Wild Willow Landscape Design

By bildtankstelle.de

Can roses be grown sustainably?

I recently spoke with Janet Rude, the owner of Wedekin’s Nursery here in Sonoma and asked her about the sustainability of roses. We discussed pruning, irrigation, soil issues, fertilizers, and pest control.  The truth of the matter is that roses do require water; they do require external inputs and they do require care and maintenance. I think the better question for rose lovers is, “How do we grow roses as sustainably as possible?”

1)      Provide the best possible growing conditions so that your roses are least susceptible to diseases and pests.

• Choose a location that gets 4-6 hours of sunlight a day minimum.
• Provide the best growing medium possible – soil rich with organic matter that holds moisture and provides good drainage. Clay soil should be amended with compost.
• Provide even moisture but do not over water.  Test the soil (with your fingers or a moisture meter) and make sure it doesn’t get boggy. Back off your irrigation schedule if your soil isn’t just moist before watering.

2)      Choose disease resistant cultivars. 

3)      Buy only healthy plants. If you buy bare root roses choose grade one plants.

4)      Aim for zero or little use of pesticide sprays. If you must spray for diseases use a copper sulfate that is acceptable in organic gardening. Note that even organic copper sulfate kills beneficial insects.

5)      Use organic, slow release natural fertilizers such as bone, blood and alfalfa meal.  Add the least amount of fertilizer you need. Experiment with this over the years.

6)      Give your roses enough room so they have air movement to deter fungal diseases and so you don’t have to prune them back as often.

7)      Be honest with yourself regarding how much energy you have to maintain your roses. Repeat blooming roses produce blossoms on new growth.  For best results you need to dead-head and cut them back regularly. Don’t plant more roses than your land and your water bill can responsibly handle.

Climbers:

All of these need a little support such as a wall with some trellis or a piece of deer wire tacked to it. If it is to be out in the open, I suggest building a small support fence behind it. None of these roses require pruning unless you want them to stay in scale. Taking out dead canes is a good idea, but otherwise they do not require much care.

 Cécile Brunner—[Climbing Polyantha] pale pink, small, classic rose shape. Few thorns and nice mid-green foliage. Blooms once in the spring–spectacularly.  This rose will easily cover a building, so it is good to put against an ugly wall or structure with a trellis of a strip of wire fencing for support. It can also be used on a fence where it can be shaped once in the summer with a hedge clippers to keep it in scale. No pests and no problems, this is one tough rose and can stand up to neglect once established.

1. Mme. Alfred Carrier—[Tea-Noisette] this is a gorgeous, old-fashioned rose with beautiful, drooping, cabbage-style, white roses. It is a climber but with a fountain-y habit so it takes up a bit of space. Very few thorns, pretty mid-green foliage, and it blooms all the time. Pest and fungus free. Really stunning.
2. Crépuscule—[Tea-Noisette] dark gold roses, blooms constantly and copiously. Pretty foliage with red canes. Very bush-like even though it’s a climber. Mine always looks like a Christmas tree with a ton of gold ornaments.
3. Cocktail—[Floribunda Shrub/Climber] 5-petal flowers of bright red with a bright yellow center, quite eye-catching. Blooms all the time, but in the spring it’s just amazing. People would mistake the one I had in Oakland for bougainvillea because it had so many flowers on it.
4. Altissimo—[Large-Flowered Climber] intense red 5-petal rose with flowers up to 4 inches across, like a hibiscus. A showstopper. Very thorny and a stiff climber with dark green shiny leaves. Put this in a place where no one will be walking by (good as natural barbed wire) and be careful when trimming.
5. Veilchenblau—[Rambler] lavender-purple once bloomer with zillions of small roses. Apple-green foliage. Almost thornless. Can get huge like any rambler. Can get mildew if it does not get morning sun, but this is just a cosmetic problem and really doesn’t hurt the rose. This rose is basically a weed, so be sure you want it, but it is so pretty, and attractive, it’s a great backdrop plant on a garage or fence if you have a purple garden.
6. Phyllis Bide—[Climbing Polyantha] covered with small peach and pink flowers, this small, stickery climber is stunning when it bloom and it blooms almost constantly. I have it on fences and places where the roses get very little care and it still looks great.

