and the lovely cool evening in the shade of the oak tree. Some things are worth the effort. And that’s my long excuse for not having a photo of Polonaise’s first blooms.



The two big fat buds one over the other in the lower half of this photo were gloriously open today. I would suggest that you use your imagination, but you can’t even come close.



‘Richard’s Rose’ is a tiny, little bug-eaten thing, but he has a couple of new shoots and is putting up a good fight. I think I see evidence of a squirrel attack. I also think I should put up a defense perimeter around the little guy.



Right next to ‘Richard’s Rose’ is the bare-root “Pink Hollyhock” from Walmart. The other one I planted didn’t come up. I hope this is ‘Summer Carnival’ since other cultivars don’t stand much chance in Florida. This one looks like the Summer Carnivals that I’ve grown – so far.



A bud of ‘Marchesa Boccella'. I guess my hard pruning didn’t hurt her, and since she’s looking fairly bushy, I guess maybe it worked out okay. You can see her whole self in her purple pot below.




Here’s a volunteer from last year’s seed project whose name I can not remember. I think I have more in the front garden. How fitting! SDLM and Polonaise now occupy a red, white and blue bed. Well, in the heat of summer SDLM will be off-white anyway.



Now she’s gorgeous pale ‘baby pink’.



This ‘Souvenir de la Malmaison’ is now six feet wide, fitting from edge to edge in this bed, but she’s only about three feet tall and hardly thorny at all.



I’m really pleased with this ‘remodeled’ bed. You are free to use as much imagination as you need to picture Richard’s Rose, the hollyhocks and coreopsis, and the daylilies and purple coneflowers – in a few years – filling in between ‘Louis Philippe’ on the left and ‘Arcadia Louisiana Tea’ on the right. Packed in like sardines, aren’t they?


Referring to my cheat-sheet, this one is ‘Seductor’. Won’t be long. I’m going to try to count buds this year on the daylilies. I’m not really as compulsive as that may sound, merely curious.



‘Maman Cochet’ has a rather imperfect bud, perhaps from thrips. They’re baaaacck !! Crap-ola!



‘Maman Cochet’ (on the left) is looking much fuller already now that her new canes in the middle are taller. These bushes (‘General Schablikine’ is on the right) are about five and half feet tall, and this portion of the bed is about ten feet wide.



Here’s a close-up of the young canes in the upper left quadrant of ‘Maman Cochet’, showing flower buds already. When these flowers are spent, these canes will sprout new shoots from about two inches below these buds at the abscission point, and the rose will get taller in this way and make more flowers again at the ends of all that new growth. By the way, Maman is French for mother/mama. Monsieur Cochet was the breeder of this rose.



‘Maman Cochet’ is a huskier Tea Rose than ‘General Schablikine’ who has already had one basal break chewed off by an %^$## squirrel. These roses are three and a half years old, planted in September, 2008 and still quite juvenile in their maturity. The General definitely needs more basal breaks…and some barbed wire.



‘Maman Cochet’ is apparently an earlier bloomer than ‘General Schablikine’. Some Tea Roses definitely wait for hotter temps to start their blooming. Of course, YMMV.  he-he. Now that I know what that abbreviation means, it makes me chuckle. Your mileage may vary. Hmmm, garden mileage. It is rather variable, isn’t it? And I feel like some of us (moi?) have garden mileage envy. In reality, fast or slow our gardens should be accepted unconditionally and not judged against others. Gardens should be green…not gardeners.

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.

One for the road...or maybe five

'Capitaine Dyel de Graville', 1905, Bourbon

(L to R) 'La Sylphide', 1842, Tea and  'Louis Philippe', 1834, China

NOID

'Madame Abel Chatenay', 1894, Hybrid Tea (with a little bit of thrips damage)

'Madame Lombard', 1878, Tea

Repeat after me...

Chinas, Teas and Noisettes. Chinas, Teas and Noisettes. If you're a warm-climate rose gardener, those rose classes are meant for your garden. Did you know that Shanghai, China and Jacksonville, Florida are almost on the same parallel - latitudinally speaking, within a few minutes of each other? Explorers and merchants of the late 1700's brought Chinese roses (R. chinensis) back to Europe. They were the first repeating roses ever seen by Europeans and are responsible for the genetics of reblooming roses. The one I am fondest of and the first OGR in my garden is Louis Philippe, also known as...drum roll, please. The Florida Rose! It seems to be impervious to the nematodes in our sandy ground that cut short the life of most other roses. Its smallish globular flowers are deliciously scented. They remind me of Cherry candy and never fail to make my mouth water. The outer petals are red, but the petals toward the center are pink with a touch of white. All my roses are favorites, but he really is my favorite, I think. Louis Philippe is such a cheerful rose, never giving me a moment's trouble. I just love him.

About a year and a half old, maybe 3' tall x 4' wide

Two years old in March, 2009 preparing the first spring flush

The shocker is that this bush is now as tall as the 6' fence and about as wide. (It's too cold to take his picture now!!) You can see his foliage is beautiful and healthy with no spraying. Chinas have a very twiggy structure, shooting out thin canes at all angles. They really only need to be pruned for size since they cycle through flush after flush even without deadheading, typically dropping old leaves after a bloom followed by a burst of new red growth which turns a fresh green and then on with the next flowering cycle. It was a little scary the first few times he dropped leaves. I thought he was dying. As Louis Philippe has gotten older, he doesn't defoliate nearly as much between blooms but stays nice and bushy.

Every week with these roses has been something new. Looking through my photos, I am amazed at how different they looked a year ago and two years ago and even from spring to summer. I have another favorite China, but that's tomorrow's post. Oh, did I say 'another' favorite? Told ya.