Roses as ornamental woody shrubs

There are hundreds of books about growing unblemished Hybrid Tea rose blossoms,and the many stupifyingly boring tasks that must be repeated over and over, each

month of each year (or so it seems), to reach and maintain a level of perfection. These plants are sometimes not winter-hardy, so extra research is necessary to find those that

are. Modern roses are heavy feeders, and will need, at the very least, a heavy mulch of well-rotted manure twice a year. Hybrid Tea roses are susceptible to fungal diseases,the big three in North America being black spot, powdery mildew, and rust disease.There is mounting anecdotal evidence that spraying with manure teas and other types of organic concoctions to change the pH of the leaf surface will act as a preventative for such ills, but any of the common recipes must be applied regularly (every ten tofourteen days during the growing season), and these are not curative potions.Hybrid Tea and Floribunda roses must be pruned at least twice annually, with a third to a half of the plant cut back in the autumn so that winter winds do not rock the plant and thus allow cold air to get at exposed roots and freeze the graft union.The second prescribed pruning is much “harder,” meaning that only canes twelve inches in height will remain. This hard pruning is usually done in the City of Roses,Portland, Oregon, between Valentine’s Day and St. Patrick’s Day, when the stem buds have started to swell and you can cut precisely. What a bother. If there is more cold weather after the false spring that lured you out to prune your roses in the first place,you can bet on tip dieback on the newly bestumped roses, making them even more diminished and weakened.Although they come in a truly vast array of colors, many of the modern roses no longer carry the divine scent associated with them. This is perhaps the greatest tragedy about the latest Hybrid Tea and Floribunda roses; whether they were meant to be broodmares in an Ecuadorian greenhouse or for fussy gardeners who want just the right color, roses are expected to be flower-making machines. Their plant does not have to look good, and now the roses themselves no longer have to smell good.Which brings me back to the fact that rosebushes are woody shrubs. We should expect more than a time-consuming spoiled brat of a plant. Most other flowering woody shrubs have multiple seasons of interest, are hale and hardy, and grow best in association with other plants. All roses used to be like that, and without too much looking we can still find the crиme de la crиme of old garden roses, some of which make very fine cut flowers and certainly equal any modern rose in beauty.