Of all the great garden plants of the world surely the rose is the most iconic? The history of roses is intertwined with the history of humanity, and to imagine a world without them is impossible. From ‘rose hip jelly’ and ‘rose water’, to ‘itching powder’ used by naughty schoolboys, roses have had their practical uses. However the rose is primarily a source of food for the soul; when we take in the beauty of a rose we bridge the gap between the plant world and our own humanity.
Rose ‘Wedding Day’, a fine rambler
More than just a pretty flower
Maybe the rose should be the way we engage people with the plant world? Fruits and vegetables give us lovely flavours and fill our stomachs, but soon after the meal the ‘connection’ between plant and soul is broken. The perfume of a rose causes a deeply emotional response, bringing back old memories or transporting us to another place, while the feel of delicate petals against our skin gives us the experience of great softness which we find comforting. It’s so easy to become entranced by the form and beauty of the flower.
Rose ‘Gentle Hermione’ is a must-have plant
Rose culture
It’s easy to see how the rose has become so ingrained in culture. The rose has become a symbol of romance and also comfort, with rose gardens regarded as a feminine ‘safe space’ from a hard masculine world for many centuries. In the heyday of such things, no community could hold its head up high if it didn’t have roses in its public spaces, and of course the rich built huge rose gardens all for themselves. The Roseraie de L’Haÿ in France once boasted 8,000 roses at its peak!
Rose ‘Stanwell Perpetual’ isn’t a great rose by modern standards, but is popular with fans of old varieties
Roses: Love them and hate them
I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with roses. The rose pruning season in my part of the world is very short so I find myself pruning and training a lot of roses over a very short period of time. During the dreary grey days of winter I find myself almost hating roses; you must have enormous faith in roses to keep the focus needed to tend roses during dormancy, especially as the only real colour you get to see for days on end is the crimson of your own blood as you’ve been scratched by a thorn yet again.
Rose ‘Frances E. Lester’ is a fairly compact rambler (but ‘compact’ doesn’t mean ‘small’)
They redeem themselves during summer, and while I will never be a true rosarian I do appreciate the joy they bring. Taking a moment to enjoy the elegance and beauty of a rose is a treat during the gardening year. For a brief moment it feels like the world slows down and I’m able to just enjoy the bloom in front of me. This joy is not always guaranteed; some of my clients constantly pick their roses for the house so all I ever get to see are stems.
Where roses aren’t picked or deadheaded they may produce fruits called ‘hips’ or ‘heps’
For the plant nerds
As something of a plant obsessive I find the roses have an added appeal for me. I enjoy researching plants in general, but thanks to so many rose-obsessives there are quite a lot of interesting books about roses and rose breeders available. My bookshelves have surprisingly few rose books (at this moment in time) but there are many to be found online, in book shops and even in thrift stores. Being well-regarded so widely means that gardeners and rosarians are keen to retain information, about the histories and origins of the plants they love. One day I’ll find a rose that I can’t find out anything about, but so far I’ve been able to find any information I need.
A small selection of rose books, from the very technical to the almost romantic
I guess so much of the appeal of roses is because rose culture is so multifaceted. Whatever your garden interests there are probably roses for you, subject of course to appropriate climate. You can immerse yourself in the history of roses, rose gardens or rose breeders. Maybe you prefer to grow the species roses and take an interest in how they grow in nature. You can grow roses for perfume or even just for their colours and beauty.
Rose ‘Viridiflora’, the ‘green rose’, is a strange plant loved by some but loathed by others
If it’s possible to grow roses somewhere then you will probably find roses being grown there!
40 years ago we bought a house that had the remains of a garden. Neighbors told me she had lots of roses, but as she got unable to care for them, most were gone. Except for red climber Blaze, which reverted to it’s rootstock Dr. Huey,
which I like but it gave out too. Now all I have is a pink rose with very small tight petaled blooms that smells like your grandma’s hand cream. Spreads by suckers. I thought it was a bush until I planted some by a trellis (I’m cheap, i like it, and couldn’t decide what I wanted on the trellis.). It is a climber. Who knew? I just wish I knew it’s name.
