New Post for New House--the Roses Edition

Well, in any case, I have to start somewhere, and since I've now been in the new house and working in the new yard for one year and one month, I guess it's about time.  The intention has been and is to put up some Before and After posts, but today, I'm just going to gush about roses.

I dug up several roses from the TX garden that I thought I might have a hard time finding again, and brought all the ones I had in pots.  When we moved in and started putting in the beds, I also bought some more roses online.  The roses I transplanted from garden to garden include:  Hot Cocoa, Brown Velvet, Ebb Tide, Distant Drums (all floribunda), and Sweet Chariot, a purple mini rose.

"Hot Cocoa"

"Brown Velvet"

"Ebb Tide"

"Distant Drums"

There are a couple more mini roses in the ground that certainly came outta TX but have lost their ID.  No wine tastings for them! (Until they bloom, and hopefully I  can figure them out--I'm hoping one is "Ice Tea"--an apricot blend, and one may be lavender).  I'm also pretty sure I brought a little groundcover rose called "OsoEasy Peachy Cream" (Rosa Horcoherent) from TX in a pot, but I wouldn't swear to it.  This pic is from last year, and already this spring, it's spreading an even wider footprint:

 

More Roses, After The CLICK:


When the beds in the back were being set up in the summer I ordered a couple roses I had had in TX but left b/c they were doing well there, and/or they'd be fairly easy to get again, including Souvenir de Malmaison (antique Bourbon rose).  Got this via mail, and it bloomed nicely last season:

"Souvenir de Malmaison"

Perle d'Or (antique polyantha rose--the pic below is from the TX bush, didn't get a good shot of the new one last year):

"Perle d'Or"

and Buff Beauty (a climbing Hybrid Musk rose), which I'm going to train on the back fence and also up a small tripod--it got really long canes in TX.  This is one that came in the mail and was pretty small, but it bloomed for me, and this spring it's just growing gang-busters, so I'm expecting good things:

"Buff Beauty" and Caryopteris "Dark Knight"

In addition I ordered these new ones online:  "Pat Austin" English Shrub Rose

"Pat Austin"

and Alchymist, a climber to train along the north side back fence (that one was very small when it arrived in the mail, and did not bloom for me last season--I have high hopes for this season),  and bought another climber here at a Big Box store, "Golden Showers," with small yellow blooms to train around the side gate.

Finally, there are the two climbers that came with the house, and which I moved from the south side of the house to the back fence--it was a tough, hot, drought-y summer and they did not bloom, so I'm looking forward to seeing what the heck they are this season.

So, this past week I bought two floribunda roses: first, "Julia Child"--a bright, butter-yellow floribunda, whose scent is described as "licorice", and indeed had a nice sweet spice, rather than traditional tea rose scent.

"Julia Child"

Julia Child is now occupying this patio border in place of the small gardenia on the far left which did not survive the winter:

Patio border 2010

 Here she is, in the ground with some purple heliotrope behind and blue lobelia in front:

 

Back up in the pic of the patio border from last year (click for a larger view), you can perhaps see two spindly red mini roses (between the three silvery shrubs), and one red gerbera daisy.  These were no-name grocery store minis plus the daisy that made the trip from TX.  One of the roses survived the winter, and one (plus the daisy--those have to come inside or be treated as annuals) did not.  Somewhat impulsively I just bought another pot of no-name grocery store red minis (4 in a pot) and put two in that bed, now I have two more to tuck in somewhere else, or more likely, in one of the pots whose occupants decided they preferred warmer climes.  Here's a pic of one in the ground--they have very large blooms for mini roses, so they may end up being the larger variety "Mini-flora" rose.


The second new floribunda is "Heaven on Earth", a pinky-peach rose with a "spicy perfume".  The latter was entirely an impulse buy based on the picture and description on the tag with it.  But after looking at these pics and glowing review, I'm even more excited!

Meanwhile, I left a bunch of the mini-roses in pots all year, and left the ones in large pots out this winter--thinking, hey, roses are hardy perennial shrubs, right?  Well, I'd say about half have come back this year, so next winter I'll definitely pull them all close to the house and cover them rather than leave them out and about.  Of course, it's not enough for me that half of them survived...no, I wanted to replace as many as I could, but that grows harder and harder as the online retailers that will ship to individuals have grown less and less as the price of mailing goes up and many have folded.  So alas, there are some I cannot replace.

Survivors include "Lindee," a sprawling polyantha rose with clusters of miniature white flowers that I fell in love with at the Antique Rose Emporium in TX (and here it is on their website); "Quiet Time," "Lady Moss," "Winter Magic", "Golden Century" (climbing mini--although I'm unsure until the plant I think it is blooms), "Cinderella" (this one's barely hanging on--I hope it survives) as well as "Julie Link" and "Wedding Cake" (pictured below)

"Julie Link"

"Wedding Cake"

There are two or three more 'mystery' minis in large pots whose tags are gone, gone with the wind.  We shall have to see what they are, and I shall have to do a better job keeping all these marked, since so many I can't get any more, might be nice to learn how to propagate them.

Picked up two new mini roses this week at local nurseries.  One is "The Fairy," which is actually a polyantha rose, often called a landscape or groundcover rose b/c they are low and spreading.  This one's fairly common, but I liken it to a mini since its blooms are especially small (a lot smaller than "Perle d'Or" for example), and I thought I had a place for it. I had a tall cobalt blue pot whose inhabitant c'est mort, and in which its trusses of pink blooms should look nice--hopefully, a lot like this.  And there are so few minis available around here reliably (especially "named" ones), well...when I saw a few varieties at the local nursery (probably brought in for Mother's Day/early spring--I don't recall seeing any there last year when I was looking), I was weak, and bought "Gingerbread Man".  At least this is a well-grown bush in a 1 gallon pot--the mail-order ones are usually in small 2 inch pots, very young in other words, and that makes it more dicey for the first couple of winters, especially in pots which will freeze through faster and longer than the ground.

Finally, all the minis in small pots that over-wintered in the unheated sun-room (it was probably on par with the plastic greenhouse I had in TX).  Micro-minis Si or Trinket (better to tell when it blooms again), "Littlest Angel", and "Orange Parfait":

"Orange Parfait"

And this little one is either "Mary Adair" or "Baby Austin"--I know I've had both in the past, and I know one came with us probably with a tag in the pot, but it too has gone, gone with the wind. I've looked at pics online of both, and they are so similar that it's really impossible to know:

"Mary Adair" or "Baby Austin

And finally, "Green Ice"

"Green Ice"

The ones I'm replacing--that can be replaced, are "Black Jade," "Suntan Beauty," and "Cafe Ole" (thanks to Rogue Valley Roses), and "Coffee Bean" and "Suntan" (which may be the same as Suntan Beauty, but I like the "russet" roses, so I thought I'd give it a try either way), thanks to Hortico.  "Teddy Bear" is coming from Michigan Bulb (along with "Chocolate Candy" daylily); this picture is from the plant before the move:

"Teddy Bear"

   The ones I can't replace any more....well, it makes me too sad to list them....