We seem to be having the winter that isn’t here in Connecticut!! What better time to talk about roses. I have always been a rose nut. I love all roses, but my favorite blooms have always been the classic Hybrid Tea roses…the ones on long stems with the perfect tightly screwed center, the beautiful recurvent petals,the absolutely classically shaped beauty. Yum! Grandifloras follow, and then Floribundas. The only trouble with these varieties is that most of them are not disease resistant and must be sprayed. I have always sprayed my roses for the same reason I took my kids for their innoculations when they were growing up…to keep them from getting sick.

Most of today’s newer gardeners would prefer not to use chemicals, though. I have heard garden speakers tell their audiences to plant roses in their gardens with tall-growing perennials close by, so that when the rose is finished with its first flush and gets blackspot in July, it will be hidden by the blooming perennials. I can’t tell you how much it bothered me to hear that.

New Roses

There are new roses on the market today that will amaze the gardener that doesn’t want to spray. Everyone has heard of Bill Radler’s Knockout series of roses. They are a real boon to the landscape gardener. Garden clubs love them, because they are so disease and drought resistant, and they are blooming machines. They come in all shades of pink from magenta to blush, and now, also, in yellow and white. Landscape designers love to use them in gardens by shopping malls because they are as tough as nails. I have a lot of respect for Mr. Radler, and I think he has given a great gift to the gardening world. Only problem is, I think his blooms look more like dogwood blossoms on rose foliage, and I like my roses to look like roses! So, what other options are there for someone who likes more traditionally shaped blooms?

Easy Plant Care

Enter: Ping Lim, with his ‘Easy Elegance’ brand of roses. Ping worked for Bailey’s Nurseries for many years. It was his personal mission to create roses that were winter hardy, disease and drought resistant, and would bloom all summer. Ping literally innoculated his roses with disease and then bred it out of them! For his test program, he took his roses and planted them out in the middle of the prairies in Minnesota and left them there. They were only irrigated during severe drought, they were not fertilized or sprayed, and they received no winter protection. If anything got sick, poof! Out of the program. If something didn’t make it through the winter, oh well…he would try something else.

The bottom line is that Ping has created outstanding roses! The photo above is one of his creations called ‘Funny Face.’ He has fantastic shrubs like ‘My Hero’ and ‘Yellow Submarine,’ great grandifloras like ‘Grandma’s Blessing’ and (my favorite)’Centennial’…the list goes on and on. Check him out at rosesbyping.com. And then, let your local garden center know that you are interested in ‘Easy Elegance’ roses. You won’t have to spray, these roses look like roses instead of dogwood blooms, and you will have armloads of blooms to bring in the house all season!