Shrubs and ground cover roses

1. Sally Holmes—[Hybrid Musk] this fabulous rose can be seen all over the East Bay. It has large five-petal flowers of cream to pale pink developing from peach buds. It is always in bloom and once established, will put out huge panicles of 50 to 100 flowers on one cane like a bridal bouquet. Absolutely stunning! This rose can be trained as a climber, but without support, it will grow into a large fountain, so it can be used in the middle of a bed as well as a backdrop. It is absolutely tough and can take a variety of conditions.
2. Chinensis Mutabilis—[China] this is another 5-petal rose whose flowers start out as a dark apricot and change slowly to dark rose pink. It has pretty china rose foliage which is long, narrow leaves and purplish canes. It blooms all the time. It can be grown as a climber or large shrub an may need a little support if you are using it as a shrub.
3. White Meidiland—[Shrub (ground-cover)] this was one of the first “freeway roses” ever bred and it is still and excellent rose. Cal-Trans uses this tough, pest-free rose in freeway landscaping here in Northern California. It is a low-growing white rose with beautiful, dark-green foliage and it blooms constantly and heavily. The only drawback to this rose is that it does not drop its dead flowers, so that you do need to deadhead it from time to time.
4. Baby Blanket—[Shrub (ground-cover)] classic, pale pink roses cover this pretty ground-cover rose almost year round. It is a great filler for a spot where you want a constant display of flowers. Under ideal conditions, it will grow slightly larger than White Meidiland—to a height of about 3’ and about 6’ in diameter.
5. Rosa Rugosa Alba—[Rugosa] rugosa roses are a species of roses with very interesting crinkled leaves of mid/dark green. This one has a white flower of 5 to 10 petals that looks almost like a poppy. There is also a dark rose pink version of this rose. Rugosas are very tough and will stand up to almost any conditions. Most of them bloom all the time and are both attractive and problem free. I am recommending this one because I have had one for 20 years and it is still going strong, even though it is on a graft.

Older roses are—in general—much tougher and easier to grow than hybrid teas or floribundas. Polyanthas, Hybrid Musks, Teas, Tea-Noisettes, Rugosas and more are very easy to grow and care for. Also, roses grown on their own roots seem to do better in this area than grafted ones. These are going to be hard to find at local nurseries which only have room for the “latest hits” in roses. You may have to go online to find nurseries that will mail-order. I have bought many roses from Vintage Gardens in Sebastopol and Regan Roses in Fremont. Russian River Rose Company is in Healdsburg and does not mail order but is a lot of fun to visit. There are other mail-order nurseries online which carry old garden roses.

Madame Alfred Carriere by Stan Shebs

Most people would agree that roses are incredibly beautiful. There are legions of passionate rose lovers around the globe. They travel far and wide to admire rose gardens, salivate over rose books, and fill every nook and cranny of their garden with these visually delicious garden gems.

 But in some crowds roses have a terrible reputation. Black spot, rust, powdery mildew, aphids, thrips and nematodes are just a handful of the diseases that assault roses. Claims that roses require too much maintenance, too much water, too much fertilizer and too many pesticides are common. You can find the adjectives “persnickety”, “disease-ridden”, and “thirsty-beast” applied to roses in Alec Scott’s May 20^th, 2012, San Francisco Chronicle article titled Roses starting to fade from American gardens.

 Scott’s article about the slow demise of the old-fashioned rose industry and the battle by rose lovers to save these garden beauties prompted my friend and client Susan to contact me requesting I write an encouraging article about roses.

 Susan is a passionate rose enthusiast, a consummate gardener, and my favorite go-to person regarding anything about roses. She designed and maintains a spectacular rose garden in the hills above Bennett Valley in Santa Rosa. 

 She  points out that roses are more than just beautiful.  They often smell delicious, can serve as a living barbed wire and are as tough as weeds.

 According to Susan people have a misconception about old roses and roses in general. Here in the west most heritage roses are now grown on their own rootstock rather than grafted. This makes them much less susceptible to nematodes and other pests and therefore much easier to maintain. In Susan’s experience roses don’t require that much water nor that much work.  Sure, like most landscape plants, roses do require some maintenance. Susan waters her roses three times a week for 15 minutes. She also cuts back some (not all) of her roses once a year, fertilizes once a year, and sprays them once a year with a copper sulfate approved for organic gardening.

 She also recommends the modern landscape roses that are bred to be disease resistant. Sally Holmes is a 10-15’ climber that repeatedly produces gorgeous ivory white and pink tinged flowers in clusters of 50-60 per stem. Altissimo, another climber displays striking 5” bright red blossoms. White Meidiland, a tough but lovely landscape rose that performs all summer long and requires little maintenance. 

 A couple of good resources for old roses are the web site helpmefindroses.com as well as the book 100 English Roses for the American Garden by Clair G Martin and Saxton Holt.

 Susan’s rose garden may be available to the public for tour this May (2013).  If so, I will let you know! 

If you are interested in learning more I have also posted an article titled “Susan’s Recommended Roses“. In the near future I will also be posting an article titled “Growing Roses Sustainably“  as well as “Roses: The Permaculture Perspective“.