I have noticed that many of the gardeners around here have roses that are already four feet tall and full of blooms. I want some of those. In fact, one house looks like half their garden is roses. I never see them covering these roses in the fall, so they must be hardy shrub roses. I have thought about going to their house and asking about them, but maybe I will just wing it, as usual.
This year so far I have bought four roses, all from Menards (an upper Midwest mega-hardware store - the original Home Depot). I got all four roses for a mere $9! Can't beat a price like that. It makes it a lot easier to try out plants.
I bought a Tiffany tea rose. I had seen this in bloom at Shopko, but decided that even at $10 I wouldn't get it since I didn't know exactly where I would put it. But when I saw it bareroot at Menards for $2 I knew I could find a spot for it. It is a beautiful pink rose with a wonderful scent. It is doing well and I look forward to seeing it in bloom.This of course is not my picture since my rose has about 4 inches of growth. I got this picture from roses-roses.com, but soon, soon.
I like the hint of yellow in the center and the large silky petals. I planted this next to my gazebo so that I could enjoy it while relaxing under the canopy of the future morning glories drinking iced tea.
A few weeks later my husband and I went to Menards to get gravel for his zen garden and saw the bareroot roses were now only $1! Well, I had to get more! I picked up two: Irish Gold and Granada. I didn't really know much about either of them. I mostly bought them based on the quality of the stock available and the description on the packages.
Irish Gold was described as having "very large, fragrant blooms of butter yellow with a touch of blush in cool weather. Dark glossy foliage. Vigorous. Everblooming Hybrid Tea Rose".I got this picture from roses-roses.com too since my rootstock is basically just a stick in the ground. I like the closed, full blooms. This is also called "Grandpa Dickson" since it was hybridized by Dickson in Northern Ireland in 1966. It is the winner of many awards and is said to have a light fragrance.
I planted this in a bed by the road that had a large open spot. It will look lovely in front of the airy pink Queen of the Prairie and along side my sea of echinacea.
The other rootstock that I bought for $1 was Granada. I got the image from roses-roses.com also.This one is said to have a spicy scent but is not reliably winter hardy. :(
We will see. If it does not do well, at least it was only $1. Most fancy annuals are more expensive that that!
All the roses-roses photos were taken by Bob Bauer. Isn't he a great photographer? He also has a great sense of humor. I suggest a visit to that website. It is really lovely and informative!
My last rose purchase, Carefree Delight, was also one that I had seen at Shopko but decided that at $15 I could wait until I found a really good place to put it. Then I went to Menards and found it in a smaller pot for $5. Sure, why not?This picture is of the actual rose that I bought. It is light and airy. The petals are dark pink on the underside and light pink on top. The dual tone gives them great dimension and interest. It is VERY THORNY though, so this wouldn't be good for an area that gets a lot of traffic. I haven't noticed too much of a scent yet, I mostly got it to fill in an area that needed flowers.
8 comments:
We are all in love with our roses! I posted my heavenly pink "Queen Elizabeth" that I purchased at Home Depot last spring..she has graced me with an abundance of blossoms!!
Nature Girl, that is a beautiful rose!
Tani, welcome to my blog. Thanks for the "tip", but that is way to fussy for me. My parents live in zone 3 and they just use rose cones. That's about as fussy as I'll get I'm afraid. No plant is worth that much trouble.
Yep, bargain prices definitely encourage my desire to experiment! My girls gave me a Joseph's Coat (climber) they found on clearance at Home Depot. It has done beautifully!
I am awful to my roses they do not get any special treatment from me through our cold winters, not even my minatures and they just keeps coming back. In fact my attitude towards all my plants is "If you can't survive without pampering then you don't belong in my gardens."
You have made some great buys and I hope they all take for you. In the late fall when you do a final cutting of your grass you could just pile the clippings around the base of the roses, this is easy and cheap.
Tani, I would forget to do things at the right time, so if the plants are depending on me, forget it!
Ellen, that's the best way to try roses, I think.
Crazygramma, I pile leaves on them and cover them with rose cones but I was thinking about trying something else so that I could save more of the cane height.
I hate to put a damper on your excitement, but I bought 10 $2 roses at Menards late spring of last year, and only one of them survived until now. Most of them died early on from stem canker, some simply couldn't handle the heat after being planted so late in the season, and one of the two that made it through the summer wasn't strong enough to make it through winter (NE Illinois zone 5a).
It was a good learning experience, in that I learned a ton about what not to do with roses, and also that you get what you pay for. By the time they go on sale, it may be too warm to get them off to a successful start, and the bargain roses may also be infected when you get them or prone to infection because they are so weak.
This season I found a happy compromise. I learned about Buck roses, named for their late Hybridizer. His philosophy in breeding roses was to leave them alone and see which ones would survive Iowa winters. As a result, his roses are very winter hardy and disease resistant. I purchased 4 of them from Jung Seed in Wisconsin for $35, and so far they are doing great.
hope this is useful
Your roses are gorgeous!
smoner4, eh, normally I wouldn't buy those roses, but I figure at $1, what the hell. My parents bought about 15 of those bargain bin roses from Menards two years ago and I think they only lost one. And they live nearly in the U.P.! (that's zone 3).
Believe me though, I'm not holding my breath for them and I am certainly looking into more hardy roses like the ones that you suggested. I LOVE JUNG!!!
Jill, thanks, but the only picture that is of my actual roses is the last one - the Carefree Delight. Those others are from a photographer - Bob Bauer. He's great, isn't he?
Post a Comment