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Residents Association MagazinearrowSummer 2003 - 3

ROSES ALL THE WAY?

A recent poll of 342 gardening experts showed that the rose was both best loved, and yet top of the most disliked garden plants!

"People love roses for their romantic associations, but they hate the work involved, like spraying to keep them healthy, and pruning to keep them flowering", said the gardening editor of Country Life, Kathryn Bradley-Hole, discussing her recent poll.

Perhaps because of my upbringing on a nursery, I am prejudiced. My earliest recollection is of sitting on the grass behind the rose hedge that divided the floral and fruit sections of the nursery. Delicious scent of that old hybrid rose Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, raised by Muller as long ago as 1899, filled the air. This vigorous bush, some 10ft in height with trusses of silvery-pink roses is still available some 100 years after it was raised.

Today the rose family gets wider and wider from the old six or so categories that comprised the average nurseryman's offering seventy-five years ago. Now we find some 20 groups of wide diversifications from nurserymen (including some specialist growers). They range from the miniature varieties like that container (or garden) favourite Ko's Yellow at a few inches to the useful rambler Alberic Barbier, yellowy-white flowering, which can cover 25 ft on a trellis or pergola.

Much has been achieved towards creating varieties which are resistant to those disfiguring diseases of blackspot and mildew.

Now is an excellent time to visit display gardens and nurseries to look out varieties that please you. Ask about disease resistance; study respective height and spread. If the nurseryman/gardener is kind, get a bloom of your chosen trees, and look at effect of bloom against bloom. Should you have the admirable desire to create show quality blooms, choose from varieties in the "large-flowered Bush Roses" nomenclature (formerly hybrid teas, etc.) For sheer garden effect consider the long flowering characteristics of the "Cluster flowered Bush Roses" formerly called floribundas, etc.)

Here is a list, by no means extensive, of varieties to look out for:

LARGE FLOWERED BUSH ROSES GROUND COVER ROSES
  • Alec's Red (Height 3ft, spread 3ft)
  • Lolita (3ft x 3ft) combination of yellow & pink
  • Grandpa Dickson (3ft x 2ft6in)
  • Yellow Pascali, creamy white, (3ft x 2ft6in)
  • Paradise (3ft x 2ft) silvery lavender turning to ruby red
  • Troika, coppery orange (3ft x 2ft6in
  • Little White Pet, covered in double white flowers from mid-summer to autumn, height up to 2ft 6in,spread up to 4ft.
  • Fiona, red trusses of flowers up to 3ft height, spread up to 3ft 6in.
  • Pearl Drift, an early bloomer and continuous throughout the season. Height 3ft,spread up to 3ft 6in.
CLUSTER FLOWERED BUSH ROSES MINIATURE ROSES
  • Brightsmile, superb yellow flowers (2ft x 18in)
  • Fragrant Delight (2ft6in x 2ft) copper/orange
  • Isis, ivory white (3ft x 3ft)
  • Picasso, pink petals/blotched red (2ft x 2ft)
  • Red Gold (2ft6in x 2ft)
  • Satchmo, bright red (2ft6in x 2ft)
  • Darling Flame, orange vermillion (12in)
  • Starina (10in) orange scarlet
  • Ko's Yellow (12in)
  • Angela Ripon, pale carmine pink (12in)

"Owd Garge"

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