NEW ROSES
Last week I wrote about garden trends and how they are playing out in the spring catalogs. I completely forgot the pervasive trend for new twists on old favorite fruits and vegetables. The most obvious example of this is the new ‘Pink Lemonade’ blueberry, which is truly pink, with just a touch of blue. It may be delicious, but one word comes to mind–“Why?” As far as I know, the world has been yearning for peace, prosperity and the end of winter, but not for a pink blueberry. I will withhold my judgment on this particular innovation until it has stood the test of at least one season.
I also omitted new roses because the category is big and deserves dedicated space. Roses have never really been out of fashion, but they are hotter than ever right now due largely to two breeding breakthroughs–David Austin’s English Roses and breeder William Radler’s phenomenally successful ‘Knock Out’ rose series, which is ever-expanding and available from every plant merchandiser in the universe. Many of the new roses on the market this year owe a debt to one or both of those gentlemen.
The following are some of the trends in the rose world for this year.
Hot Colors: There are plenty of pastel-colored roses out there, but the screaming headlines in the rose world are all about hot colors, especially bi-colored roses with touches of red, yellow, orange and coral. Weeks Roses offers ‘Colorific’, a great big floribunda, with peach, coral and salmon blooms. Venerable breeder and grower Jackson and Perkins gets spicy with ‘Hot Tamale’, a red and orange “patio tree rose.” Star Roses, home of the ‘Knock Out’ juggernaut, introduces ‘Adobe Sunrise’, a compact salmon-orange floribunda. The heat has also reached England, as David Austin has introduced the many-petaled, orange-red ‘Lady of Shalott’. Clearly with all this available “hotness,” you can set your garden on fire without ever lighting the grill.
Brown Tones: Brownish or orange-brown roses were developed for several reasons, including the perceived need for a more masculine-colored rose for the cut flower trade and a desire on the part of breeders to extend the range of traditional rose colors. I suspect fashion-forward decorators were in on the plot as well, since brown returned to vogue in home decor–at least for awhile. Weeks Roses has introduced the brownish orange mini- rose ‘Smoke Rings’. Not to be outdone, J&P has introduced its ‘Cinnamon Girl’ patio tree rose. They are completely different colors, but both have a “smoky” tinge.
Small Spaces: Container and small space gardening rages on and breeders of everything from eggplant to roses have fallen into line. Rose types suitable for small spaces include miniatures; shrub types that grow to three feet or less; “patio tree roses,” which are standards on short trunks, and ground-cover varieties. ‘Wild Plum’ from J&P, is a miniature tree rose that grows only eighteen inches tall, with medium purple blooms. Star Roses’ ‘Silicon Valley Diamond’, a white-flowered variety, grows to only eighteen inches with a one-foot spread, and works well in containers or rock gardens.
Grandifloras and Floribundas: Beginning in the 1980’s and continuing unabated until the present, the heirloom and heirloom-type rose revival, led by David Austin, made traditional hybrid tea roses less fashionable. It was time for a rose coup–the hybrid teas, with their high-centered, florist-type blooms and upright habits had ruled supreme over the post World War II gardening world for decades. Unfortunately many of them also lacked fragrance and were prone to pests and diseases, making their owners slaves to all kinds of pesticides, fungicides and other hybrid tea-enabling chemicals. Rose producers responded to the anti-hybrid tea movement by breeding greater hardiness and fragrance back into hybrid teas and by introducing more floribunda and grandiflora type roses. The lineage of these roses is complicated, but suffice it to say, they combine the large blooms of hybrid teas with a generally more attractive growth habit and somewhat more frequent and abundant flower production. One of the flashiest new introductions this year is the All American Rose Selections Winner ‘Dick Clark’, which is a burgundy, cherry red and cream grandiflora with a somewhat spicy fragrance.
“Green” Roses: All rose producers are working to breed “greener” roses that are easier to care for, work in mixed planting schemes, are hardy under most climate conditions and do not require large amounts of garden chemicals to keep them happy and healthy. Texas A&M University pioneered the “Earth Kind” rose designation, assigned to old and new rose varieties that have survived tough trials over time under a variety of conditions. To see the “Earth Kind” line-up, go to www.aggie-hort.tamu.edu/earthkind/roses/cultivars. The New York Botanical Garden has also revamped its Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden to include only roses that meet certain criteria for hardiness, ease of care and sustainability. To see their most recent list of top performers, go to www.nybg.org/files/rose_list.pdf.
This year, if you are into roses, your garden can be simultaneously sustainable, fragrant, compact, unusually colored and “hot” with lots of large blooms. It’s clearly time to get some or all of those qualities into your beds, borders and containers.