{"id":259,"date":"2011-06-13T04:28:18","date_gmt":"2011-06-13T12:28:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/garden\/?p=259"},"modified":"2015-11-24T07:32:34","modified_gmt":"2015-11-24T15:32:34","slug":"layers-of-meaning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/layers-of-meaning\/","title":{"rendered":"Layers of Meaning"},"content":{"rendered":"

LAYERS OF MEANING
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\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong>For years I have wondered why I can’t love the ‘Knock Out’ rose.\u00a0 Millions of people sing its praises every day, including some well-known plant pundits. By all accounts it is a stellar garden performer.\u00a0 ‘Knock Out’s confront me at every turn–in private borders and public plantings–but I still can’t warm up to these red-flowered commercial phenoms.\u00a0 I considered therapy for this problem, but the cost would put a serious crimp in my garden budget and I would rather spend the money buying plants.\u00a0 Finally I decided to wait until spontaneous revelation answered the existential ‘Knock Out’ question.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Fortunately the revelation came.\u00a0 I was standing by a row of hybrid musk roses and inhaling their elegant, old-rose fragrance when it dawned on me.\u00a0 To figure out why I don’t like ‘Knock Out,’ I had to consider the winning qualities of the roses I love best.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I am drawn to old-fashioned rose beauty and that means a lush appearance and lots of petals.\u00a0 ‘Maiden’s Blush,’ for example, is an old-fashioned Alba rose.\u00a0 Each bloom has up to fifty pale-pink petals.\u00a0 It is absolutely voluptuous when fully open.\u00a0 ‘Knock Out,’ on the other hand, has five to thirteen petals per blossom, making a pretty show, but not a lush one.\u00a0 There are many spare and lean times in life, and for my money, a spare and lean rose–even a pretty one–just doesn’t provide enough comfort.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Fragrance is an absolute requirement in my garden.\u00a0 There are some beautiful roses, especially hybrid teas from the mid twentieth century, which have little or no scent.\u00a0 They are fine for public rose gardens, but not for my establishment.\u00a0 Fragrant varieties have a whole host of scents–citrus, myrrh or licorice, fruit, spice or “old rose.”\u009d\u00a0 On a sunny day there is nothing more glorious than standing in the middle of a garden full of fragrant roses.\u00a0 My favorite fragrant rose, Joseph Pemberton’s ‘Felicity,’ a hybrid musk has a scent that is like a valentine.\u00a0 ‘Knock Out’s have little, if any, scent.\u00a0
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The roses I love are mostly shades of pink, peach and yellow, with a few true reds and whites thrown in for good measure.\u00a0 If you look closely at most of them, you will see that the color of each petal is actually many colors.\u00a0 ‘Gruss an Aachen,’ for example, is silvery pink with a bit of white and darker rose in each petal.\u00a0 The strength of each color element varies according to time of year, climate conditions and the amount of light the plant receives.\u00a0 ‘Knock Out’ and its offspring–all of which have the ‘Knock Out’ name–show only a bit of this sophisticated coloring.\u00a0 ‘Blushing Knock Out,’ ‘Sunny Knock Out’ and ‘Rainbow Knock Out’ have some color gradation in their petals.\u00a0 Original ‘Knock Out’ is a pretty cherry red, but the color lacks depth.\u00a0 It is simply not as emotionally satisfying as some other roses with similar coloration.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 And emotional satisfaction is important.\u00a0 My roses speak to me of their individual stories.\u00a0 The Pemberton roses, for example, are the work of an English bachelor clergyman, who bred them in the years before, during and just after World War I.\u00a0 Like David Austin today, Pemberton looked for beauty, fragrance and durability.\u00a0 After Pemberton’s death, his rose breeding efforts were carried on by his devoted sister, Florence, and his gardener, Joseph Bentall.\u00a0 When Bentall died, his wife, Anne, took over the business and introduced my favorite hybrid musk, ‘Buff Beauty.’\u00a0 Pemberton hybrid musks have also been used as parent varieties for some of David Austin’s best “English Roses.”\u009d
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The ‘Knock Out’ roses haven’t been around long enough to have those kinds of generation-spanning stories.\u00a0 They were never in Empress Josephine’s garden at Malmaison.\u00a0 No Knock Out ever traveled as a cutting, going from East to West in the covered wagon of someone riding the Oregon Trail to a new life.\u00a0 They were not named in honor of a wife, daughter or even a comely actress.\u00a0 “Knock Outs’ shout “Wow!”\u009d while other, older varieties whisper, “I dare you to find out my secrets.”\u009d
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 To be fair, ‘Knock Outs’ rebloom, which is a highly desirable trait.\u00a0 They will withstand a variety of conditions, resist diseases and make novice gardeners feel successful from the very beginning–also a wonderful thing.\u00a0 The breeder, William J. Radler, is a great lover of roses and it is hard not to feel a sense of kinship with someone like that.\u00a0 He developed ‘Knock Out’ to spread the rose gospel to all those benighted souls who thought roses were too hard to grow or too fussy to maintain.\u00a0 He continues his breeding efforts in the hopes of creating even better varieties.\u00a0
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In short, I think that someday a ‘Knock Out’ descendent will come along with the current phenom’s desirable traits coupled with a bit more character and fragrance.\u00a0 If it endures, it will accumulate history and stories, the way brick walkways gather moss.\u00a0 Eventually it will stop shouting all the time and beckon seductively.\u00a0 I have no doubt that it will more than hold its own with the great roses of the past.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

LAYERS OF MEANING \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 For years I have wondered why I can’t love the ‘Knock Out’ rose.\u00a0 Millions of people sing its praises every day, including some well-known plant pundits. By all accounts it is a stellar garden performer.\u00a0 ‘Knock Out’s confront me at every turn–in private borders and public plantings–but I still can’t warm … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,2,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-interest","category-spring","category-summer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1532,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259\/revisions\/1532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}