Rose identification is a bit of a ‘dark art’ to me; there are so many and inevitably some will be very similar to others.
Although context might make things easier. If there are two roses with tightly packed pink blooms that smell like hand cream, one American and 20th century and one English and 19th century, then it’s more likely to be the 20th century American plant in the US. The job of identifying roses definitely goes to far more talented rosarians than me!
I fully agree that there is a rose for everyone.
In addition to the benefits you listed, roses provide great cover for wildlife, too. I find my local Bay Area lizards enjoy the protection those thorns provide, and prefer it to neighboring plants. While I don’t have one yet, there are beautiful roses native to my region as well. When I lived in the Rocky Mountains, I often saw families of quail inside large neighborhood rosebushes too.
That’s a very good point, the same thorns that are such a painful nuisance during the pruning season do provide important cover for wildlife.
But it’s such a lovely shade of red.
Similar to Mr Lincoln.
We still have a few memory plants I can’t get rid of.
Beautiful floribunda adjacent small climbers.
Blackspot magnets by late May.
Tall enough to enjoy them in early spring and less noticeable in the back of the border later.
We mostly enjoy that shade of red with the hollies, yucca and cholla cactus.
Blackspot is such a bane of the rose; seeing the exquisite bloom above horribly disfigured foliage isn’t quite so good.
As we clean out old and dead canes each Spring I remind my myself that it’s a good thing they are pretty otherwise they would be gone. Rugosas are the hardiest for me and perhaps some of the most lethal. It would be nice if breeders could make a miraculous breakthrough and breed hardy thornless roses.
I’m very much the same; those thorny stems are a pain in all senses of the word!
There are some good ‘thornless’ roses (‘thornless’ in roses usually means the stems are smooth and devoid of thorns except for the precise point where you happen to touch them…) but the question of hardiness is one I’m not in a position to tackle. Hardiness allowing, Rosa x odorata ‘Mutabilis’ (sometimes sold as Rosa chinensis ‘Mutabilis’) makes the world a better place, and if you’re looking for a rambling rose then usually anything with Rosa wichuriana listed as a parent is less thorny.
Roses are probably among my favorite plants. If I do a photo search in my phone for flowers, almost all of the photos that it finds are pictures of roses. At one time I had close to 30 roses in my back yard, but alas, I’m down to half as many thanks to rose rosette disease and to the terrible freeze of 2021. I made a point of getting roses that were hardy to two zones colder than mine, but when winter serves you a storm made for 3 zones colder, some of the roses will succumb.
Black spot is nothing compared to rose rosette disease. Sadly, this disease has hit Texas and Oklahoma, and probably other spots in the south very hard, killing out people’s own rose collections as well as public rose gardens. I’m grateful that the roses I have left have managed to survive, and even thrive with not much care.
Finally, there are thornless roses, or some with few thorns. I have one that’s called the “blue Ladybanks” aka Veilchenblau. It’s a once blooming climber with masses of lovely mauve/purple flowers each spring, and a nice soft fragrance. Some people refuse to plant once-bloomers, but the ones I have I find to be worth the wait.
Oh the once-bloomers are superb. I find it so depressing seeing the perpetual bloomers pushing out their last flowers of the year in cold and wet [British] November, knowing there is absolutely no chance of the flower reaching anything like its potential. I’d rather have a short season of magical abundance, especially if those roses then reward me with a display of brightly coloured hips later in the season.
Sally, it’s interesting, isn’t it, that no one really blames lilacs or hydrangeas or peonies for blooming once, but some turn up their nose at a once-blooming rose.
An interesting point.
The same is true with the modern perpetually blooming Geraniums. We’re guided toward the idea that our gardens must have an abundance of flowers for as long as possible, but I wonder if this just means that we’re at risk of losing the changing of seasons and ending up with gardens that look the same day after day?
How exciting it is to enjoy blooms that only last for a short period.
So true! I love not only seeing the changing of the seasons, but the changes within the seasons.
Absolutely agree.
It’s good to have the bassline of perpetual interest in the garden, but the different things coming and going through the year is where the interest is in the garden. Sure you sometimes miss something that has a very short season, but how exciting it is to have things that must be seen and enjoyed for a short period of time.