Rose Report: At Last™ Rose from Proven Winners®

Let's just get this out of the way right now: I am not a big fan of roses. But it hasn't always been that way. I've grown lots of them over the years and in the past, have staunchly defended them. I've grown hybrid teas, climbers, floribundas, miniatures, David Austins, Knock Outs®, and other types that I can't remember.

My pink mini.

My first roses were miniatures. I'd won one at a dinner I attended and that little pink blooming machine performed beautifully for lots and lots of years. No disease, no real pests, just oodles of little pink blooms. It was my gateway drug to roses.

Then came hybrid teas and floribundas. 'Hot Cocoa' and 'Chihuly' were the rose stars of my garden. 'Disneyland' gave me gorgeous clusters of orangey-pink Kool-Aid® blooms. I reveled in the fragrance of my David Austin beauties. The uniqueness of a new Decorator Rose® wowed me.

I'd hear people wail about aphids and Japanese beetles. They'd curse black spot, powdery mildew, and fungus. They were losing roses to this or that. And while they were ranting away, I was wondering what was "wrong" with my roses, because I had none of these problems.

Until I did.

Pitiful.

It was like the universe was taunting me. I had bragged about the beauty and nobility of roses and poo-pooed the disrespect that roses are often the targets of. If I could grow disease-free and pest-free roses, anyone could, right? Ha.

I hung in there for a few years, taking advice from my rose-growing friends and seeking help by way of googling rose problems to death. One by one, my roses failed to live up to my expectations until one day last year, I'd had enough. One by one, I began taking them out. I couldn't stand to look at them anymore.

Now I didn't remove all of them. And not all of them that I did remove ended up being destroyed. Those that still weren't affected by the aforementioned afflictions found new homes, or received a reprieve (for another year or two, anyway). But you'll only find a fraction of the number of roses that used to call Our Little Acre home.

Those that got to stay include 'Gourmet Popcorn' miniature rose, floribundas 'Ebb Tide', 'Hot Cocoa', 'Chihuly' and 'Disneyland', and 'Morning Magic' climber. But half of those will be disappearing by next year too. I may keep 'Morning Magic' just for its Japanese beetle attracting character. It's a master at it and I rarely see the beetles anywhere else.

Oh, I nearly forgot to mention my beloved wingthorn rose - Rosa sericea var. ptericantha - but that is in a class by itself. No pests, and it's been disease-free ever since I planted it in 2011. I hope it continues to behave, because I'd be really sad to lose that one. It's something special.

Aren't those thorns delicious?

So there's my history of roses. When Proven Winners® ColorChoice Flowering Shrubs told me they wanted to send me one of their new roses, I had to think twice about it. I read its description and decided to give it a shot. It was the color and the fragrance that were the tipping points. Fragrance! Imagine that! A rose that smelled like a rose...

I don't usually do a plant review until it's been in my garden for at least an entire season, meaning it's survived our often brutal winter. The plants usually arrive here in decent shape but there's often transplant shock and an adjustment period to our climate and soil to contend with. I'm not a gardening expert, I'm just an average backyard gardener, and sometimes my trial plants don't make it because of gardener error. Sometimes they thrive in spite of the gardener.

Rosa x At Last™

I received three At Last™ roses at the end of June. They've been in the ground for just a month, but oh what a difficult month that has been. Very little rain and extremely hot temperatures have made it hard for even some of my well-established plants.

The roses arrived with one bloom and a few buds. The color - apricot - was just as lovely as the photos. They didn't pout at all once I had them in the ground and in fact, have been throwing out new buds and blooms ever since. And then there is that fragrance. They smell like...ROSES.

Rosa x At Last™

So far, the Japanese beetles have not found them. I don't have a huge beetle problem here, but they're around. It's too soon to say if they will be bothered by disease or other pests.

It's too soon to say much of anything about them. But for now, I'm loving these roses. I hope I can say the same thing next year and for many years after.

Read more about this new rose here.

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*I received these roses gratis from Proven Winners, with no request to say a single word about them. But I'm duly impressed (so far) and wanted to share my experience.

A Good Year for Roses

June is National Rose Month and we're celebrating in style here at Our Little Acre.  As anyone who grows roses knows, some years are better than others and more times that not, the good years are when we get plenty of spring rain.  This year was like that.

Last year wasn't good at all and I wondered how the roses would fare through a summer of drought, but they seem to have survived and look none the worse for wear.  In fact, they're outdoing themselves in their first flush of blooms.

