Our First Season Growing Roses

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Our old garden had garnered, over 15 years, a nice casual collection of 55 hybrid tea roses and a half dozen climbers. Then we moved and left them all behind. We were in the new place for seven years without planting or growing a single rose

Suddenly last year we had to have roses and we couldn’t get enough of them. We planted 128, a few of almost every type of rose we could find in the catalogs.

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I was prepared for disappointments (and mistaken identities, of which there were only five), but had sternly disciplined myself and everyone else in the family not to judge any of the roses from first-year plants. And we didn’t.

No adverse opinion was uttered aloud. But we couldn’t keep from rating what we considered a perfect first-season performance.

Continuous Blooming Miniature Roses

Pompon de Paris, Oakington Ruby and Pixie, polyanthus Maud E. Gladstone, La Marne, and The Fairy, the single hybrid tea Dainty Bess, the hybrid setigera variety Mabelle Stearns, the rambler Phyllis Bide and the very bushy species rose Rosa chinensis mutabilis as well as R. spinosissima Stanwell Perpetual were never without bloom – from the first bud in spring to the last fluttering petal in late fall.

The varieties Bloomfield Dainty, Mermaid, Hermosa, Rosette Delizy, China Doll, and Goldilocks ran them a close second. Goldilocks, in bush form, gave us six distinct crops of bloom. The hybrid tea Crown of Jewels also proved a delightful subject. Now for a close-up view of the performance of these precocious stars.

Roses For Rock Garden

I wanted miniature roses but was almost afraid to plant the little POMPON DE PARIS (Pompon Ancien), a variety of R. Chinensis minima (R. rouletti), because in our climate the latter crawls out from under its coffee cup and ramps in the sunshine, which blurs its magenta-pink petals to a disagreeable dowdiness.

But Pompon de Paris, at the end of its first season still carried its soft pink posies on a much smaller plant even than the newly planted miniature MONCTON RUDY. The latter, unfortunately, had as a companion the lovely Talinum calycinum Cherry Sunbright, whose myriad, misty stems greeted every rising sun with huzzahs of the loudest magenta.

We won’t move the rose, which daily challenges its belligerent companion in blossom production, so talinum (which I still considered indispensable in any sunny rock garden) will this year have to find another pocket pal, preferably a blue one. Pam’s wiry stems carried a constant crop of tiny, rice-grain buds, which opened to many-petaled, fiat white blossoms.

Polyanthas Outstanding Performers

They were particularly colorful spendthrifts of bloom. MAUD E. GLADSTONE reminded me of a miniature Tausendschon. This vigorous, sprawling plant bore its pink and white blossoms in the same big bouquets but seasoned through instead of for one brief burst of glory.

A wealth of white fluted flowers banded broadly in pink were flaunted by LA MARNE, one of those lovely live-forevers admired by amateur and expert alike. THE FAIRY was a study in contrast. A rugged plant 2’ feet high and 3’ feet in diameter, it carried an infinitude of tiny clustered blossoms wrought of the most exquisite artistry, each a fairy flower, crisp and waxen like a pink seashell.

Roses Come In a Variety of Colors and Styles

Dr. J. Horace McFarland considered the single hybrid tea DAINTY BESS a most penurious personality. For us, however, she produced those scalloped pink saucers in endless profusion, at the same time shaping a tall, sturdy plant for future abundant display.

We planted MABELLE STEARNS in a bed of Lycoris squamigera or naked ladies, where its ultimate 6’-foot width will be able to overflow down a tiny slope. The extreme double, satiny blossoms of this hybrid setigera rose opened from a globular, sharply pointed bud almost the identical pink of their other bedfellows, the brunsvigias.

The hitter sent their tall stems through MabelIe’s fast-widening maze of branches. A gray wall trimmed in deep blue was the effective foil just back of these roses. The rambler PHILLIS BIDE won our admiration for its season-long display of colorful clusters—peach petals furled lightly around green-gold hearts.

Considered Species From Catalog Description

ROSA CHINENSIS MUTABILIS a mere novelty. But a generous nurseryman happened to include it as an extra last year and now this gardener will never be without it. Yellow single blossoms opened from an orange bud and changed almost immediately to deep rose. I’m sure I’m safe in saying there is no other rose with its unusual coloring.

By the season’s end STANWELL PERPETUAL was already 6 feet in diameter and 3 feet tall! Big, flat, double flowers nestled in ferny foliage along the arching branches. The perfumed beauty of their blush pink. intricately arranged petals were a perpetual delight.

The yellow semi climber BLOOMFIELD DAINTY with its 4-inch, single, silken flowers was a model for continuity of bloom. This rose, together with the lovely climber BELINDA, a hybrid musk that carried its pink blossoms in huge, upright trusses, we planted on a wall behind a bed of massed Michaelmas daisies. There their autumn color provided a fine backdrop for the asters.

