|
Hardy Shrub
Roses
Not your
mother's roses
Sweet Fragrance |
|
Hardy shrub roses are not your
mother’s roses. Your mother’s roses were almost
certainly hybrid tea roses—plants bred and produced
solely for their big beautiful flowers with no
concern at all for soil adaptability, hardiness, or
ease of care. So the plants which produced those
big, beautiful flowers often did not survive the
coldest of winters and were true high maintenance
plants—requiring frequent fertilization, insect and
disease control, and winter mulching to keep them
alive and even moderately healthy in Wyobraska.
Unfortunately, these
temperamental plant freaks gave roses a bad name.
The native roses from which hybrid tea roses were
developed over years and years of breeding and
hybridizing are actually tough shrubs native to and
widely distributed on every continent except
Antarctica. One Asian native rose that was
introduced to American gardens almost 100 years ago
is now considered an invasive species in some areas
of the United States. Nebraska and Wyoming both
count a number of roses as natives, and a small
native rose can be found routinely growing in the
prairies of Wyobraska. |
|
For Wyobraska homeowners
looking for low-maintenance landscapes, the best
thing about hardy shrub roses is that they require
planting…….and almost nothing else. Forget the
frequent fertilization, forget the insect control,
forget the disease control, and forget about
mulching them for winter. Hardy shrub roses are
true low maintenance landscape plants—with the
beautiful flowers of your mother’s roses.
I began experimenting with hardy shrub roses in
Wyobraska landscapes almost 10 years ago and I
continue to be surprised by their exceptional
combination of beauty and toughness. Not
surprisingly, some of the earliest hardy shrub roses
were developed in Canadian breeding programs. They
tend to be mid-sized shrubs ranging in height and
spread from three to eight feet, with flowers
ranging from deep red to light pink. The are very
cold hardy and almost all are well-adapted to
Wyobraska soils. These first Canadian roses were
appropriately named after famous Canadian explorers
and so are often referred to as the Explorer series
of roses. |
|
Previous Articles
I
It's
Finally Spring - March 13
Spring Garden Calendar-March 20
No
Garden Left Behind-March 27
Planting Trees for a Cooler Earth in a Warmer
WyoBraska-April 3
Viburnums - Shrubs for Wyobraska Springs-April 10
2007 Articles
2006 Articles |
|
It is undoubtedly the beautiful flower of the rose
that has made it perhaps the best known of all
garden plants, and why one can find references to
its use in gardens for thousands of years. Hybrid
teas roses became so popular in American gardens and
landscapes in the last half of the 20th
century that they became the most widely planted
landscape plant for much of that period. The
popularity of tea roses inevitably led a number of
plant breeders to work on developing roses that
retained the ecological toughness of the native
roses but with the big beautiful flowers of the
popular tea roses. After all, as Shakespeare said
in his famous line, “A rose by any other name is
still a rose.”
That work began almost 50 years ago and has had
great success—producing a large group plants that
are most commonly called hardy shrub roses. That
group now includes over 100 shrub roses ranging in
size from 12 inches to 12 feet or larger, with
flowers primarily red, pink, and white, but yellow
and orange are also options. Native roses generally
bloom for about a month at some point through the
growing season, but many of the hybrids developed
from these tough native plants will bloom from
spring to frost. Most, but not all, of these shrub
roses appear to be well-adapted to Wyobraska’s
landscape soils and climate.
William Baffin |
|
A second Canadian rose
development program at the Morden research station
in Manitoba focused on developing smaller plants
with flowers more like the abundantly petaled hybrid
tea roses. This program has now produced a number
of outstanding smaller shrub roses in the two to
four foot size range with names like ‘Winnipeg
Parks’, ‘Morden sunrise’, and ‘Morden blush’.
By far the largest hardy shrub
rose breeding program in the United States is now
supported by a large national nursery headquartered
in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Bailey Nursery rose
breeding program has introduced over 25 new shrub
roses. This program has concentrated on developing
even smaller shrub roses that they refer to as
“garden roses”. Their “Garden Art” series of roses
focuses on roses with distinctive flowers, and their
“Garden Path” series is known for heavily blooming
roses that are also well-adapted plants.
Winnipeg Parks
Here’s a little poem I wrote
just for you.
Roses are red
Violets are blue
There’s a
perfect
Hardy shrub rose
for you
Some Varieties of Shrub
Roses |