'Nearly Wild'

'Memorial Day'

'Princess Anne'
(David Austin Rose)

'Ebb Tide'

'Glamis Castle'
(David Austin Rose)

'Topsy Turvy'

'Lavaglut'

'Cinco de Mayo'

'Disneyland'

'Disneyland'

'Hot Cocoa'

'Falstaff'
(David Austin Rose)

'Pompeii'

'Christopher Marlowe'
(David Austin Rose)

'Jubilee Celebration'
(David Austin Rose)

'Diana, Princess of Wales'

'Crown Princess Margareta'
(David Austin Rose)

'Chihuly'

'About Face'

The Garden Appreciation Society: Week 5

I haven't kept up with each week of cutting selections from the garden to enjoy inside, mainly because I haven't spent much time inside in the last few weeks!  We were preparing for a garden club's visit to Our Little Acre (more on that later) and if anyone was going to appreciate the flowers, the garden was the best place to do it.

But I promised Erin when it was over I would share something.  Here it is - an unlikely bouquet of:

• Rosa 'Lavaglut' (a.k.a. 'Intrigue' and 'Lava Glow'), which is a bouquet on a stem all by itself!  Introduced by Kordes in 1978, this florabunda rose has the deepest, richest, darkest shade of red, which can be very difficult to photograph acurately.  Hardy in Zones 5-10.






• Tanacetum vulgare 'Isla's Gold', a brilliantly colored tansy.  This herb is non-edible (all parts of the plant are toxic), with highly fragrant foliage, hardy in Zones 3-9.  It has small white daisy-like blooms about mid-summer, and while they're nice, I grow this one for its stunning foliage.






• Physocarpus opulifolium 'Coppertina™' (a.k.a. 'Mindia').  There are several cultivars of ninebark that I like, but none as well as this one.  It was introduced in 2006 and it took me several years before I found it in a garden center.  I only have one, but ohhhhhh, what a one it is!  New foliage in the spring goes through several color changes, then it blooms, and then its whitish flowers turn blood red!  One of my very favorite shrubs EVER.
  
  
  
  
  

To see other appreciative efforts, visit The Impatient Gardener.  Thanks to Erin for hosting and for inspiring me to enjoy my garden's flowers in the house.  In spite of being the author of Indoor Plant Décor:  The Design Stylebook for Houseplants,  houses aren't just for houseplants.  Flowers can make a statement, too.

Frost Bouquets

A couple of weeks ago, we had one night where frost was predicted. It was a bit early and thank goodness, we managed to slip under the radar that night. It was patchy around us, but we have just enough tree cover that afforded us a bit of protection.

Tonight, we won't be that lucky, I'm afraid. They're predicting a low of 29° and if we hit that, it won't just be a dusting of frost, it will be a freeze. I got the last of the tender plants put in the conservatory or brought into the house for the winter, but there was one other thing left to do that's de rigueur on the eve of the first real frost/freeze.

The cosmos are blooming like there's no tomorrow and for them, there isn't. The zinnias that I planted too late (by seed) just started blooming two weeks ago and are loaded with buds. The rains in recent weeks did the roses a world of good and so many of them are blooming as if it were June. So what's a gardener to do?

Make frost bouquets.

When frost is imminent, I cut flowers and bring them in. No frost is going to have the pleasure of ruining my flowers' good time. I'll get to enjoy them for another week and I don't have to put a coat on to do it.

"I Went to Disneyland!"

...said the leaf-cutter bee.

And from the looks of things, he had a very good time.

Evidence of leaf-cutter bees on my Rosa 'Disneyland'

Rosa 'Disneyland'

Leaf-cutter bees (Megachile rotundata), a.k.a. alfalfa bees, like to use rose leaves to line their nests. They don't manufacture honey or form colonies like honeybees, instead preferring to raise their young in solitary nests. 

They rarely cause more than cosmetic damage to rose bushes or their other favorites - green ash and lilacs. I also noticed they like the leaves of our green bean plants. Sometimes they'll bore into the soft wood of cut rose canes, so to prevent them setting up housekeeping there, you can put white glue on the ends of the canes after pruning.

Leaf-cutter bee
Photo by Jodelet/Lépinay - Wikimedia Commons

The adult lives about two months, and is most active during the time alfalfa is in bloom. They never become a problem and because of their value as pollinators - they're much more productive than honeybees - insecticides are not recommended, nor are they particularly effective. The females can sting, but they rarely do so. Both males and females bite as a method of defense, but won't, unless squeezed or otherwise provoked. They do have natural enemies - parasitic bees and wasps, velvet ants, and certain blister beetles.

Here's a video that I found on YouTube of a leaf-cutter bee in action:

Have you noticed the leaf-cutter bees on anything in your gardens? If so, what are they choosing to take back to their nests?

Wingthorn Rose is Something Special

I've been talking about roses lately - here and here - and last year I was introduced to a very special sort of rose when I attended the Garden Bloggers' Fling in Seattle. I'd never seen or even heard of the wingthorn rose before, but its appearance really got my attention.

It wasn't the blooms, in fact, it wasn't even blooming when I saw it. It wasn't the foliage, although it's rather beautiful, being almost fern-like. No, what I loved about it is the very thing my husband hates about roses - those thorns.

But these aren't just any thorns. When a rose goes by the common name of "wingthorn" you just know that there's got to be something special about its thorns.

