Roses and cottage gardens are sort of synonymous or at least closely linked in many people's minds. Just picture that little English thatched cottage and a dooryard brimming with ... well, roses and ... see what I mean?
It's not that I actively dislike roses. Far from it!
I just always claim not to grow any, especially when I teach about gardening, but that's not exactly the whole entire truth. More to the point, I do not actively cultivate them and therein lies an important distinction. If a rose would like to survive neglect, benign or otherwise, in my garden that's fine with me.
Right now the old stand-by red climber, "Blaze Improved," is unspeakably gorgeous, testament to the perhaps unsexy but enduring value of the tried and true. (I bought it left over and on sale for two bucks at the hardware store in July a couple of years ago.) I visit it every day when it's in bloom. The blooms are finally so numerous this year we've been cutting them for arrangements. We took some to the Memorial Day Parade where they ended up strewn on the graves at the cemetery for all to enjoy the fragrance and memento, right along with the fabulous peonies that grow so well here. So yeah, I like roses just fine.
I've even planted some more within living memory. The two old fashioned shrub roses I planted a while back are blooming their fool heads off thanks to all the rain we had earlier this spring, and the wild bird-imported seedlings (Rosa multiflora) are scrambling and cascading copiously through the new foliage of the mimosa trees - solid blooming fountains of perfect little white flowers in miniature sprays worthy of a bridal bouquet. It doesn't get any better than this!
In my other tiny garden a bit south of here in Maryland, there is an inherited and venerable "Chrysler Imperial" hybrid tea surviving and even thriving despite all odds, a dear "The Fairy" hanging on bravely in increasing shade and a "China Doll" blooming to perfection at the moment. An old, long-forgotten rootstock, legacy of a previous seriously hybrid-tea oriented gardener there, has surfaced once again and clambered up through a HUGE wall of silverfleece vine to bloom serendipitously in simple red in exactly all the right places. Of course I like roses!
SO why don't I push 'em?
Japanese Beetles, that's why. Around here, the dreaded beetles are "late" if they haven't appeared by Independence Day, the Fourth of July. So all my roses have got to "do their thing" early and be done with it before the beetles appear. The beetles eat the center out of rose flowers, and it's really ugly to watch them do it. So I don't want repeat bloom.
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