Judith’s Corner - September, 2003

Gee, this has been a crummy year in the garden! I probably shouldn’t say that so frankly--maybe I should try to think of it as a “horticulturally challenged season”. As Roberta pointed out to me, an aphid by any other name still eats roses, so all I can say about this last growing season is that it was pretty darned crummy.

First, none of my roses really went dormant last winter. It didn’t get cold enough to kill most of the critters that freezing usually takes care of, so my unrested roses awoke just in time to get the life sucked out of them by an aphid infestation. Then, the eagerly awaited rains encouraged a nice first bloom, only to have the heat hit, searing all that vigorous growth and costing me two new roses that just couldn’t cope with a vicious first year. I threw my hands up about mid-July, as I looked at the water bill and all my blasted, dried up blooms--tell me again about how relaxing gardening is? I can’t wait for next year--this one was a dud!

My roses at home may have broken my heart, but the roses at the Botanical Gardens weathered the season surprisingly well. Clara mentioned that, from the perspective of her perch at the BG gift shop, the roses at the southern-most end of the beds, which didn’t get pruned this Spring, seemed to bloom more profusely than those that had been pruned. We think that was an optical  illusion--those roses simply got twice, or three times, as big as the pruned roses,  and therefore had more area covered with blooms. They towered over the pruned roses, but we think the bloom ratio was the same, pruned or unpruned. The roses to the south also get more sun than those on the north end. It would be nice  to be able to skip the hard Spring prune we usually do, but the unpruned roses  got huge, and grew into each other, making it very difficult to get around in  that part of the garden. I have the scratches to prove it!

I have to single out Double Delight for special praise--what a terrific rose! It’s lovely even when it’s not perfect, it’s hardy in tough times, and it’s wonderfully fragrant. There are two in the BG beds, and they produce regardless of conditions. Everyone should have this rose in their garden.

Our plans to transplant some roses from Palisade has been stalled for several technical reasons, none the least of which is that we don’t want to risk relocating a Japanese Beetle. We need to remove and replace some roses at the BG, so at some point, it would be nice to get our hands on the Hybrid Perpetuals that were planted in Palisade in 1910. We need a transplant crew! Old rose removal is a lot of work, some of it backbreaking.

If you know of anyone who has roses worth preserving, or seeing, let us know. We are always looking for yards for our rose tour, and we want to make sure that heirloom roses aren’t lost.

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