Roses: By Any Other Name Would Smell as Sweet

Roses are a great addition of color, fragrance, and texture into your garden landscape. With a multitude of sizes, colors, and bloom clusters, one could work a rose into any gardening situation. Options ranging from your lower growing shrub and ground cover roses all the way up to your climbers can add color with ease. Deciding on what type of rose to buy is contingent on your intended use.

Shrub roses are low growing, proving them to be reliable for borders or accents for taller plants. They are low maintenance, disease resistant, non invasive, and provide continuous color. Floribundas, being slightly taller are also applicable to borders and accents. With continual blooming of their dense clusters of flowers coupled with their cold heartiness, floribundas make an easy addition to the garden.

For those who love aromatic pleasure of a flower and large single blooms on upright growth, hybrid teas make a very good aromatic show piece. Although more temperamental to disease than the other varieties, the therapeutic release of pruning this type of rose is an added value of to the enjoyment of your garden.

With grandifloras, being a cross between floribundas and hybrid tea you get the best of both worlds. Large fragrant blooms in clusters of three to five blooms with a thinner upright growth pattern allows this rose to be used in several applications and can be planted amongst perennials and shrubs.

For those looking for a hearty showpiece or garden focal point of height and color, one could implement a climbing rose. Used mainly against a structure such as a house or trellis to provide support for the plant as it grows to over ten feet tall, if desired, and can fill in a large area in need of color and vegetation. It it important to know, climbing roses are pruned differently than other roses as it flowers off at least one year old wood.

It is recommended to use a bee friendly pesticide and fungicide such as neem oil found in Bonide’s Rose Rx or Bonide’s Captain Jack’s as a preventative pesticide application and to always plant a rose’s graft at least three inches below soil level.

There is a rose for any flower lover out there. With an abundant variety of colors, sizes, fragrances, heights, and textures, roses are a great addition to your beloved garden. Lasting a lifetime and more, roses may bring memories for generations to come.