Old Garden Roses are any of the rose varieties that were recognized prior to 1867, the year in which the first modern rose, the hybrid tea, was introduced.

Major Classes

The major classes of Old Garden Roses are: bourbons, noisettes, portlands, species, centifolias, albas, chinas, damasks, hybrid perpetuals, moss roses, gallicas, and teas.

Often referred to as “Old Fashioned,” or “Antique Roses,” these roses are the predecessors to some of the most beautiful modern hybrids. Although some are native to the United States, the majority are from Europe and Asia.

Unlike Modern Roses, which are applauded for their vibrant colors, compact buds, and recurrent blooming, Old Garden Roses are usually pastel in color and are single-blooming. Their much anticipated annual blooms have come to symbolize the arrival of summer.

These flowers are true survivors. Most Old Garden Roses are hardy even in the coldest and harshest weather conditions. It sometimes seems as if they can withstand anything. Their versatility can rarely be matched by any other class of rose.

Planting

Like all roses, Old Garden Roses flourish best when planted in a favorable location. They need at least 6 hours in direct sunlight daily. The ideal location for your Old Garden Roses is an open area, away from shade trees. The soil in this area should be well drained and fertilized prior to planting.

Soil preparation is a very important element in growing healthy, beautiful roses. You should add a large quantity of organic material such as manure to the flower bed prior to planting. The fertilizer will enrich the soil and aid in water drainage. It is highly recommended that you prepare your garden soil several months in advance to allow the nutrients to settle. Your Old Garden Roses will prosper in this rich environment.

Once your flower bed is prepared and settled, you’re ready to begin planting, a very easy task. Dig a hole about 1 foot in depth and diameter. Remove the plant from its pot. Carefully untangle any loose roots and place the plant directly into the hole. Fill any remaining space with loose soil. You won’t need any soil additives at this time.

Be sure to saturate the ground with water. Your new plant will require water on a daily basis for 3 weeks. Any time the ground looks dry, give your plant a quick shower.

Effortless Beauty

Mulch can truly be a rose gardener’s best friend. It repels weeds and is great for holding moisture, which encourages your flowers to bloom radiantly in the summer months. Don’t worry about diseases unless you see strange spots on the foliage. Although Old Garden Roses are not 100% disease-free, they are known to be highly disease resistant. It is quite rare for a disease to debilitate these plants. They’re extremely tough and very self-maintaining.

For a beautiful addition to your rose garden, treat yourself to 1 of these Old Garden Rose varieties. The blooms and their fragrances are sure to please your senses. That is why these roses have withstood the test of time.

The romantic long-stemmed rose is the instantly recognizable signature of hybrid teas, and it’s what makes them the most popular variety of roses. Public gardens feature special sections devoted to roses, especially colorful hybrid teas. Home gardeners enjoy growing hybrid tea roses that make lovely floral arrangments. Florists love the Tiffany hybrid tea rose for its ability to stand up so well in bouquets. But despite the world famous renown of those fragrant hybrid tea roses, some expert gardeners say that you can’t avoid the fact that they often require a great deal of care.

Some hybrid tea roses may be better suited to your area’s weather and soil conditions than others. If your location has humid summers, you should be growing hybrid tea roses that resist mildew. Drier regions will demand your rose plants to have more vigorous root systems, to sufficiently sustain them against drought periods in addition to the necessary amount of hybrid tea rose care required. Varieties like the Blue Girl hybrid tea rose require quite a few treatments to fend off nasty diseases like blackspot.

While not generally recommended for colder climates, certain types such as the hybrid tea rose like the Terracotta offer hardier petals and last longer after cutting. Blooming big from late spring to fall, their colors darken from a chocolate shade in cool weather to a vibrant cinnamon on warm days! The Terracotta is one of the gently fragrant hybrid tea roses most suitable for cutting, as the scent won’t be overpowering.

There are even more spectacular shades including the charming Vienna rose with its fruity orange on orange blend, or the lilac-toned Blue Moon rose that makes stunning floral arrangements with red and pink roses. The Elle hybrid tea rose, a 2005 AARS prizewinner, offers the most striking color combination of soft pink petals and a brilliant yellow undertone that makes this absolutely gorgeous flower, with its scent of citrus mixed with spice, a standout for your garden of hybrid tea roses!

