Warmer weather this spring and summer helped push the fruit crops ahead of their normal ripening schedule. This allowed us to finish up our cherry harvest in time to attend the Farwest Trade Show in Portland, Ore. Portland, being known as the City of Roses, has some really well established rose gardens, some of them boasting several thousand varieties and thousands of individual plants.
After the trade show, we toured the public International Rose Test Garden. It is one of 24 official test sites for the internationally respected All-America Rose Selections (AARS) program. Many of the rose selections we offer at the nursery in spring have won this award at some point in the time. New roses are not named but numbered, and four plants of each entry are evaluated for two years on 14 different desirable characteristics, including form, fragrance, colour, vigour and disease resistance. They test about 200 varieties every year. With so many flowers in bloom it was incredible, very impressive. There were people from all over the world in the gardens. You couldn’t help but be inspired to try and grow roses like that back home.
In our garden we have a number of varieties including Hybrid tea roses, which bloom from July 1 through frost. They make nice cut flowers owing to their good colour and fragrance. Many have good stem length, too. We also grow many Floribunda roses, which give continuous clusters of smaller flowers. Floribunda means “many-flowering”. Their flowering period is roughly the same as the teas’; however, they are known to be hardier. They can be useful for mass plantings or even a low hedge. Grandifloras are much larger flowers on large plants. These also make great cut flowers.
Owing to the number of tough winters we’ve had over the last few years, I’ve started to carry a lot of the Prairie hardy roses developed in Manitoba. These plants are sold all over the world now. There are three series of them. The Morden series is named after the research centre where they were developed. The Explorer series is named for great Canadian explorers. Just released is the Canadian artist series, featuring the likes of Emily Carr and friends.
In past years, the sale of roses has slipped. Perhaps it has been the discouraging weather or the fact that people are looking for more plants easier to care for. To combat this, some marketers are introducing their own series of roses named “So Easy” or what have you.
Most roses aren’t that hard to grow if you follow a few simple rules. Roses like sunshine. More is better. Well-drained garden soil is also good. Feed them early in spring. Water them early in the day so their leaves can dry as quickly as possible. Prune them to allow air and light into the plant. Lastly, mulch them in well for winter.
Years ago, while attending the horticulture program at Olds College in Olds, Alta., I observed an old gardener caring for a whole raft of hybrid tea roses in the college gardens. They weren’t supposed to grow out there but he had them planted extra deep and mulched them in as well for winter, which goes to show that just a little extra effort can yield all kinds of extraordinary results.
Evan Davies owns Beltane Nursery at 2915 Highway 3 in Erickson.