GARDENING : Rose Sellers Petal Their Rares to an Adoring Public
Roses are America’s favorite flower, gracing the gardens of more than 75 million households. It’s little wonder that much time and money is spent producing top-quality catalogues that delight the eye and set the mind to dreaming about the new offerings as well as old favorites.
The 1993 crop of roses has been growing in the fields of Wasco, near Bakersfield, for the past year, and this month approximately 30 million rose bushes are being dug, sorted, labeled and placed in cold storage until their shipment in December to local nurseries or directly to households by mail-order.
This is also the month when colorful mail-order catalogues from rose growers reach the eager hands of rose lovers.
There are thousands of named varieties from which to choose--including miniature roses, floribunda, hybrid tea, grandiflora and increasingly popular shrub roses.
And in the quest for that perfect rose with form, fragrance, disease resistance, vigor, repeat bloom and attractively shaped bush, rose hybridizers constantly develop new rose varieties.
In an effort to help consumers select the best roses, the All-America Rose Selection process is a very serious effort to evaluate and rate roses.
Growers enter roses in designated test gardens throughout the nation, where they are evaluated for two years. Each year, only three or four varieties win the coveted AARS designation. They’re graded according to a number of criteria, including disease resistance, form, fragrance and growth habits.
But that doesn’t necessarily mean that an AARS rose will flourish in a specific location. The scores are averaged from around the nation. According to Tom Carruth, a rose hybridizer with Weeks Wholesale Roses in Upland, AARS roses may perform very well in the East but not here, and vice versa.
“The 1993 AARS winners don’t really do well in Southern California,” he said. “Most mildew in our climate.”
The 1993 AARS winners include Child’s Play, a miniature rose of white edged with pink. It’s prone to mildew and won’t look its best along the coast.
Rio Samba, however, does well in coastal conditions. A hybrid tea rose of yellow edged with red, it likes cool days and nights. However, it drops its petals quickly and has a rangy growth habit.
Solitude is a gaudy, colorful grandiflora. The large, bushy plant produces many blooms of orange-pink flowers with yellow reverse. The flowers aren’t of exhibition form. This rose is disease resistant and can be used in landscapes where a vivid splash of color is desired.
Carruth recommends Sweet Inspiration for those people looking for mass color in their garden.
“It’s the first to bloom in a garden and does bloom prolifically. But it’s a cropper rose--all the flowers come at one time. The flowers lack form and are short-lived, but the bush is compact and colorful.”
Some exciting new roses are being introduced this year. Topaz Jewel is a yellow rose belonging to the Rugosa category of old-fashioned roses. It’s the first yellow hybrid Rugosa since 1900, and it combines a sweet fragrance with great disease resistance. The older varieties bloom only in the spring and set colorful hips in the fall.
Hybridizers have developed reblooming Rugosa roses, and Weeks Roses is introducing one variety, Topaz Jewel, this year.
“Rugosas are extremely hardy and clean bushes, but they won’t tolerate having their leaves sprayed with water or any chemicals, including fertilizers,” Carruth cautioned. “They respond to that by immediately dropping all their leaves.”
Another noteworthy rose is Sally Holmes, a climbing rose that can produce canes up to 18-feet long.
Developed in England, Sally Holmes already has earned an outstanding reputation for producing long-lasting single white flowers in hydrangea-like clusters. The bush is very disease resistant and can hold its blossoms for up to one month, even in hot weather. Weeks Roses is introducing it this year in the United States.
An amateur hybridizer from Los Angeles has created two hybrid tea roses that are also being sold through Weeks Roses: the Temptations, a vigorous rose that produces abundant flowers with swirled shades of orchid pink; and Imagination, apricot-orange with a yellow reverse. Both varieties have exhibition form and will tempt rose exhibitors and rose connoisseurs alike.
Justin Ekuan is a rose connoisseur and ardent garden hobbyist with more than 100 rose bushes in his Laguna Niguel garden. A frequent exhibitor of prize-winning roses, he favors roses that have exhibition form as well as make an attractive addition to his garden.
