A ROSE GROWER'S PRIMER - I
Because we have a number of new subscribers [to Roses Canada], it may be time to provide some tips on how to go about growing your very own roses. Probably all our long-time readers who have been growing roses for many years would start at a different place. But this scribbler will begin with making a choice of what to plant. In the next installment, I will proceed to where to plant, and how to plant.
A Hybrid Tea Rose
‘Abraham Darby’ an English Rose developed by David Austin
A Floribunda Rose
Grown and photographed by Frank Smith of the ‘John Cabot Rose Society of Newfoundland and Labrador’
You are new to roses and one may seem as strange to you as another. But roses are very different in their growing habits and in the care they need. I concur with the owner of Palatine Fruit and Roses when he says "a Hybrid Tea rose is not a beginner's rose". He means that an HT requires a great deal of attention with watering and spraying and fertilizing and weeding and pruning and winterizing. In other words it is labour intensive and if you don't have a bunch of time to spend in your garden, start with something less demanding. Perhaps a modern shrub rose or a rose by David Austin that will fit nicely into your existing gardens. By that I mean the rose will have a relaxed profile and mingle with your perenials better. An HT rose will tend to stand up stiffly and produce a beautiful high-centred rose for two or three days and then blow wide open looking awful unless you get out there promptly and remove the ugly flower.
However, if you aspire to enter a rose show next year, and you mean to have the most divine rose on the show bench, disregard what I just said. Plan to buy an HT that is tagged "exhibition form". But plan to lavish time and love on the rose. This will be hard unless you are retired, have an empty nest, and are not into watching sports, fishing, or travelling. You may be able to do all these things with careful allocation of time and still fit HT, grandiflora and floribunda roses into your schedule. But if you're at the cottage, or on the other side of the country when green worms attack, or black spot hits, or drought comes to the garden, you may have your aspiration jeopardized.
The most work required for tender roses (and most HT roses are tender) is the hilling-up needed before winter arrives to protect the rose from freeze-thaw conditions, which tends to break the graft between rootstock and grafted scion. If you are unable to get about in wintry weather and get your fingers bitten by frost, stay away from tender roses.
You can still enter most rose shows that are big enough to have sections for shrub roses and antique roses. If you decide on these types of roses, pick the ones that have been bred for disease resistance and winter hardiness. They are generally produced in Canada or Germany where green thinking and cold winters are facts of life.
The best advice may be to visit the best rose gardeners in the area you live in. Pick their brains. Or contact a rose society in your locality, or seek help from the owner of the most reliable and responsible nursery in the area. Such advice won't come from the local grocery or hardware store. Furthermore when you come to buy your roses, patronize the major propagators of roses. You will know them as the sponsors of the colour covers of this journal [Roses Canada].
By permission of the author . . HM
“text in square brackets added for clarity by the editor (FRS) for Newfoundland readers”