Shrub rose Oso Easy@ ‘Italian Ice’. Photo: National Garden Bureau

Each year the National Garden Bureau, a non-profit organization promoting the pleasures of home gardening, selects one bulb, one annual, one edible plant and one perennial to celebrate in their Year of program. It’s a great way to discover a new plant or to learn a bit more about a plant you may already be growing.

Here is the last of the four plants honored in 2017, the rose.

A Reluctant Report

I must admit I found writing about the Year of the Rose a bit awkward.

First, to my mind, a rose is not a perennial, but a shrub, although I can grudgingly accept that the word “perennial” can be used to mean not just what a gardener accepts as a perennial, that is a “herbaceous perennial”, a non-woody plant that comes back year after year, but any plant that comes back year after year. So check that off.

Me after a day of rose pruning.

However, the other factor is I’ve had a love-hate relationship with roses since my childhood. My father not only grew roses (hybrid teas and grandifloras), but worked as a gardener on estates with large rose gardens. As a result, my first summer job involved pruning roses and I simply was not yet, at 12 years old, dexterous enough to walk away from rose encounters unscathed. Those thorns just kept attacking me! I spent that summer looking like I’d just come out of battle with an enraged feline. I’m still amazed to this day I wasn’t blinded! As a result, en now I much prefer to admire other people’s roses than to grow my own.

And the third factor remains that, as a laidback gardener, I prefer to avoid plants that need a lot of attention. And although the resistance of roses to disease has made enormous progress since my childhood (back then, roses spent the summer so covered in rose dust – a combined insecticide/fungicide – that their leaves always had a bluish tinge… and this was considered normal and acceptable!), they remain persnickety plants, at least when it comes to insects, deadheading and, in many cases, winter protection. They’re still just too much work for me and the only roses I grow are ones that were given to me as gifts.

As a result, I’m writing this piece a bit reluctantly. If you love roses, there is lots of information to share about them and share I will. Just don’t expect me to grow the things!

The “Rose Report” for 2017

When I write about a plant, I usually put in my own grain of salt. In fact, I’m pretty heavy with the saltshaker. Here, though, most of the text was taken directly from the National Garden Association Web site with only a smidgen of modification. O.K., perhaps a bit more than a smidgen. Here goes:

There is no denying the popularity of roses. They are one of the most widely grown garden plants and indeed, the rose is the national flower of the United States, the United Kingdom and the Maldives and is popular as a state or provincial flower elsewhere.

The redleaf rose (Rosa glauca, syn. R. rubrifolia) is one of the rare species roses that is commonly grown.

Roses (Rosa spp.) belong to the Rosaceae family and first appeared around 35 million years ago. There are more than 150 species of Roses, although only a few species are commonly grown. Instead, most gardeners grow hybrid roses.

People have been growing roses since the earliest recorded history. The oldest record is from China and dates back more than 7,000 years ago. Modern rose hybridization started in Western Europe in the 18^th Century, and today there are more than 11,000 existing varieties of hybrid roses, with more being bred every year.

How Roses are Used

Although most gardeners think of roses mainly as garden plants, that’s only one aspect of their use. In fact, the rose industry is divided into 3 main areas: the fragrance industry, the fresh flower/florist industry and the garden rose industry.

Field of roses in Grasse, France.

The fragrance industry uses mostly 2 species grown specifically for that purpose: the Gallic rose (R. gallica) and the damask rose (R. x damascena). The industry is concentrated on the Mediterranean basin where the climate is ideal for their culture. It takes 10,000 pounds of rose petals to make 1 liter of rose oil, one of the most widely used components in making perfumes.

More than 1 billion stems of cut flower roses are produced annually.

The florist rose industry produces more than 1 billion stems a year in more than 30,000 acres of greenhouses worldwide. The industry started near important urban centers in Europe and North America in the late 19th Century, but has since moved to areas with climates better suited for their production. Columbia and Ecuador in South America, Kenya and Ethiopia in Africa and now China and India are the major producing areas.

Painting of a rose in Empress Josephine’s garden, Malmaison, by Pierre-Jospeh Redouté circa 1798.

Last but not least, garden roses have been front and center in the garden since the Middle Ages when they were first widely grown for their medicinal qualities. The industry today is largely concentrated in developed countries (US, Europe, Japan and Australia) but they are increasingly grown in newly industrialized countries, especially in China.

Classes

There are many classes of roses. The most commonly grown are the following:

‘Peace’, a hybrid tea, is the most widely sold rose in the world.

Hybrid Tea Roses are the classic, long stemmed varieties. They are not very hardy (about zone 8) and need winter protection in most climates. They are usually grafted.

Grandiflora Roses are similar to hybrid teas, but usually have several blooms per stem. Like the latter, they generally need winter protection beyond zone 8 and are generally grafted.

Floribunda Roses are multi-flowered plants with a more compact habit and smaller blooms. They tend to be a bit hardier: usually zone 7, sometimes zone 6. They too are usually sold grafted.

Miniature roses are often grown in containers.

Miniature roses bear smaller flowers on smaller plants, from 6 to 24 inches (15-60 cm) in height. They often grown in containers as gifts and can be used as houseplants if you give them a long period of cold dormancy. They are grown on their own roots (not grafted) and tend to be fairly hardy (zone 4 or 5).

