A NEW CONJUGATION OF 'ROSE'
Past Tense - Present Tense - Future Tense
By Helene Pizzi
Forget those Latin classes - there are new ways of conjugating 'rose'. This I discovered when I was in South Australia recently for the Horticulture Media Australia Symposium and the prestigious Laurel Awards.
Adelaide is a city of roses, with roses planted as highway dividers, and in every public city park (and there are many). The fairly new Municipal Rose Garden and the International Rose Trial Garden are a riot of bloom in the spring 'down under'. Along the Torrens River that crosses the city, the Historic Rose Society has planted the banks with a wonderful collection of Old Roses adding to the glorious rosy-spring-spirit of the city.
The large new Convention Center, also on the Torrens River, is planted with - yes, you guessed correctly - roses; pure white old favorites, 'Iceberg', setting off colorful annuals that are periodically changed.
There are so many 'past tense' roses that we have almost eliminated from our garden schemes, partly as many, such as 'Iceberg' were terribly popular, over-loved, over-planted and then destined to be given the thumbs-down rating. Greatly unfair, when you think of it, and here in South Australia where this rose was and still is indeed over-loved, ‘Iceberg’ has not fallen into that sad state of 'past tense' at all. 'Iceberg' standards give height and cheer to private gardens large and small and certainly make the gardens very allegri, light spirited and simply lovely.
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'Gold Badge' |
Another 'past-tense' rose that we saw blooming, often planted en masse, and especially in private gardens there is 'Gold Bunny'. I was with Roger Phillips in Clare County, north of Adelaide, the first time I saw this excellent low growing yellow rose. Neither of us recognized it, but we asked the owner of the property what that interesting rose was. 'Gold Bunny', she answered as if we were really dumb bunnies. We then checked and discovered that this 1978 Floribunda by Meilland is also called 'Gold Badge' and 'Rimosa'. Its lucid dark green foliage sets the heavy bloom of yellow roses off very well. Over and over, now recognizing it, there it was. I saw this good past-tense rose still very often used as I moved about in South Australia.
It is the 'present-tense' roses that are really 'in' and can be seen everywhere. We Rosarians seek the 'in' roses, the newest roses, the All-American Rose Selections (AARS) winners that should be good for our gardens and for showing. The rose industry is a huge business worldwide. There are hybridizers working continually to better the roses, to produce relatively disease resistant, repeat blooming, fragrant roses that also make good landscaping plants.
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'Knock Out' |
What comes to mind, as one of the biggest selling and most popular 'present-tense' roses is 'Knockout'. This rose was the first to be released from the breeding program of Bill Radler. He works in the Milwaukee, WI, area and has aimed carefully over the years to produce a hardy rose that will withstand the icy northern winters without the need for covering, or even burying the rose to keep it alive when the temperatures plunge.
I was the first person to write about Bill Radler and his new rose - then still being tested all over the United States - only a little more than 4 years ago (in the ARS American Rose). His then unnamed rose was growing, double-planted, in a bed under a light waving lavender cloud of Verbena bonariensis. He glowed as he showed it off, "That is the rose of mine that shows such great promise." How right he was! A few months later 'Knock Out', was announced the winner of the All-American Rose Selections (AARS) for 2000. 'Knock Out' won Bill Radler the Fuerstenberg Award in 2003, and it was the first rose to win the 'Member's Choice Award', given by the ARS to the rose with the highest Roses in Review score in the previous five years. 'Knock Out' scored 8.6.
This 'present-tense' rose provides months and months of generous blooms, remains contained in size, is very disease resistant, does very well in diverse climates and soils, and is happy with a minimum of water. 'Knock Out' has swept Bill into the big-league of rose breeders, and he will be releasing others just as interesting that we will watch for in the future.
The 'future-tense' of 'rose' will be the most interesting to follow. We are watching Rose History in the making. The new roses will need to have the qualities that 'Knock Out' has. They will need to be easy care roses, and they are actually now being bred and selected for disease resistance; perhaps this is the first must that our 'future-tense' roses must have. Two years ago at the International Rose Trials in Baden Baden, a fabulous Shrub, well proportioned, with beautiful green leaves, excellent blooms for color and shape, and with intense fragrance besides, was firmly eliminated - out - for its lower leaves showed signs of blackspot. In Germany no poisons are allowed in private gardens, so it is essential that the roses are as healthy as possible. Judging is rightly ruthless.
Our 'future-tense' roses will fit our landscaping needs. We will find a better selection of Ground Covers (that hopefully will become a separate classification - they are now grouped with Shrubs.)
There will be more Climbing Roses as they can be used in small gardens, giving a vertical dimension. We will be able to choose from a great selection of new fragrant roses, as we can note in the European trials where now at least 50% of the new roses are perfumed. Monza was the first rose trial to give an award for perfume and shortly after almost all the European Trials followed suit, recognizing the need for new fragrant roses. Our 'future-tense' roses will be more drought tolerant and will be able to handle a hack-pruning with hedge clippers well. They will be beautiful.
Roses! They were beautiful, they are beautiful, and they will be beautiful. Long live roses!
Helene Pizzi, Subrosa Rome Reporter
