Hi I'm Stephen Orr and today we are going to talk about
one of the most popular flowers in the world, but
also one that has kind of a difficult reputation
and it is a high maintenance diva, roses!
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Everybody loves roses, but some of us as gardeners
kind of went through a rose phase and then
gave up a little bit because they can be difficult.
But these are the roses that are not difficult.
These are roses that are bred to be more low maintenance,
more disease resistance and just easier to use.
In the big group they're called shrub roses.
It is kind of a catch all umbrella for plants
that are grown for the way the plant looks, as
much as the flower, because I'd say about
50 or 70 years ago, somewhere in the middle of
the last century, garden roses were really grown
for only the flower and we may all think of those rose
gardens with just a bunch of spindly plants with
the beautiful flower and nothing else. But these
roses are actually meant to be integrated into your
garden. They are really great plants that are either
small, medium, or large shrubs. We have several
varieties here. The most famous and it's probably
the best selling rose in the world or at least
one of the best selling roses in the world, is
the Knockout Rose. It comes in a variety of colors.
Knockout Roses are very famous for being long
blooming, they bloom all summer long basically
almost until fall or all the way until frost.
They are medium sized shrubs that are almost as wide
as they are tall, so you can plant them in a big bank of
roses if you want to have a long line of them along a fence
but also they look good sprinkled in amongst other
perennials or other shrubs. Other types of roses that
are really good are these new Drift Roses. These are
newer, this is a tiny little flower here a little
apricot colored rose. These are also good for - as
a ground cover rose as they're called, because
they'll just be thick and they'll grow and they'll
cover a big space, but they're also good to incorporate
into a flower bed of herbs and annuals and perennials.
We also have the Easy Elegance series here as well.
All of these series are great to look at and you can
just pick different colors that you like the best.
All of these roses are easy to find online and in the
nurseries. They are very popular these days, if you want
to look, do some internet research and find out which
roses do best for you, you can look at the
American Rose Society. They have a lot of good tips
and also they list varieties that get awards
for heartiness or being roses that grow across
the country. One of the things I love about roses
is the fragrance and sometimes when they're breeding
for all the things like disease resistance or
heartiness or low maintenance, sometimes the
fragrance kind of is the last thing they're paying
attention to. I do notice that fragrance is
coming back in on certain of the lines, so this
Easy Elegance Yellow Brick Road Rose has a really
beautiful classic rose fragrance, whereas the
Knockout does not have as much fragrance. So
if you love the smell of roses, when you go to
the nursery just take a sniff and see which one
combines all the traits that you'd like to have.
As far as planting roses, basically like any
shrub or perennial, you can plant them as a
container plant, you can plant them in the
spring, summer, or fall. I wouldn't plant them
when they're really hot because that's stressful
for any plant. There is a long tradition of
planting bare root roses and I've tried both,
bare root roses take longer to take off, but
the best part about growing bare root roses is
that you can get them mail ordered very cheaply,
you can get multiples much more cheaply and it
is a great way if you are trying to add a
a lot roses to your landscape to get a more
inexpensive solution to that. Sometimes old
fashioned roses, like Hybrities, can take a
lot chemicals to make them look good. They
require a lot of synthetic fertilizers and they
require a lot of spraying with different oils to
keep fungus and pests at bay. These shrub roses
are bred to be less high maintenance that way.
The Carefree Rose series is bred to be less
orientated to black spot or different powdery
mildew problems, which plague a lot of roses.
Hopefully these won't have that, if you're having
trouble with your roses with a lot of fungal
diseases, just be aware that that rose is
probably in too wet of a situation and you might
want to move it somewhere else next year.
Roses love sun, they love regular water, but
it is better not to spray the leaves, that encourages
fungus. Water at the base and fertilize if you fertilize
once a month with an organic fertilizer or a time release
fertilizer, they'll like that as well. These roses
are meant to bloom continuously that is one of their
big perks is they kind of keep in flower all summer
long and all the way until frost and they don't need
much deadheading. You can leave the little spint
flower heads on here without too much trouble. Old
fashioned roses, I would say old roses from the early
part of the 20th century or even earlier, often just bloom
once. They had an amazing bloom in June and then they were
done for the year. These are bred to keep blooming
all summer. Some classic roses take a lot of complicated
pruning, you have to prune them just a certain way and
all of theat. These are supposed to be as low maintenance
as possible with pruning as well, they're designed to be
that way. You would prune them in the early spring right
when the leaves are starting to bud, you can see the little
leaf buds coming out, that is a good time to do it. You
don't have to prune every year, basically you are pruning
to keep them in shape, keep them in the right size so
they are not getting too large. You can prune some of
them -a full grown one you can prune down to a foot or
10 inchesat that time and then let it sprout back.
It will rejuvenate the whole plant and make it
bloom even more. These rose are meant to be grown
all over the country, especially in other places
that other roses might not be that hearty. If you
live in one of those places where it is really
cold particularly where it could be quite windy
in the winter, you want to make sure that you let
the plant go dormant when winter comes. You also
want to let the ground freeze and then you can
start to protect this part of the plant here at
the base, that is what you're trying to protect.
So you can either mulch that add straw or use
a rose cone, that rose cone needs to have
ventilation and it probably needs to be weighted
because it will get pretty windy.
So we hope you'll take another look at roses, what used
to be a high maintenance plant is really now
very easy to integrate naturally into your garden.