This first picture is from peak bloom in April. This rose has been my first to bloom in each of the last two years. It has all the shades of pink at the same time on the same plant.
Next is the same plant in early August. Unfortunately, I don't have full plant pictures of any of my roses from early summer. Still, this shows the plant at the most stressful time of year in my climate. As you can see, there is some leaf loss, but none of the leaves are yellow or spotted. (The smaller-leaved climber behind this plant is a rambler known as Super Dorothy.) There are not many blooms at this time of year and the blooms that do come out are small and crisped from the heat.
By mid-September, blooms are coming back in profusion. I love the light peppery fragrance of these flowers! I've given this rose the same care as the Abraham Darby and it looks much better.
At the end of October, this is what AC looks like. I'd say this is about as good as first spring flush. It will continue to bloom like this till a hard frost comes. This rose comes pretty close to being an evergreen in Louisiana. I planted this specimen in October of 2008, so it is still a youngster. It's filling out nicely as it ages and I expect it to get around 5' x 4' at full size. It's a fairly bushy and full plant that has been recommended to me as a good candidate for a rose hedge.
This is a great rose for beginners. It requires almost no care to look great. I suspect that it's easy to take cuttings and get them to root for passing on to friends and family. To me, this rose has so much more character than the Knockout family of roses and does nearly as well. Highly recommended.
2 comments:
I am really enjoying your review of roses in your garden! How many bushes do you have in total? I also noticed that you planted many of them near your chain link fence. Is this intentional so that it uses the fence as support? If so, how far from the fence do you plant it. I'm new to growing roses, I planted 4 bare root roses this spring and 1 established climbing rose bush.
I currently have 19 roses. I still have more to plant in coming years. I'm also rooting a bunch of them to either give away or plant elsewhere in my yard.
Most of my roses are lining the chainlink fence so as to help hide it. The non-climbers do not need the fence for support. However, I've planted a number of climbers that are meant to climb on the fence too. I plant the climbers around 1.5 feet from the fence.
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