Easy-Care Roses

Some of the easiest to grow include shrub, carefree and climbing roses, and no one knows this trio better than Penny Nickels-Larkin, who has spent the last 18 years planting, pruning and pondering over her menagerie of roses. Her membership in the Rose Society has blossomed, turning her into an expert and a mentor for budding beginners.

Beginning rose growers may want to start with shrub roses rather than hybrid teas. Also, select roses that you can be certain are hardy in your area.

As the name implies, a hardy shrub rose is one that survives winter without any special care and without sacrificing quality blooms and overall appearance. All have bushy, shrub-like forms and are typically resistant to insects and diseases.
Penny, who inherited her love of gardening from her father and grandmother, has kept her genetically imposed green thumb busy with a collection of 130 different varieties of shrub roses.

Penny's favorite is 'Hope For Humanity', which was developed in Canada to commemorate the 100-year anniversary of the Canadian Red Cross. It's a shrub rose that produces clusters of five to twelve blooms on a stem, so one stem is a bouquet. Typically, it's the first one to bloom and the last one to quit, stretching straight through from spring to fall.

Another easy-care rose with a bushy growth habit is the carefree variety. The carefree rose mixes well with other shrubs and most have long blooming periods.

'Carefree Delight', developed by Dr. Griffith Buck in Britain, has five petals and a beautiful yellow stamen and a white eye. It's considered a landscape rose, so you can grow it in a bucket like Penny does, or you can grow it as a landscape plant that will sprawl and has a mounding habit.

For gardeners who want a profusion of blooms, check out 'Carefree Beauty', which flowers from May to October.

The final easy-care rose in our trilogy and a must in any rose garden is the climber. These roses grow longer stems that sprawl or can be tied to a vertical structure to create a wall of living blooms.

One beauty in particular is 'John Davis', a Canadian explorer rose that can actually have about 1,000 blooms at one time. This rose blooms in June and then has a six-week hiatus and starts all over again.

Another climber that will add new heights to your garden is 'William Baffin'. It's very hardy and blooms all summer long.

There is really no trick to planting roses. Choose an area that gets quite a bit of sun, because roses need four hours of sunlight to survive and six hours to thrive. Dig the hole 18 inches deep and 24 inches wide, which is roughly three times as wide as the root ball.

Next, amend the soil with some compost and manure. Remove the root ball from the container. If the roots are pot-bound, be sure you score the bottom to loosen them.

Place the plant in the center of the hole, making sure the crown--or what's known as the bud union--is level with, or slightly below, the soil surface. In colder climates you'll want that bud union two inches below the soil surface.

Backfill with the amended soil and add mulch. Water your newly planted rose with a couple gallons of water every day until it's established, and then you want to give it about an inch of water per week after that.

Roses can be prone to diseases like blackspot. Penny uses all kinds of different chemicals, including fungicides, to combat rose diseases. And she likes to rotate her chemicals so there is no build-up. And for those who prefer organic treatments, try products containing neem oil; apply it every 14 days.

In terms of fertilizing, you can use any kind of 10-10-10 or rose food; scratch into the surface once a month. You also might use a foliar feed every 10 days.

Roses will need pruning once they finish their cycle of bloom; prune back to a five-leaf union. That may seem like a lot of pruning, but it won't kill the plant.

Now that you know how easy it is to grow roses, don't get stuck. Just remember to check with your local nursery to see which easy-care roses will grow best in your area, or call on your local rose society to help you take the worry out of roses.