Gardening: Building a more reliable rose
Hardy breeds are growing in popularity
Is it time you renovated your rose garden? Time to shovel, prune — or dig up and throw out — those old, disease-prone roses of yesteryear and replace them with a new breed of hardy, disease-resistant, floriferous cultivars?
Often when climatic or environmental changes happen, so do the rules for growing roses successfully.
In England in the 1950s, London suffered some of its worst smogs, or smoky fogs, especially in 1952, when thousands died from respiratory problems.
Roses, however, thrived and performed beautifully. They appeared to do well despite — or perhaps because of — the smog, which was caused by smoke pouring from the chimneys of homes with coal fires.
After the Clean Air Act was introduced in 1956, roses struggled more with diseases, particularly black spot.
Apparently, the sulphur dioxide in the smog was just enough to kill off or suppress overwintering black-spot spores, leaving roses relatively clean and free of fungal infection.
With cleaner air, British rose growers were forced to spray more or replace old favourite roses with more disease-resistant varieties.
Today, changing weather patterns, as well as changes in environmental practices, such as bans on ornamental pesticides, have forced rose lovers in Canada and the U.S. to demand more reliable roses.
Brad Jalbert, one of B.C.’s top rose experts and the owner of Select Roses, a farm-style home-based nursery, says many favourite roses of the past are just too disease-prone to be sold today.
New Dawn, a striking pink climber, was a big seller in the past, but today it is considered a mildew magnet in many areas.
Jalbert has spent his life growing and hybridizing roses and keeping on top of developments in the rose industry around the world. He reckons Canada is lagging behind.
“We’re at least 20 years behind the rest of the world in roses. Even the U.S. has risen above us and accepted all types of roses, including shrub/ landscape roses. Gardeners there don’t expect every rose to look like a long-stem florist tea rose.
“Our gardeners are rather spoiled and demanding. They want big flowers, big fragrance, but also black-spot- free. The huge issue here is that our public has not embraced shrub roses the way the U.S. and Europe have.
“Shrub roses can be outstanding garden plants and need to be thought of as just a garden plant, so don’t expect a rose-type flower.”
The world’s best roses today, according to Jalbert, are being produced by Kordes, a German-based nursery that has been experimenting with roses over the past 20 years to develop cultivars that are super hardy, highly disease-resistant and do not require spraying.
Kordes’s most famous rose is probably the climber Westerland, which produces spectacular apricot blooms, but the Fairy Tale series is a new top seller with such names as Cinderella, Floral, Golden and Brothers Grimm.
The Vigorosa series is another winning line from Kordes. Top names in this series are Ruby, with carmine red flowers, and Innocencia, with pure white flowers.
Jalbert has taken a leaf out of Kordes’s book and started to concentrate more on his own no-spray rose breeding program. Some of his introductions, including Loretta Lynn and Redsi (named after Redmond O’Hanlon) and the Biltmore series, are increasingly in demand in the U.S. as well as in New Zealand and parts of Europe.
But Jalbert is particularly excited this year about three highly rated roses with excellent disease resistance: the new shell-pink Francis Meilland rose, a super-fragrant, award winner; Poseidon, the only lavender-blue rose, and Souvenir de Baden Baden, which Jalbert describes as “a fab rose, so resistant to disease, it grows like a weed.” This rose is also sold as Pink Enchantment in the U.S.
If you decide to upgrade your rose collection and want to pick an established classic performer, you can do no better than to pick one of Peter Harkness’s star floribundas like Julia Child, Easy Does It, Livin’ Easy or Easy Going.
Many gardeners also love David Austin’s English roses, which were bred specifically to combine the charm of old-garden roses (existing before the introduction of hybrid teas in 1867) and the vigour of new roses (ones developed after 1867).
Austin roses were immensely popular in the 1990s, but worldwide sales have tended to slump, Jalbert says, partly because of the poor performance of plants in pots while waiting for buyers at the garden centre.
However, reliable ones include Gertrude Jekyll, Mary Rose, Graham Thomas and Golden Celebration.
Flower Carpet roses, developed as totally reliable landscape ground cover roses by Anthony Tesselaar in the U.S., still sell well. Jalbert rates Pink Supreme the best of the bunch.
Shrub roses are still an excellent choice since they possess an abundance of winning characteristics: they’re super hardy, more disease-resistant, mostly repeat blooming and easier to prune than most hybrid teas and floribundas. They also have a charming, natural informality about them, which allows them to easily blend into an herbaceous border. Hansa and Bonica are two favourites.