Rose planting time is just around the corner. If you are a typical gardener, during the past few months, you derived much pleasure from scanning the newest catalogs and deciding which new roses to plant in your garden this spring.
As you browsed through the season’s offering of catalogs, you perhaps needed clarification, as many do, over the various groups in which roses are classified.
Climbers and hybrid teas are two kinds that you most likely know. Still, there are such classes as shrub and bush, old-fashioned and hybrid perpetual, floribunda, and polyantha, not to mention the recent group termed Grandiflora.
Because the rose is one of the most popular flowers cultivated and hybridized for centuries worldwide, there are many kinds, with varying backgrounds, that make this classification necessary.
Yet, once understood, it is simple to remember, making the growing of roses more meaningful and rewarding because it helps the gardener to know where and how to use the different kinds to the best advantage.
Since so many of the roses overlap from one group to another, classification can become involved.
In the most simple terms, there are the climbing or “vining” types, which need to be fastened to their support, and the many shrubs and bush kinds.
These, in turn, are broken down into many groupings, including the terms you come across repeatedly in catalogs, books, and gardening magazines.
Climbing Roses
Climbing roses include climbers and ramblers. The first group, characterized by long, vigorous canes, produces its large flowers in clusters. The familiar Paul’s Scarlet, New Dawn, and Golden Climber are examples.
Conversely, ramblers are less vigorous and produce clusters of much smaller flowers once a year. Much grown several years ago was the pink Dorothy Perkins, but one of the most outstanding gardens today is the dark red Chevy Chase.
At times you also come across the term pillar. This is a sub-division in the climber group, including varieties characterized by a less vigorous growth habit.
With their smaller canes, plants are adapted to pillar use, and examples in this group are Dr. J. H. Nicolas and Parade.
In addition, there are yet other climbers, including the ever-blooming climbers, the climbing hybrid teas, the climbing floribundas, and the climbing polyanthus.
Their names indicate these, but all are still climbing roses to be used wherever a climbing plant is needed, whether it will be supported or not.
Typical supports for climbing roses include arbors, pergolas, trellises, fences of many kinds, such as pickets, chain link and split rail, arches, stone or wooden walls, and posts or pillars.
Plants can be trained to frame windows or doorways or made into garlands by securing chains that loop from post to post.
Uses for Climbers
Another method is to use climbers as ground covers or to conceal large outcroppings of rock.
Because of their flexible stems, Ramblers are admirably suited to this purpose. Secured against the wall of a house or a brick, stucco, or wooden wall, climbers always look appropriate and very much at home.
Bush Roses
The bush group of roses includes many more. There are shrub roses like Father Hugo rose (Rosa hugonis) and the rugosa rose (II. rugosa), noted for their ability to grow near the seashore.
Old-fashioned roses, as their name indicates, are the bush roses of old-time gardens, and among them are the fragrant Damask and the York and Lancaster. They flower in June.
In this group, too, belong the hybrid perpetual, with their large blooms that appear in June, the reason they are often referred to as “the June bloomers.” Karl Druseliki is still considered one of the best-cultivated white roses of these Frau.
The bush roses that concern us most are the hybrid teas, floribundas, polyanthas, and grandifloras.
The small class, yet another, consists of the small growing, small flowering novelties, with blooms less than an inch across, used often in pots or window boxes. They do not have the importance of others and are often grown for their dainty and delicate charm.
Hybrid teas
Hybrid teas and bush roses grow to 3’ or 4’ feet high, even taller under favorable conditions, and are the most popular. They are characterized by pointed buds and high-centered blooms that appear singly on stems or in small clusters.
The foliage is large and glossy. Peace, Charlotte Armstrong, and the recently introduced Kordcs Perfects are familiar examples.
Mostly, hybrid teas, which have a peak of bloom in the early summer, followed by continuous flowering through the summer and fall months, are best used in beds.
They make up the greater part of the roses in a formally designed rose garden, where the beauty of each bloom can be admired individually.
Floribundas
Often they are mixed with other flowering plants and are even planted along the foundation of a house, particularly in combination with floribundas.
Still, their greatest charm comes when they are used by themselves, queens as they are.
Floribundas have been increasing in popularity each year. The reasons for this are many:
- Vigor
- Bushy habits
- Ease of growth
- Remarkable resistance to diseases and pests
- A showy display of bloom that continues all season long
This floriferous quality is making this group of hush roses more and more endearing and dependable to gardeners all over the country.
The many uses to which floribunda roses can be put are not the least of their commendable qualities.
As shrubs, attaining 4’ to 6’ feet, and even more, they can be combined with other flowering or evergreen shrubs, including the foundation planting, or they can be planted along driveways or walks that lead to the front door.
Grouped in masses where bright, bold color is desired, they always succeed at their best.
Floribundas also look well in the rose garden, contrasting with hybrid teas. More and more, they are being planted along highways and at rotary plantings because of their ability to take care of themselves.
Large clusters of flowers, with blooms smaller than those of hybrid teas, typify lists of adaptable groups of roses.
Flowers may be single or double and appear as many as 30 or 40 atop a single stem. Betty Prior, a single pink, is an old favorite, and among the newer introductions, Fashion, Goldilocks, and White Bouquet rate high.
Polyanthus Place
Polyanthus are like floribundas, except smaller in every way. Growing less tall and broad, they produce clusters of smaller flowers all season long.
Their smaller size makes them useful in other ways, such as aligning paths and walks and surrounding pools, bird baths, sundials, and other garden features.
Likewise, they have their place in the formal rose garden, frequently used to edge beds where larger growing roses are used.
Some gardeners like to use polyanthus in clumps among low-growing perennials and annuals in flower borders.
In a sense, the forerunners of floribundas, polyanthus, were once much planted. Still, today are beginning to find renewed use, thanks to the new varieties which hybridizers are creating. Their ability to withstand neglect is another reason for their increasing popularity.
Among the outstanding polyanthus are the following:
- Improved Cecile Brunner, the so-called “sweetheart” rose
- Margo Roster, with tiny pink-orange flowers borne in profusion
- The Fairy, a hardy pink hardly ever out of bloom
“Cluster rose” is another name given to this group of roses, also widely planted along the front of shrubberies in parks and new highways.
Most Noted Grandiflora
The group known as Grandiflora, the most recent of all, was coined to represent a list of roses that is a cross between the hybrid tea and the floribunda.
Most noted is the pink Queen Elizabeth, a cross between Charlotte Armstrong and Floradora and the first in this class to become an All-America selection.
Characterized by large, vigorous plants and a free blooming habit, grandifloras have pointed buds that are larger than those of floribundas yet not as large as those of hybrid teas.
Produced singly or in small clusters, the blooms of grandifloras are enhanced by large, glossy leaves reminiscent of hybrid teas and appear on stems long enough for cutting.
Some in the class have the advantage of being almost thornless. Varieties; worthy of acclaim include the yellow, Gold Coast, and the intense red Roundelay.
Uses are similar to hybrid teas and floribundas but always give plants prominent positions where the exquisite blooms and attractive growth habit can be fully enjoyed.
Hybrid teas, floribundas, polyanthas, and grandifloras are also widely planted in pots, tubs, planters, and raised beds in patios and terraces of contemporary-style gardens.
44659 by George Taloumis