� Copyright 2005 Dana Noonan www.RoseGardening101.com

The Hybrid Tea Rose is a modern rose, the offspring of 2 old timers getting together: the Hybrid Perpetual and the Tea Rose. These magnificent modern flowers grow on long stems and bloom throughout the year. Although this rose gives off only a faint scent, it makes up for this shortcoming with its many petals and tall stature. The Hybrid Tea Rose has been referred to as “your basic rose on a stick.” These are the most popular roses to give or receive on special occasions.

A Thorny Issue

Many gardeners avoid the Hybrid Tea Rose because they’re turned off by the idea of thorns. Well, good news — there are several thornless varieties! When shopping, look for roses with tags that read “smooth” on the label. You can find these roses in every color of the rainbow, except blue.

You Look Marrrrvelous

A Hybrid Tea Rose will look fabulous in any garden. They are happiest when planted in rows by themselves. It’s much easier to tend to them this way. Space your plants approximately 24 inches apart to ensure a good growth pattern. Plant in the spring.

Be sure to keep this area weed-free. These roses, like most flowers, do not enjoy the company of weeds.

Water Generously

Hybrid Tea Roses require lots of water during hot weather, especially if the heat is accompanied by dryness. Most gardens require a good soaking every 2 weeks, some gardens require a weekly soaking. Regardless of chosen schedule, if the ground looks dry and cracked, you water at once.

Placing mulch around your roses is a very good idea. The mulch will help prevent those aforementioned unwelcome weeds and conserve moisture.

Sunlight is Essential

It’s important that your roses get plenty of sunlight. Roses require a minimum of 6 hours of sunshine a day, including morning sunlight. The morning sun will dry up excess moisture and dew, which will help prevent diseases from developing.

The Hybrid Tea Rose will likely reach full height in about 3 years. Even after pruning, the flower will grow back to this height annually. Most modern roses, such as the Hybrid Tea, live a span of 6 or 7 years — even longer if the flower has been given exceptional care.

How to Care for Your Hybrid Teas

In February, when your flowers are dormant, prune your roses. Your first step will be to remove dead branches and damaged canes.

In colder climates, you’ll probably have to cut all the old damaged wood. Look for lively green canes — and don’t cut them. Those are the canes that will produce buds in the spring.

In warmer areas, remove any existing leaves from the plant to promote new growth.

Lastly, remove any debris from your garden.

Now you’re ready for spring. As spring approaches and your roses begin to grow, you should fertilize your garden with a high-nitrogen fertilizer.

Then sit back and enjoy nature’s beauty.

When many people think of gardening, their thoughts turn first to roses, and there is no wonder. Roses are among the most popular, and certainly most beautiful, types of flowers there are. In addition, roses are a huge part of both the gardening hobby and the professional flower business. There are even rose and flowers shows were master gardeners proudly show off their lovely creations to an awestruck crowd.

Whether your ultimate goal is to take the big prize at the next rose show or just enjoy a few roses in your garden, it is important to get a feel for the many varieties of roses on the market. Roses are among the most varied flowers on the market; they come in virtually every color of the rainbow and in blooms ranging in size from a fraction of an inch to almost a foot in width. This article focuses on a few of the most commonly seen rose varieties.

Pimpinellifolia Roses

Pimpinellifolia roses are renowned for their hardiness, and their attractive foliage and lovely blooms make them a great choice for the beginning rose enthusiast or the experienced gardener. These roses come in pink, red, yellow and white blossoms, and they grow on attractive and very compact bushes.

Boursault Roses

Boursault roses are of the climbing variety, and they are said to be the result of a cross between an early variety of China rose and the R. Pendulina rose. This cross is thought to have occurred during the reign of Napoleon, who was a well known rose enthusiast. The blossoms of this rose are somewhat large, and they grow in either small or large clusters depending on the variety. The blooms come in various shades of pink and red. Many varieties can reblossom later in the season.

Sempervirens Roses

The Sempevirens is similar to the Boursault, in that it is also a climbing rose. The Sempervirens originated in the Mediterranean region of the world, and it has large leaves accented by small white flowers which grow in large clusters. This variety of rose was studied extensively by rose enthusiasts as far back as 1820, and it continues to be one of the most popular varieties of climbing rose on the market today. This variety of rose is seen in various shades of pink and white.

Setigera Roses

The Setigera variety of rose, known to the scientific community as R. setigera, has a reputation for being a hardy and tough plant. That hardiness may be due to the fact that R. setigera comes from the prairie region of the United States, a difficult environment to say the least. The setigera rose has been used in breeding programs to create many very hardy varieties of climbing roses, most notably the crosses with the Noisettes and Gallicas varieties.

