We continue to talk about the roses that you intend to settle in your garden. The key to success is a competent choice of varieties. Which ones should I prefer? This is truly a question of questions!
About classification
First of all, we need to talk about groups. The fact is that it is from belonging to a particular group that the appearance of the rose, the habit of the Bush, its foliage, growth and ability to branch, the abundance and number of waves of flowering depend. This determines the place of the rose in the garden and the possibility of its use in decorating your site.
It is precisely on the principles of using each group of roses in the garden that the modern classification, recognized in the world since 1976, is based. The basis was based on the decorative and biological features of roses, not their origin.
We will leave it to the gardener to decide the color of the purchased roses. Everyone has their own priorities here. Some adore yellow flowers, others serve maroon or purple, someone dreams of “blue” roses or some completely unusual-“chocolate”, “terracotta” or “jade”. It is not easy to navigate in the most common-white (with a lot of nuances of color) and classic pink. Among them are soft pink, like blush girls, and varieties of strawberry mousse coloring, and bright pink fuchsia tones, and” artificial ” pink — the favorite color of the Barbie doll. Here the choice is a matter of taste.
I offer you a number of varieties from the most popular groups — hybrid tea and floribunda, which are considered reliable. I will say at once that these notes are the result of observations of roses growing in my garden for more than one year. All of them, in addition to their stunning decorative appearance, are distinguished by enviable health and excellent winter hardiness.
I assume that someone has their own favorites and proven varieties, someone grows roses in the southern regions, another does not agree with me in assessing the economic qualities. But the choice of the proposed varieties will free you from your own experiments — quite expensive and often with unpredictable results.
Tea hybrids are beautiful, but deceptive
First, let’s look at the features of Hybrid Tea. This is the largest group, including more than 10 thousand varieties. All these roses, which in some countries are called Edelrosen, are distinguished by the extraordinary beauty and grace of a large flower, a rich palette of colors, velvet petals, and a delicate fragrance.
But the roses of this group are great sissies. They do not winter well in a cold climate, need a reliable shelter and are often affected by diseases. I must admit that in my garden, I initially planted a lot of tea-hybrid roses. Their choice is extremely large, the beauty of the varieties is captivating, well, how can I resist buying!
I had a period of fascination with the so-called blue roses: in the garden grew ‘Mainzer Fastnacht’ from Tantau and meijan lilac ‘Charles de Gaulle’ with an amazing aroma of lemon and verbena. However, all the tea-hybrid varieties from Meiyan that I planted in my house were distinguished by a wonderful aroma: pink-cream ‘Elle’ smelled of apricots,’ Henri Salvador ‘ – Jasmine,’ Botero ‘ had a strong smell of damask rose. Beautiful fragrant — ‘Tino Rossi’ with salmon-pink flowers with a darker underside and shiny dense foliage and ‘Jade’ with large flowers of a nostalgic form of apricot-copper hue on a high strong Bush.
‘Liv Tyler’ infinitely pleased me with its amazing coral-pink flowers intended for cutting. I grew up and ‘Märchenkönigin’, an elegant exhibition of the famous Kordess rose with a tall, strong stems with almost no thorns. I also paid attention to the legendary varieties-the unique beauty of ‘Gloria Dei’, the grandiflora rose’ Queen Elizabeth ‘and the braided’Compassion’. Struck by its beauty and perfection ‘Nostalgie’, large flowers that were like cups of cream ice cream, poured with cherry syrup.
But practice has shown that they were the most capricious and unviable, although they received all the necessary things as roses from other groups: timely feeding, competent pruning and reliable winter shelter. In the garden, these beauties lasted for several years, and then one by one left my rose garden without a trace. Only the notes in the notebook remained…
So now I confidently pass by the so-called dummies, not paying attention to their stunning but deceptive beauty. And from the point of view of General decorativeness in the garden, these roses are quite useless, lost in the space of flower beds and rose gardens, obviously losing to other groups that are recognized as landscape. In order for them to be noticeable in the garden, it is necessary to plant at least 3-5 bushes of the same variety.
But there are exceptions to any rule. For many years, growing in my garden is a fairly rare Kordess variety, which is classified as a tea hybrid, but you can not tell from the appearance of it. It looks like a powerful scar that grows to an unprecedented height of 2 m for roses of this group. I’m talking about ‘Sebastian Kneipp’ (1997). This is a completely unique variety with a nostalgic flower shape (for which it was bought at the time) and a delicate fruit aroma. The Bush is covered with exquisite white and pink, like marshmallows, large flowers.
Decorative almost continuously all summer until the frosts, perfectly winters! One prerequisite-the Bush should receive maximum sunlight and gentle pruning. Extremely hardy variety. I passed an additional test of resilience in the garden of my friend, who has not been engaged in a rose garden for 6 years, having gone on a long business trip abroad. Well, the only shrub she has left in her garden is our Sebastian! You can only wonder how it managed to survive in the cold winter without care, feeding and shelter. This variety is quite rare on sale, but if you are lucky, I advise you to buy it, you will not lose!