On roses

I would like to tout our drier inland weather as the best of all possible rose conditions.  We can grow virtually any rose to perfection in one site or another on the average lot.  Our Capitol Rose Garden in the Capitol Park in full bloom is testament to that.  That said, there are those varieties that seem to attract the Japanese Beetle, and a few that get viruses on the leaves, but with a good feed regimen they grow here like nowhere else .  I have two David Austen roses, for instance, "Graham Thomas" and "Gertrude Jekyll", both strongly scented, that each year exceed by at least 3 or 4 feet their supposed maximum height!  I have each in the back of a garden plot where they show off all year, except for the two coldest months of January and February.  I also have a beautifully scented, beautifully formed deep pink tea "Perfume Delight" that has been putting on its amazingly heavy and constant display of bloom, 6feet high or more each year for 7 years, despite being in a half wine barrel!
 
My cross the street neighbors have a long serpentine bed of all different varieties including miniatures, and there is just nothing so charming as that swath of perfumed color for most of the summer.
 
Let's hear it for the rose "hips-hips hooray"!
 
Karrie Reid
Folsom Foothill Gardener
Sunset Zone 9 usda zone 9
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