Climbing Roses bear long flexible canes from 8 to 20 feet (2.5 to 6 m) in height. Most are not natural climbers and have to be attached to their support. They don’t tend to be very hardy, though, and most have to be taken down and trenched for the winter in zones 8 and below. A few are hardy to zone 5 without any special attention. The very hardiest (to zone 3), such as ‘John Cabot’ and ‘John Davis’ of Agriculture Canada’s Explorer series, are actually shrub roses with extra-long canes that can be trained to climb.

Oso Easy® ‘Cherry Pie’ is a shrub rose that can be used as a groundcover in sunny spots. Photo: National Garden Bureau

Shrub or Landscape Roses usually have a robust, informal habit creating a shrub effect. They tend to be hardy, sometimes even very hardy (to zone 2), usually grow on their own roots (not grafted) and modern varieties, at least, tend to more disease-resistant that other roses, all of which go a long way towards making them the easiest roses to grow.

Shrub roses have gone from a hodge-podge of varieties that did not fit any of the other categories and were rarely grown to become the main component of today’s garden rose industry. Popular series include Explorer roses, Meidiland roses, English roses (David Austin roses), Flower Carpet roses, Knock Out roses, Drift roses, OSO Easy roses and Carefree roses.

Today’s Garden Rose Industry

Roses remain popular in garden centers around the world.

Today an estimated 35 million rose plants are sold each year in the US alone and it’s a market that is growing again after years of decline. About half of the total are shrub roses. Among the remaining classes, hybrid teas and grandifloras, so popular in the 20th century, still make up about 60% of the market, followed by floribundas (30%), climbers (15%) and miniature (5%). There is also a small but significant production of heirloom/heritage roses produced by boutique nurseries.

In North America, the main trends in new rose varieties are for low maintenance roses and roses with multiple uses. There is also a renewed interest in the old favorites, hybrid tea roses, but only if they are fragrant and more disease-resistant than traditional varieties.

Growing Roses

Thanks to serious breeding work over the last 40 years, today’s roses are much easier to grow than older varieties. They have been bred for vigor, disease resistance and controlled growth meaning much less work for the home gardener.

Full sun is a must for roses because, without 6 to 8 hours of full sun, you’ll have fewer flowers, long leggy (and weak) stems and a higher likelihood of disease. They don’t much like competition and should be planted well away from neighboring plants.

Plant roses in sun in a rich, well-drained soil.

Plant them in rich, well-drained soil. They are quite tolerant of clay soils as long as drainage is reasonable.

Roses appreciate deep watering during dry spells. Try watering them with soaker hose or drip irrigation, as these methodskeep the soil moist and the leaves dry, the ideal situation for preventing roses diseases which tend to occur mostly on wet foliage.

For best bloom, apply a slow-release all-purpose organic fertilizer in early spring and follow up with a second application after the first flush of bloom. In mild climates, where roses bloom nearly year-round, a third application in late August may be wise.

Once a very common disease, black spot is rarely seen on modern roses.

Thanks to careful breeding, the rose diseases that so bothered gardeners in the past, including black spot, rust and powdery mildew, are less and less frequent in modern roses, especially shrub roses, and symptoms are now often so reduced that many gardeners no longer feel the need to treat their roses to prevent disease.

Rose chafer: one of the many insects that feed on roses.

Insect damage remains a problem and, depending on where you live, such scourges as rose chafers, sawflies, Japanese beetles, rose bud borers and rose slugs can be devastating. However, at least most modern shrub roses are tough enough to survive their attackers and will often start to again once they are under control. Rose gardeners should always be on alert for insect damage and ready to react when the first pests arrive. Early treatment is always the best way of controlling pests.

Winter protection is not necessary for shrub roses if you planted them in an appropriate zone. It is necessary for most other roses. Typically, hybrid teas, grandifloras and floribundas are pruned back harshly in late fall, soil is mounded around their base and they’re covered with a rose cone. Tender climbing roses need to be buried in a trench. Always remove the protection in late winter, before any new growth occurs. For more details on whether or not you need to protect roses, read No Winter Protection Needed for Hardy Roses.

Grafted roses tend to die after a few years, especially in colder climates, and the rootstock, a smaller-leaved, smaller flowered “wild” rose may take their place. Learn more about that in the article Dude, Who Switched My Rose Bush?.

Pruning Tips

A bit of deadheading may be all the pruning you need to do.

Landscape roses don’t necessarily require much pruning, other than a bit of control to keep the plants compact. Many ground-cover roses don’t require pruning at all unless canes begin to reach into areas surrounding plantings. Alternatively, you can prune plants back annually by one-third to one-half to encourage fresh growth.

Using hedge shears, lightly prune plants to maintain size. This is best done in late winter or early spring, just before plants break dormancy. Also, trim lightly after a flush of blooms. Most modern roses are capable of reblooming and deadheading (removing faded flowers) helps encourage this.

A Rosy Future

‘Crown Princess Margareta’, an English shrub rose.

Garden roses remain the number one garden plant in most countries and that trend will likely continue due to the unending advances in breeding which keep bringing superior genetics to the Queen of the Flowers.

Who knows, perhaps these continued improvements in ease of care (I’m banking on insect-resistant foliage as the next big thing in roses: keep your fingers crossed!) will finally convince me, the very reluctant, once-burned-twice-shy Laidback Gardener, to try roses again… but still, someone will have to do something about those nasty thorns!