Learning to learn about the roses

New Dawn

If someone asked about my favorite flower, I probably would not say "a rose". Considering that I have about 150 of them prickly things in the garden, it may sound a bit strange, but for me they are a rather recent garden obsession. Although there always were some in my garden, I never really paid much attention to their names or classes. In our old LT garden they were my moms flowers, I generally did not meddle much with them, apart of adding an occasional impulse buy. In retrospective, my mom was not very good in the whole rose thing either, even though she loves the roses and they actually are her favorite flower. She read a couple of garden advice books, but (as I figured that out later) it was mostly about hybrid tea roses and their maintenance; and that generally is not a very universal thing, because different groups of roses need different care, not to mention that there was no information about the old garden varieties, probably deemed inferior by the authors. So, since nobody really did much of homework, we kept buying crap varieties and crap plants, and wondered why the damn things do not want to grow.

Constance Spry, slightly past her prime

Either way, there are two reasons why I ended up knowing about roses more than I intended to know. First one was a moss rose: I did not even suspect a rose like that existed until I saw her planted in a memorial garden. The second reason was that big cabbagy rose in a local nursery, mistakenly labeled as Eden rose, which in fact was Constance Spry (that's another long story altogether though). Either way, when I saw it, I had to have it! So there we go, one late autumn evening I decided to google them up, and my NL garden never was the same.

As I learned more about different roses though, I also noticed that a lot of information has to be taken with a grain (or, in some cases, with a sack) of salt, because for one, personal preferences play a huge part in the "advices" you get; and for second, people just won't consider different climate conditions, insist on leading you the wrong way and still have a nerve to be pissed when you dare to doubt their "expertise".

Cecile Brunner

To give an example, it is very true for all the tea rose enthusiasts, which you often encounter looking up old garden roses. Typically, they are gardening in hot climates, such as Southern California, Florida or Australia, where they do not have a winter to speak off and dry hot summers. Tea roses might be a viable plant there, but here they are greenhouse plants, pretty miserable when planted outdoors (if they even survive their first winter). In the hot climates, on the other hand, there are other problems with them, and if you are willing to dig under a pile of praise, you figure, that, actually, quite often tea rose blooms go crisp (literally) in hours in +40C dry heat and only a few varieties are ok with it; and in humid hot climates they can defoliate pretty badly due to the blackspot; and they tend to grow into huge unruly bushes which do not like to be pruned, which, in its turn, is not necessarily a good thing for a small city garden. So there you go, "perfect" and "wonderful" and "easy" to grow rose, which is not hardy, is miserable with temps lower than +25C, turns into a dry floristic arrangement with +30C, defoliates completely if it rains, and if it grows, it turns into 2x2 m shrub, which cannot be pruned, because then it goes into a floral tantrum... and that's what you MUST grow in your garden if you live in a hot climate, because all other roses are shit and your faithful rosy advisers will be very surprised, if you decide that, perhaps, some modern variety might be a better idea.

Comtesse de Barbantane

Real answer is, as with every other garden plant, it depends. It depends what variety you choose, what exactly climate you have, and how much of babysitting you want to do with your plant, and most of all, what you like. An ordinary gardener is not a rose expert aiming for a flower show, although quite annoyingly this "minor" difference also often gets lost somewhere down the advice hot line! Spraying your roses every week is not something I would call a "normal" rose care, it is more like rose intravenous therapy, to keep half dead things alive. It also depends if you get a generic or a very specific advice, especially when things are a matter of taste. I remember some people telling how wonderful and strong fragrance of a particular rose was... but eventually I saw that rose in the gardens and hated the fragrance! Lesson learned there, if you want to get something recommended as "very fragrant", it can be a lot of fragrance you do not like!

Louise Odier, grown from cutting

Another big advisory misleading is that whole own-root rose fade. It is mostly an American thing, with some followers there and there. Thing is, most roses in Europe are sold grafted into a rootstock (r. multiflora, or r. canina most of the time), but with some troubles in US rose industry (sick rootstock and and a skill required to properly graft the plants), some specialist nurseries there began propagating their roses by cuttings and sell them "own root". It is a half decent method in warm climates (again, California and co), where roses can take fairly quickly and do not get slowed down by a long cold season. Also it is more viable with some older, more vigorous, varieties, because in the distant past roses were propagated that way and own root vigor was taken into account when breeding them (to some extent at least). However, it is a rubbish method with many modern varieties, because those were created to rely on a vigorous rootstock to give them a growth push, especially in the colder climates, with short growing season. If you happen to like those, you will be screwed if you tried them own root.

Albertine, another rose grown from a cutting

It also has some extra dangers in the cold climates, because those tiny own root plants often do not strengthen enough before the winter and freeze out; but that is not only the own-rootness itself, but also a size of aplant they ship to the customer. Generally, when we buy a grafted bare root rose in EU, we buy a 4 year old plant: its root stock was grown in a field for 2 years, then it got grafted, grew another 2 years, and only then it was considered a quality product, ready for sale. Own root roses, however, can be sold as "bands": that is, a tiny half a year old plant (and with the worst of luck, just a rooted cutting), which generally croak fairly easily if left to fend for themselves in the garden.

Dresden Doll

All in all, when you look for the information, there is quite some encouragement to try exchanging and rooting cuttings yourself, because it is "easy". Well, it isn't. Especially if you do not have an expensive mist propagator or at least a proper greenhouse; and even more so if you want to have varieties that are more "difficult" to root in general. I tried different rooting methods for 4 seasons, just to satisfy the curiosity: from about 100 cuttings (aka 100 possible plants), I managed to grow 3 and a half of plant. Quite a disappointing propagation rate I would say. Of course, I did not have a propagator, or a greenhouse, and perhaps did not TLC (tender love and care) the cuttings enough, but that is how I do things in my garden.

In other words, what works or does not work for you, you can tell only after trying it yourself, no matter what kind of praises the other people are singing to a plant or a gardening method. So it is back to the gardening basics, observe the plant and learn from it.

There are, of course, people who genuinely know a lot about roses and who can give you tons of useful information, from their own experience or experience of their friends, it is just a matter of filtering it all and finding the gems in between all the other cackle.

Bonita