“My garden is based on the principle of chaos--I mix all my plants together,” he said.
Although he enjoys working in his garden and sprays his plants regularly to combat mildew, rust and insects, he tries to add disease-resistant roses to his collection.
“We have a problem along the coast with both powdery mildew and downy mildew, and I prefer roses that are naturally disease resistant.”
For that reason, he likes White Meidiland, a rose he created a few years ago by budding the plant on rootstock. Because this variety produces long, trailing canes with many clusters of small white flowers, it’s very effective as a tree rose.
Rose collectors and rose exhibitors enjoy buying through mail-order catalogues, where unusual roses are more readily found than in nurseries.
Two sources are Edmunds’ Roses, which publishes an informative color catalogue with detailed information about the 125 varieties offered, and Jackson & Perkins Roses, which offers a 60-page color catalogue of more than 100 varieties of roses and other plants and garden-related items.
Each year, J&P; promotes one variety it designates as its “Rose of the Year.” For 1993, it’s Legend, a medium red hybrid tea rose with slight fragrance and good disease resistance.
J&P; is also introducing 13 other new rose varieties.
According to Carruth, the following will do well in the Southern California climate:
* Boy Crazy--This belongs to the new category of patio rose. It’s larger than a miniature rose bush and smaller than a floribunda. The bush produces quantities of dark pink flowers and is very disease resistant.
* Lady of the Dawn--a shrub rose that in our mild climate can reach a height and width of 12-feet. The flowers are white, edged with pink, and the shrub is very disease resistant.
* Red Simplicity--according to J&P;, the original Simplicity, a pink-flowered shrub, is America’s best-selling rose. J&P; introduced White Simplicity last year, and this year adds red to the collection of easy-care roses, which it suggests can be grown as a living fence.
Armstrong Garden Centers is also offering new roses. Baronne Edmund de Rothschild is new to America but has been grown in Europe since its introduction in 1969. The hybrid tea rose is mauve-pink with a silver reverse, moderate fragrance and good disease resistance.
Elizabeth Taylor is a pink hybrid tea rose that has gained popularity with rose exhibitors who have obtained the rose by mail-order. This year it will be widely available at Armstrong Gardens Centers as well as through Weeks Roses. Armstrong also will offer the new J&P; roses, plus varieties that J&P; offered last year only by mail.
Rose fanciers who enjoy novel flowers will appreciate the new series of striped roses by J&P.; Purple Tiger, a low-growing floribunda, produces unusual flowers with stripes of white, pink and deep mauve. The color changes according to sunlight.
Peppermint twist is a blend of pink and white stripes on a tall floribunda. Both will be available at Armstrong Garden Centers. Tiger Tail is another in the striped series; the orange and white striped floribunda is available through J&P.;
Many new miniature roses also will also be available. Pixie Treasures, a miniature rose nursery in Yorba Linda, will introduce three new varieties: Rebecca Anne, a shell pink small mini; Christa, a pure white flower on a 16-inch shrub with exhibition form; and Zig-Zag, a white flower edged with red, also on a 16-inch shrub.
All three varieties have good disease resistance and can be grown as border or container plants.
Here is a selection of mail-order rose sources:
* Jackson & Perkins Roses Inc., Medford, Ore. 97501-0303, (800) 292-4769, offers a free catalogue.
* Edmunds’ Roses, 6235 SW Kahle Road, Wilsonville, Ore. 97070, (503) 682-1476, offers a free catalogue.
* Pixie Treasures, 4121 Prospect Ave., Yorba Linda, Calif. 92686. (714) 993-6780, offers a free catalogue. The nursery is open to the public.
Weeks Roses are available at nurseries throughout Orange County, including:
* Armstrong Garden Centers in Costa Mesa, Fullerton, Huntington Beach, Irvine, Mission Viejo and Santa Ana.
