Do you want to add more roses to your present planting? Are you contemplating a new rose garden, or do you just love roses and want to plant a few for personal enjoyment?
If you are puzzled and bewildered by the varied descriptions and glowing colors of the rose books or catalogs, the following may be of help to you in selecting the best in present-day roses—best in form, of bud and open flowers, color, vigor, sturdiness of plant and disease resistance, giving you a group or garden of roses requiring the minimum of care for desirable results.
If you are just starting your rose garden, or if you want to add to your present plantings a border or hedge for background, a fence or series of arches or arbors covered with climbing roses, or a low border or edge of the floribunda or polyantha type, will give you any height desired.
Space will not permit a large list of climbers to be trained along your fence or over your arbors and arches.
However, a combination, or selections, of your color choice of the following will provide a pleasing background or boundary border:
New Dawn
New Dawn, a very robust, flesh pink, profusely blooming climber throughout the season, or its parent, Dr. Van Fleet, identical in color, form, and habit but only blooming once in Spring, will cover a long stretch of fence or extra high arbors.
Climbing Crimson Glory
The City of York is an excellent variety, a pure white with golden yellow stamens and a delightfully spicy fragrance. Also, Silver Moon, a pure white single with glossy green foliage, will cover a lot of fences or a large arbor.
City of York
The City of York, a pure white with golden yellow stamens and a delightfully spicy fragrance, is an excellent variety. Also, Silver Moon, a pure white single with glossy green foliage, will cover a lot of fences or a large arbor.
Mary Wallace and Doubloons or High Noon
The bright pink Mary Wallace or the paler shade of Mme. Gregoire Staechelin will give pleasing results in their color.
While not growing as robust as some of the others named, the yellow Doubloons or High Noon should give you the desired color combination in large-flowering hardy climbers.
Too numerous to name. Here are other very good types and varieties of climbers to select from when adding to your garden or extending your boundary or background.
A very pleasing arrangement of the low border or hedge can be had in your choice of color from the floribunda or polyantha roses.
For hedges, approximately 2′ to 3′ feet high Floradora, coppery orange; Betty Prior, a single bright pink; Cameo, cameo pink color; deep orange Gloria Mundi and Dagmar Spath, white with an occasional red streak, will please you in your color choice.
For a somewhat lower hedge, choose either:
- Red Pinocchio
- Donald Prior, bright single red
- World’s Fair
- Crimson Rosette
- Permanent Wave
- Pink Rosenelfe
- Springtime
- Pinocchio, salmon pink
- Pink Rosette
- Margo Koster, a miniature cabbage rose in clusters of orange pink
- White Summer Snow
- Gruss An Aachen or Marionette, yellow bud opening white
- Yellow, Goldilocks, or Topaz
There are numerous very excellent shrubs or species of roses to make very valuable additions to your present shrubbery border or, if used properly in any new planting, to give very pleasing results throughout the season in flower, a form of growth, foliage, and Autumn color of fruit and foliage.
Hybrid Tea Varieties
The hybrid tea, or so-called everblooming roses, will make up the major portion of your garden.
For the best in these varieties, make your selection from the list of top-rated roses given here in color groups that will make it easier for your selection.
RED
- Crimson Glory
- Charlotte Armstrong
- Etoile de Hollande
- Christopher Stone
- Poinsettia
- Grande Duchesse Charlotte
- Rubaiyat
- Red Radiance
- New Yorker
- Nocturne
- Texas Centennial
- Fire Chief
- Margaret McGredy
- Mirandy
- Charles K. Douglas
- Ami Quinard
- National Flower Guild
PINK
- Dainty Bess (single 5 petals)
- Picture
- Good News
- Radiance
- Show Girl
- Pink Princess
- Mme. Cochet-Cochet
- Mrs. Charles Bell
- The Doctor
- Editor McFarland
- Pink Satin
- Katherine T. Marshall
- Edith Nellie Perkins
- President Macia
- Killarney Queen
YELLOW
- Eclipse
- Mrs. Pierre S. Du Pont
- Soeur Therese
- Golden Dawn
- Joanna Hill
- Lowell Thomas
- Hill Top
- Butterscotch
WHITE
- Pedralbes
- Kaiserin Auguste Viktoria
- McGrady’s Ivory
- Snowbird
- Mme. Jules Houche
- White Briarcliff
BLENDS OR TWO-TONE
- Peace
- Mme. Henri Guillot
- Mrs. Sam McGredy
- Comtesse Vandal
- President Herbert Hoover
- Saturnia
- Girona
- Betty Uprichard
- Condesa de Sastago
- Duquesa de Penaranda
- Angels Mateo
- Forty-niner
- California
Your selection of varieties to suit your color preference from the above will give you a garden of roses, among which have been many winners at rose shows in the past, and some of these will more than likely be winners at many shows in the future.
Height and Habit of Growth
The height of growth of the various varieties is important in the proper placement of your garden beds. The height of ultimate growth is usually given in your rose catalog. However, no matter where you live, you will have, not too far away, a public or municipal rose garden.
To study the habit and behavior of the plants on your list and to help you decide to select the best, visit these gardens during the early blooming season when the plants are at their best.
Then repeat your visit in late Summer and again in the early Autumn, each time checking your list and carefully noting the behavior of plants as to habit of growth, vigor, disease resistance, and performance in blooming.
You may eliminate some that do not come up to your expectations. Then again, you may find some very good ones that will strike your fancy among the older varieties not listed here.
By doing this before you place your order for roses, you cannot fail to have a garden of good, healthy, and productive rose plants that, with the proper attention, will doubly repay you in diversion and pleasure for all the time and effort put into it.
Concerning Fall vs. Spring Planting
If you live in a section of the country where the ground does not freeze solidly too early to make it possible to procure dormant rose plants for planting immediately, try fall planting for good sturdy, healthy plants the following summer.
Fall planting will allow your new plants to establish a new feed-root system before active growth starts the following spring, thus enabling the plants to develop into sturdy, healthy bushes, producing an abundance of first-class blooms with the coming of the rose season in June.
Hilling the soil as high as possible around the base of the plants is usually all the Winter protection needed.
In areas where the ground freezes solidly before, say, the middle of November, you cannot procure good dormant plants for fall planting. In this case, prepare your soil before freezing.
Placing Orders of Dormant Plants
Place your order for delivery of dormant plants as early as the ground is workable, and be ready to plant immediately on arrival in the spring. Then mound the soil around the base of your plants as you would if you were planting in the Autumn, and by June, you will have well-started plants.
If, for any reason, you cannot get your dormant plants early enough to have them get a good start, try established, potted plants procured from a reliable dealer after the danger of heavy frost is passed.
Follow carefully transplanting instructions, and you will be delighted with your roses in bloom at the proper blooming time.
The above recommendations are based on years of rose growing experience, including the designing, construction, planting, and maintenance of more than 38,000 rose plants in more than 800 varieties of all types in the Hershey Rose Garden, Hershey, Pennsylvania, where anyone interested can observe without any obligation that which is best, good and mediocre in roses.
44659 by Harry L. Erdman