Wichuraiana Roses

The Wichuraiana rose, also known as R. wichuraiana, is a frequently seen wide spreading cluster rose. It is used both as a climbing rose and as an attractive ground cover.

For planting roses a good garden loam with organic matter is important. It must contain peat moss, leaf mold, compost, rotted or commercial manure, and the bed should be prepared as far ahead of planting as is feasible in order to allow for settling of the soil.

Fall is the best time for setting out roses, but you can plant in spring. When they arrive from the nursery, plant at once. If they have dried en route, soak the roots and put the tops in a bucket of water before planting. Trim back any roots that are weak, long or broken at this time. Dig a hole that is wide enough to allow the roots to spread without crowding.

The rose is properly placed when the bud (the point where the top joins the roots) is just under the ground surface. Space hybrid teas about 18 inches apart in any direction. Prune the branches 6 to 10 inches from the soil.

To grow good roses it is necessary to cultivate, to prune and to spray. If you have a well-cultivated bed you need not worry about watering. But if you start to water in hot weather, you must keep it up, soaking the roots thoroughly about once a week.

Spraying every 10 days guards against the diseases and insects that attack roses. Nicotine sulphate wipes out the green lice; arsenate of lead is used against chewing insects; or sulphur and arsenate of lead may be used in a dust, as may DDT dust.

Winterize your roses by mounding sod around them after the first frost, or mulch with straw and evergreens. In cold parts of the country, remove the supports from the climbing roses and place the canes on the ground, peg them, and cover with soil mounds.

In spring, cut back your roses to within 6 inches of the ground. Ruthlessly lop off all but three or four canes on hybrid teas. This pruning will give you strong plants. When your plants grow out from spring pruning, you will have to disbud, cutting off all the buds except the top ones on the cane. This is the way to grow large blossoms.
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Some gardeners are leery of climbing roses because of concern that climbing roses can be damaged by cold weather; also because some types take years to reach full maturity. However, a wide selection of climbing roses can sustain harsh weather and bloom beautifully.

Rose Planting Time

The best time to plant any type of climbing rose is early spring. This will give your roses 6 months or more to get established before the cold sets in.

Before choosing your climbing rose, get acquainted with the 3 distinct categories of climbing roses: rambling roses, trailing roses, and true climbing roses.

Ramblers

The most intrusive climbing roses are the ramblers. These exuberant roses can grow up to 20 feet in 1 season. Although most of the roses from ramblers are quite small, many of the newer varieties produce larger roses. Unfortunately, ramblers tend to be susceptible to mildew.

Trailers

If you’re looking for a climbing rose that is tougher and less prone to mildew and disease, you might prefer a trailing rose. These climbers look great planted alongside walls. You should stake them, otherwise the long canes will grow along the ground instead of upright. Trailing roses typically have blooms 2 to 3 inches in diameter. 2 of the more popular trailing roses are the cultivars and Rosa Wichurana.

True Climbers

If you enjoy climbing roses with large flowers, true climbers fit the bill. These types of roses produce flowers in large clusters. There are 2 categories of true climbers: bush climbers, and climbing hybrid teas. Bush climbers will bloom throughout the season, while climbing hybrid teas may last only a few weeks. The bush climber has more resistance to mildew and disease than the climbing hybrid teas.

How to Plant Roses

Planting your roses is an easy task. The first thing is to pick your area. The hole should be approximately 1 foot from your trellis or wall, and be about 1 foot deep by 1 foot in diameter.

Once you’ve dug a hole, you’ll need to add organic matter. Well-rotted manure or compost are good. Next, carefully remove the rose from its container. If you come across tangled outer roots, gently untangle them with your fingers. Place your plant in the hole and fill it in with any extra soil. Then water it thoroughly.

How To Water & Train Your Roses

You should water your climbing roses at least once a week, saturating the soil.

Once your rose’s canes have grown long enough to reach the trellis or arch, tie the canes to the structure. Unlike a vine, which is equipped with tendrils, climbing roses need help to attach to a structure. You can tie them with a soft cloth or string. Remember to give the canes enough room for growth and expansion. Be sure not to tie them too tightly.

Choose the right climbing roses and theyll beautify your home for years to come!
Rose Care