When the sun backlights the red thorns of the wingthorn rose, it's just magical.

Rosa sericea var. ptericantha has more thorns than most roses, in fact, the stems can be downright hairy with them. And they're red. How cool is that? Red is my favorite color and these thorns are the most luscious shade of it. But it's only the newer canes that have the red thorns. Once they're there for a year or so, they turn brown, but there's no shortage of new canes if you keep it pruned, so you can enjoy those crimson thorns all season long.

The wingthorn is a species rose native to China that was introduced into the U.S. in 1890. It's hardy to Zone 6, and since I'm in Zone 5b, even with the new zoning map, I wondered if it would survive our winter. I wrapped it with a Plumstone ShrubJacket last fall to help it make it through. It turned out that we had a warmer than usual winter so the rose may have survived without the jacket anyway, but it certainly didn't hurt it to have the extra protection.

April 20, 2012

I got to see it bloom this spring, the only time it does so. The tiny white blooms are unremarkable, consisting of only four petals and total size of about one inch in diameter, but it thrilled me with those gorgeous red thorns that made me buy it in the first place.

Even with our droughtish spring, the wingthorn is thriving with only my occasional supplemental watering.

My Love For English Roses

My husband has made it clear that he doesn't like roses. Oh, when they're in  bloom, he'll comment about how beautiful they are and "don't they smell nice?" But apparently, that's not enough to make him like them. I asked him just what it was that he disliked so much. "They've got nasty thorns."  Well, I'll give him that. But for me, roses are worth the thorns.

'Jubilee Celebration' - July 2007

About five years ago, Jackson & Perkins had a deal on David Austin English roses - five of their choosing for some ridiculously fabulous price.  My mom had schooled me on these special roses and I decided I must have some of them. So that summer, I planted 'Golden Celebration', 'Falstaff', 'Glamis Castle', 'Crown Princess Margareta', 'Jubilee Celebration', and 'Abraham Darby'. That's six, because J&P threw in 'Falstaff' for free.

Just what's so special about English roses?  They are the work of David CH Austin, a British rose breeder, who began hybridizing roses over 50 years ago, combining the form and scents of old roses with the repeat blooming of newer varieties. In my own garden, I've found them to generally be more resistant to common rose problems such as black spot too, although they make no claim as such.

'Falstaff' - July 2007
It's hard to photograph the true color of this one. It's more red than it appears
here. To see a more accurate rendition of its true color, click on the photo,
which will take you to the David Austin site.

I've loved my English roses, even though 'Abraham Darby' went to live in that great garden in the sky a few years ago. It didn't die; I just didn't like its weak stems. I don't know if that's characteristic of that one, but mine drove me crazy when it bloomed and the flowers pointed groundward. They were beautiful flowers too, but for me, that one just didn't work.

'Abraham Darby' - June 2007

I've been more than pleased with several of the others though. 'Glamis Castle' is especially lovely. It's extremely floriferous and sometimes the blooms resemble butterflies as they're opening. A pure white rose is a breathtaking thing of beauty.

'Glamis Castle' - October 2011

'Glamis Castle' - June 2007
See? Butterfly!

'Glamis Castle' - October 2011

Both 'Golden Celebration' and 'Crown Princess Margareta' are also heavy bloomers and are the most gorgeous shades of golden yellow and apricot, respectively.

'Golden Celebration' - July 2007

'Crown Princess Margareta' - July 2007

Last week, the folks at David Austin Roses sent me four new English roses to trial in my garden. That means they were free. I was beyond thrilled when that box came. I squealed like a little girl when I opened the box and there wasn't even anyone around to hear me.

I got the roses planted in my garden this week (after the record-setting heat subsided) and they're already beginning to put out new foliage. I look forward to seeing blooms on them before the summer's out.  Here are the David Austin images of my new roses:

'Skylark'

'Jubilee Celebration'

'Princess Anne'

'Christopher Marlowe'

If you're paying attention, you will notice that they sent 'Jubilee Celebration' and I already have that one. That's my fault. They asked me which ones I'd like to try and for some silly reason, I put that one down as one I would like. Well, I guess I really and truly like it, don't I?  I kept thinking the one I had was something else, until I checked the tag yesterday.

They have some deeper-colored ones that I'd love to add to my collection.  (I have enough to call it a collection now, don't I?)  They were out of those, so I'll have to order them early next year.  'Munstead Wood' is especially attractive:

'Munstead Wood'

I also love the deep orange shade (they call it "copper") of 'Pat Austin':

'Pat Austin'

For more information about David Austin English roses, visit their website.

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Though I was sent four roses free of charge, there was no requirement of me by David Austin Roses to write about or promote their product in any way.  They only asked that I try their two new varieties, 'Skylark' and 'Princess Anne' in my Zone 5 garden and report back to them on how they do. I wrote about them here because I love these roses.