GROUND COVER ROSES
It seems a bit strange to be thinking about roses when the precipitation is coming down in pellets outside, but I can’t help it. I just attached a bouquet of dried rosebuds to a Christmas wreath and the sight of them triggered thoughts of spring.
As the growing season dwindled down in the late fall, I thought about the hundred bags of mulch that I put down before we opened up our garden to the public last September. Mulch is wonderful stuff, but the effort involved in getting all those heavy bags from the garden center to the garden beds made me wish that I had invested in a greater number and variety of living mulches, also known as groundcover plants.
There is no reason that some of those groundcovers couldn’t be roses. Other plants may be a bit more effective at choking out weeds, but, I love roses. There are certainly a lot of so-called “groundcover” varieties lounging around in catalogs and on websites. I decided to investigate the possibilities.
I found out that the term “groundcover” covers a lot of roses, from varieties that really do hug the earth to those that simply grow wider than they are tall.
The idea of using roses as living groundcover is nothing new, mostly because there have always been rose species that have a naturally procumbent or creeping habit. Rosa wichuriana, a Chinese species introduced in the West in the late nineteenth century, is a great groundcover. It is evergreen in all but the coldest climates and has a habit of rooting wherever the canes touch down. The leaves are dark green, clustered in groups of seven or nine leaflets. R. wichuriana blooms once a year in mid to late summer, bearing lots of fragrant, single white flowers that will remind you of the rampant white-flowered Rosa multiflora. If you can’t tell which is which, check the bloom time; R. multiflora puts on its show in mid-spring, while R. wichuriana waits until later in the season.
In the United States R. wichuriana became known as the “Memorial Rose,” because its prostrate habit made it perfect for gravesite plantings. Its tough constitution and easy-going habit also made it a favorite of breeders. R. wichuriana offspring include the fragrant, large-flowered climber, ‘Dr. W. Van Fleet’. The once-blooming ‘Dr. Van Fleet’, in turn, begat ‘New Dawn’, a pale pink repeat-bloomer that covers the arch in my back garden. ‘Dorothy Perkins’, another once-blooming descendent of R. wichuriana, inherited its parent’s procumbent habit. My great aunt planted one in the nineteen forties and it still scrambles all over the embankment beside our summer cottage.
I first saw R. wichuriana at the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx, where I was equally struck by Rosa spinosissima, which is sometimes known as Rosa pimpinellafolia. The word “spinosissima” means “with many spines or prickles,” and it characterizes a species that is more commonly known as the “Scotch” or “Burnet” rose. R. spinosissima has a low, mounding growth habit and delicate, fern-like leaves. The specimen we saw at the Botanical Garden was labeled Petite Pink Scotch, and described as a “hybrid spinosissima.” Peter Beales, in his book, Classic Roses praises the Burnet roses for their “russet-red” fall foliage color and small, black, bead-like hips. I am going to hunt for a R. spinosissima for my garden when spring gets a bit closer.
In the modern rose realm, there are lots of fine choices. ‘Snow Carpet’, introduced in 1980 by fabled rose breeder Sam McGredy, features clusters of double white blooms. More recently Kordes, a long-established German rose nursery, introduced the Vigorosa series, which contains groundcover roses in a number of colors including apricot, pink and white. Reaching between twenty and twenty-four inches tall, the Vigorosas are a little tall for some groundcover applications, but would be fine colorful fillers at the front of a border. Two other Kordes roses, Electric Blanket® and ‘Roseberry Blanket’, are what I think of as true groundcover roses, reaching only twelve to eighteen inches tall. German breeder Werner Noack created the Flower Carpet series of low-growing roses that are somewhat shorter overall than the Vigorosas. Jackson and Perkins also offers several groundcover varieties. One of the lowest growers is Yellow Ribbons Rose Blanket®, which reaches twelve to twenty-four inches in height.
In addition to roses specifically designated as groundcover types, many traditional rambling roses, like ‘Dorothy Perkins’, have long, flexible canes that love to run along the ground. These roses, with their wandering ways, don’t really outcompete the weeds, but might add season-extending color when combined with another low grower, like ajuga, that does.
Groundcover roses have grown so popular that most large garden centers and mega-merchandisers have sections devoted only to them. Just be sure to read the maximum height information on the plant tag, so that you know exactly how low your rose will grow.