True Dirt

the dirt on roses

More has been written about them than any other flower, to the point of terminal cliche. The symbol of love and war and everything hunky dory, they have decorated the homes and objets de art and gardens of the rich and powerful, and the tiny dirt patches and chinaware of the most humble and obscure. There are more kinds and colors of roses than any other flower and more are being created - and lost to posterity - every day. Roses both fascinate and repel the gardener and there is probably no gardener who has remained totally and entirely immune to their magnetism.

Curiously, they are the easiest of plants to grow and yet many gardeners are baffled by their cultivation. They are the hardiest of plants and yet we have an entire industry devoted to the idea that they are fragile and susceptible to the least blight or bug. There is a rose for every taste, unfortunately, and many roses are downright ugly while others merely bore; they can be prolific or stingy, exquisite or gauche. And that's just the flowers. The plants are another universe altogether: massive climbers and spindly twigs, luxurious leafers and scraggly dullards, deadly flesh rippers and thornless canopies; there is even a rose without a flower. We won't even mention the hips.

As a completely unqualified expert on some roses in very particular circumstances (West Coast climate, adobe soils, hillside garden, coastal fog, rainless summers), here is the dirt on (my) roses....

You can't kill 'em. Excepting a hard freeze, or a firestorm there is nothing that will kill a rose. They may lose all their leaves to rust and black spot, be covered in mildew, and not have a drop to drink for months - and they will live on, probably still bloom too. You don't need to spray them with anything, feed them, or prune them. In fact, for most roses, the more you ignore them the better they do.

They can kill you. Really. Though I actually do not know of any mortality stats. There is a fungus, Sporothrix schenckii, that grows on rose thorns, morphs into a yeast in the body and attacks the lymph system - causing lesions in lymph nodes. The infection is called Sporothricosis. It is treated by oral doses of potassium iodide. A gardener friend contracted this little nasty after falling into a particularly thorny rose bush (I think it was Eyepaint) and gouging her arm. However, you are much more likely to lose an eye or scratch a cornea, suffer puncture wounds anywhere (any where!) or clip your finger with the Felcos while pruning; and in the case of the climbers, ladder accidents are always a concern. My expert advice: wear elbow-length leather gloves, safety googles, and non-slip gardening shoes - and a helmet wouldn't hurt either.

More bloom is not better. It's just more. There are places in the garden for a continuously blooming plant and places for one that delivers an exquisite, and ephemeral, moment. The roses that bloom continuously in the growing season (they are called remontant) often have nothing else going for them because other qualities were lost in the hybridizing. Gallica roses exude a perfume more complex and intoxicating than Chanel No. 5 but they only bloom once a year. The rich dark colors and dense petaling of many roses also gets lost when they are bred for repeat bloom.

Roses have leaves too. And they often look like s---. And not because of disease or bad weather. Perhaps the worst offenders are the classic 1950s creations called "hybrid teas", to be found in every Payless and Home Depot, and most gardening catalogs, often carrying the label of rose purveyors Jackson and Perkins. The category is characterized by huge blooms on long stems - perfect for the cut crystal vase - often in bright, toneless colors. The plants grow into large round shrubs (if they aren't climbers) supported by thumb-width canes bearing massive thorns. Often the leaves are huge, dark green, and leathery. This is not a plant you want to show off unless it's got an endless supply of distracting great gobs of bright blooms.

There are many roses with perfectly charming leaves that look fine when not in bloom. They can be pale green and diaphanous, golden and russet, or glossy as glass and thick as a hedge. There are also nearly leafless roses that concentrate all their energy into the top of the cane in either leaf or bloom. These plants are best tucked into a border where their nakedness will be covered by other plants.

Roses are architectural. They can roof a garage or scale a wall, be a canopy or a tower, or disappear the neighbors. Forget the "standard" rose-on-a-stick, I'm talking about a rose that can give you a whole other territory above your garden, out your second-story window, or hide a telephone pole. A house I once had a room in (a slightly seedy mansion in the Los Altos Hills occupied by a motly crew of bohemians) had a large pond in the middle of its grand circular driveway, over which draped a monstrous old live oak tree and roped about the oak's massive limbs was an equally monstrous rose. The luminous roses were big as an Easter hat and hung suspended over the mossy pond like pale pink moons. I found the rose at the old Roses of Yesterday and Today in Watsonville years ago - colonizing a hillside. It is Belle of Portugal and you need a mansion or Rapunzel's tower to really appreciate it.

You can never have too many. I'm up to 28 or 30 and there is always room for another pot. Yes, a pot. I have some roses that have flourished in 5-gallon containers for years. Two are in 1-foot square redwood planters. One rose is growing in the cement driveway (a wild Sierra rose); a couple are wandering off into the neighbor's trees and may reach the next town soon. I've got roses cheek by jowl in several borders and lashed to the fence, windows and crude arbors constructed of rotten fence decking. An old pitchfork with a bent tine holds up a couple more. I just put some in the front yard (former container inhabitants) squeezed between pittosporum shrubs and burgeoning oak trees - and then stuck some tomato and bean plants around them. And all of this in a rented yard.

Most of my roses are not remontant and that means they are rather invisible in the garden most of the year. And I tend to forget why I have so many when I'm looking for new real estate for the latest Annie's Annual purchases. But then May rolls around and it is la vie en rose for me.

Posted by briggs at May 10, 2007 11:49 AM