MERMAID needs no description. Widely planted. This hybrid bracteata is beloved for its practically perpetual production of soft yellow, dewy-eyed flowers.

Since 1840 HERMOSA has been the darling of gardeners everywhere, who prize it for its continuous bloom, clean habit, moderate size, and amiable adaptability. Of the half dozen tea roses which we planted, ROSETTE DELIZY was easily the most outstanding in first-year performance.

CHINA DOLL’S 18-inch floribunda bushes were round cushions of pink. The bloom was so closely massed that our three plants made a fine show all season.

Yellow roses usually fade quickly in the strong sunlight of our hot California valley, but the floribunda Goldilocks kept its rich gold well. And the flowers, which were produced on a strong, shapely framework, possessed that special charm that yellow roses hold for me.

Planting Thornless Hybrid Tea

Gardeners who want roses for cut flowers, and most of us do, should plant generous quantities of that thornless hybrid tea with floribunda-type habit CROWN OF JEWELS, more properly known as Little Beauty according to Dr. McFarland. Its long-lasting quality as a cut flower is its biggest selling point, claim its introducers, and no advertising campaign ever carried a truer statement.

We lived with these roses last year and filled the house with them during those moments when we couldn’t be in the garden. We found that despite our highest temperatures the beautiful little buds of coral rose would hold their place in an arrangement for days while other similarly treated roses collapsed in a few hours.

Crown of Jewels is a precious product of the hybridizer’s skill. We need more roses of this hybrid tea’s classic beauty and stamina.

Exquisite Anticipation and Fulfillment Source

A third of the roses planted were hybrid teas, most of the varieties of quite a recent introduction. I’ll always remember the immense pink buds of THE DOCTOR arranged with Chinese delphinium in two shades of blue.

Not to be forgotten, too, were the living scarlet of NEW YORKER, the huge urn-shaped buds of SHOWGIRL so richly rose pink, the extravagant length of FIRST LOVE’S slender pink bud, the carmine veining of SYMPHONIES softly rolled petals, the good-to-breathe fragrance of MIRANDY’S full-blown flower.

The new-dawn radiance of SUZON LOTTE’S blended pinks, the bold crimson buds of CHARLES MALLERIN waving from 5-foot stems, the shrimp pink of MISSION BELLS blooming continuously in its hot western exposure.

Related: Want Some Bad Plant Care Advice? Follow Cultural Directions Exactly

Roses Granting Glory in the First Season

ROGER LA MBELIN produced only a few of the flat, white-margined red velvet blossoms for which this hybrid perpetual is noted. But our small Bourbon rose SOUVENIR DE LA MALMAISON gave us more of those exquisite miracles of quartered, flesh pink petals than we expected.

So permeated with perfume were these flowers that of the 109 rose varieties which bloomed this first season, we remember it as one of the four which furnished the most delightful fragrance. The hybrid rugosa BLANC DOUBLE DE COURT was another.

Its tantalizing, un-roselike odor is difficult to describe, impossible to forget. TALLYHO, with its spicy carnation scent contained in its dark ring of stamens, and SAN FERNANDO, often considered the most richly fragrant modern hybrid tea, completed the fragrant foursome.

R. ROXBURGHII (R. roxburghii plena), the chestnut rose, will be a tall shrub shedding its bark from mottled, sycamore-like branches, this first season we enjoyed every one of the many-petaled, soft pink blossoms that opened from its bristly burs.

MME. ALBERT BARBIER, unique among hybrid perpetuals for its yellow-toned flowers, enchanted us with the starched stiffness of its full-blown form. Each petal had a will of its own, building a blossom that seemed carved of wax.

We liked the habit of the shrub rose HON. LADY LINDSAY. With its rugged constitution, it should soon form a plant 3 feet tall and as wide. Even this first season, clusters of pointed buds of an unusual shade of pink covered the shrub constantly. 

BABY ALBERIC was tops. This little polyantha is the love of my life. If I could have but one small rose I would choose it. A low, sprawling, horizontally branched plant, it boasted big, pointed, dark green leaves with the most brightly polished surface I’ve seen in rose foliage.

The season’s end found the delightful ramblers VIOLETTE and GHISLAINE DE FELIGONDE already clambering over the top of the lath house and TAUSENDSCHON waving over the eaves of a nearby building, while up-and-coming GOLDEN PYRAMID was 15 feet on its way to the top of an old bay tree and BLOOMFIELD COURAGE 13 feet up on a gable end of the house wall.

This unrestrained rose rhapsody must end sometime, but I can’t close without mentioning the charms of a few others: the rich red hybrid tea buds NIGGER Box flaunts from a polyantha-type plant, the silver-pink symmetry of ROSENELFE, the scintillating charm of FASHION.