Green Ice Cooling the Heat

It has been so hot I thought maybe a few pictures of Green Ice might help cool things off.  My small plant of Green Ice has just been covered with blooms.  As you can tell this Ralph Moore miniature gets it name from the green tint its old fashion form blooms take on as they mature.  The plant architecture is nicely spreading and is always a healthy bush in my garden.  It is nearly Wednesday so let me stop here and let it be a Nearly Wordless, Nearly Wednesday.

A New Hybrid Musk Rose - Jeri Jennings

Having enjoyed growing Hybrid Musk roses for some time, had success with several of Paul Barden's roses, and enjoyed Jeri Jennings comments on the GardenWeb Antique Rose forum I felt like I had to grow Jeri's namesake which was introduced in 2007 and is now growing in its second year.  Jeri has been a help to me and many, many other people as they have sought to learn about and grow antique and shrub roses.  This rose is a wonderful tribute to her sunny disposition and friendly greeting to those with even the most simple questions.  It opens with a cheerful yellow then fades to a warm buttery color.  Jeri Jennings' fragrance is a strong tea scent with both sweet and musk overtones.  Very pleasing.

Jeri Jennings' graceful habit is very typical of the Hybrid Musk class growing wider than tall but maybe just a bit smaller than many.  Its long pointed leaves have a refined elegance.  I think that in many ways Hybrid Musk roses represent a near perfect ideal of graceful repeat blooming shrub roses.  My own selfish desires would simply add size to the flowers which typically are about 2 inches in size.  I personally think that might be the image David Austin has had in mind working with the English Roses.

The Hybrid Musk group was created by Rev. Joseph Pemberton, an Anglican Priest, from 1912-1939.  He was assisted in his work by John and Ann Bentall, who continued the work after his passing.  There are a large number of roses in this class that it is hard to say who of the three was the actual breeder.  Record keeping was not at the top of their "To Do List", and maybe that type of credit was relatively unimportant to them.  In any case, the group draws upon a wide variety of lines while at the same time finding a unity that holds the class together.  To my eye, Jeri Jennings would have (and does) easily fit in with the early roses in the class. 

Maybe it is Rev. Pemberton's vocation as a pastor and avocation as a rosarian that draws me to the Hybrid Musk roses or maybe this gives me a deeper appreciation for these roses, but I find a special joy in these lovely, graceful, refined roses.  Jeri Jennings is a very welcome addition to the group.

Hot Days in the Garden

We just finished the hottest June in recorded history here in Oklahoma.  Today we hit 110 degrees and our 20th day of triple digit temps.  When it gets this hot there are few roses that can stand up to the heat.

This morning I took a few photos in the garden.  Here is Graham Thomas with a few roses fried by the sun and one that opened over night. Below is the same cluster of roses just eight hours later.

While many of my roses enter a summer semi-dormancy, usually this comes a month later than it has this year.  When you see how the Summer heat affects the flowers you understand why.  Still others seem to flourish in this heat.  Here are a few others that got caught in the sun today. 

 This is Braveheart and it actually holds up somewhat better than many other red roses.

Here is St. Swithun surviving the day.

This flower of Twister made it through unscathed.

The heat turned out to be too much for Tradescant.  I'm praying for rain and cooler days - the forecast has 107 for tomorrow but we will cool off to 101 on Tuesday. 

Today we are treated to a fully opened blossom of Moore's Striped Rugosa.  This rose is the third striped rose in our current garden.  I have grown several others over the years.  Compared to Twister's precise petal formation and Scentimental's rounded and cupped blooms, Moore's Striped Rugosa's flowers are loose and carefree in form but no less beautiful.

Stripes for the 4th of July!

Striped roses were not created to celebrate the Fourth of July but there couldn't be a better time for these roses.  I currently grow three varieties Twister (three plants), Scentimential, and Moore's Striped Rugosa.  Here are a few pictures to celebrate the Fourth!

Twister is a wonderful "climbing miniature" rose.  It grows to a height of four feet and is more upright than spreading.  Ralph Moore called these "climbing," because he had a group of miniature roses which had miniature flowers and leaves but grew much taller.  So, as a marketing strategy, he called them "climbing."

Modern striped roses go back to Ralph Moore's work with the hybrid perpetual/bourbon,  Ferdinand Pichard, and can be found in every modern class of rose now.  Twister's flowers (above) are filled with petals and are very fragrant.  It also is one of the roses I can always find a flower on when I go out in the yard.  Twister's vigorous, upright growth is always healthy and this is one rose I will not go without growing in my garden.

This is Scentimental, a floribunda rose bred by Tom Carruth in 1997, with large loose flowers and a wonderful spicy fragrance.  I'm withholding judgement for now because I love its flowers and it blooms regularly, but it has a bit of a problem with blackspot.  It is also shorter than I expected, but I will give it some time to grow up.  If not then it may have a different use than I had been thinking.  

As you probably have noticed from the above pictures, part of the fun of striped roses is that from flower to flower they will move from one color being dominant to the other.  Scentimental's flowers are red and white striped, however, sometimes the white can be pink.

Here is my first bloom and photo of Moore's Striped Rugosa as it begins to open.  This was just this afternoon, July 2nd, wanting to make a statement before the Fourth.  For some reason I am really drawn to its crinkly rugosa foliage.  I have also noticed, putting this post together, that I find mostly white roses with red strips to be most attractive.  How could you not like this rose? 

Just one more picture of Twister because it is such a photogenic rose.

2011's New Roses Update (2-3 months after planting)

My last post on St. Swithun received a few comments about how big it was in just its second season.  That got me thinking that I should update this year's new roses a couple of times over the growing season.  I will start you out with a flower because there aren't very many in this entry.  You may wonder why I use the tomato cages.  It is simple, we have two Siberian Huskies who would unintentionally crush them before they got a good start.  Last year I had to cut a couple of cages up in order to remove them because the rose had grown up so much that I couldn't remove the cage without damaging the rose.

This is Siren's Keep, a shrub rose from Paul Barden.  As you can see, the color is a bit faded by our long 100+ degree days.  Still the flower has held up better than Tradescant, its grandparent's flowers which burn in the extreme heat.  So many of the Austin roses can't stand up to our summer sun and heat, so this is a hopeful sign to me. 

This is Linda Campbell a last minute addition to my Spring orders after reading Professor Roush's blog entry about the Ralph Moore Hybrid Rugosa.  If he was that excited about it I had to give it a try.  She was added to my order of Moore's Striped Rugosa which was still a couple of weeks from being ready to ship.  She looks happy and has sent out two new canes. 

Here is Moore's Striped Rugosa.  I am enjoying the crinkly rugosa leaves which are new to my gardening.  I have enjoyed seeing these leaves on plants but have never grown any rugosas until this Spring.

This young plant is from a cutting of Dublin Bay I took last year from my mother's plant.  I have always had high hopes for Dublin Bay but her plant never really turned into what I thought it would.  Maybe this one will do better.

This sprawling young plant is DayDream.  It has such a spreading habit which is one of the reasons I think of it as a Hybrid Musk.  It has sent out the longest growth of this year's new roses.

Here is another picture of Siren's Keep.  I am looking forward to seeing this one in the Fall when the sunlight is not quite so intense. 

I'm calling this one Lena's Gift.  Lena is a member of the church and she saw this rose while checking out at K Mart and just had to buy one for me and one for her.  Like so many miniature roses set up for impulse buys, it bore no name and had three very young plants in a small pot.  I separated the three plants, planted one at home and the other two at the Prague Rose Garden.  It has small pink/magenta flowers with 10-15 petals.  If you know what this rose might be, please, do tell.

This is Winsome, also a pink/magenta miniature rose but with larger fuller flowers.  I grew Winsome 20 years ago and it was a tall vigorous plant and was always in bloom.  We moved and I didn't replace it until this spring.

Here is Jude the Obscure.  I have always been drawn to pictures of this rose but have not grown it until now.  It is really taking off and I think this time next year will have built up to a good size. 

Last is the English Rose Charles Rennie Mackintosh and maybe the one I am most looking forward to.  It has the reverse breeding of St. Swithun so I am curious to figure out what similarities and differences the two have with each other.

Look for an update on all of these roses in another three months. 

St. Swithun's Day

My favorite rose is St. Swithun, an English Rose introduced in 1993.  Its flowers are of the lightest pink, larger than most English Roses, hold 100+ petals, intricately quartered, and are heavily fragranced with a heady musk scent similar to Myrrh only sweeter.  A cluster of its flowers will fill a room with its fragrance and can be quite heavy.  Its flowers are held up on stems that are perfectly matched to not be too stiff as to lack grace or so limp that the flowers drag.

The bush is vigorous and somewhat spreading.  Below is a plant in its second year.  You can get a sense of its habit but know that in Oklahoma it will grow to be 5-6 feet tall and 6 feet wide.  This is by far one of the most healthy English Roses and is said to be very winter hardy (zone 4). Its one drawback is that Thrips love it and they are a bit hard on its Spring blooms. 

I didn't know anything about the person St. Swithun before growing the roses but he was born in 852 A.D. and is the patron saint of the Winchester Cathedral.  St. Swithun's Day is July 15 and it is said that whatever the weather on St. Swithun's Day it will continue for the next 40 days.  On a side note, anytime you come across the number 40 in the Bible it probably is not meant to be taken literally.  It really mean "a long time."  Think - Its been raining for a month of Sundays or its raining cats and dogs.  If I seem a bit focused on rain its because we really need it. 

The British folksinger Billy Bragg, has written a song full of nostalgic longing for a former love titled St. Swithun Day's.  Billy has often been compared to Woody Guthrie, a comparison I understand but their sounds are so different you have to listen deeper to get it.  Even so, I thoroughly enjoy both. You can hear a sample of the song on emusic at Billy Bragg St. Swithun's Day .  Several years ago Billy Bragg performed at the Woody Guthrie Festival in nearby Okemah, Oklahoma (the birthplace and childhood home of Woody Guthrie).  While at the festival he took several of Woody poems and lyrics that were not set to music and wrote tunes for them.  This has now become a project of many artist who come the the festivial.  This year's WoodyFest is July 13-17, 2011 and always takes place on his birthday.