Summer Roses and Some are Roses

Summer Roses and Some are Roses

Roses in summer, such a glorious flowering occasion!  What other ornamental shrub can boast a bloom production like the rose?  There aren’t many, I can tell you.  Modern hybridized roses are such a delight in the rose garden, holding our attention and captivating us with its many attributes.  We enjoy the fragrances, we enjoy the colors, and we enjoy cutting them for a vase in the home. 

We know these modern roses as hybrid teas, grandifloras, floribundas, miniatures, climbers, and landscape or shrub roses.  The first hybrid tea rose was introduced in the late 1800s and was bred by crossing hybrid perpetual roses with tea roses.  These new roses shared the traits of both parents in ways that made them a popular new class of roses and therefore created the dawn of the 20^th century love affair with the hybrid tea rose. 

Popular names such as ‘Mister Lincoln’, ‘Peace’ and ‘Garden Party’ awaken memories of our grandmothers’ rose gardens from the 50s and 60s.  These types of roses were among the elite in the home garden and remain a standard in the floral industry today for their strong stems, tall buds and long lasting vase life.

Summer roses are fun to use in so many creative ways in the home.  In mixed bouquets with your favorite summer perennial and annual flowers, roses are a perfect foundation for your centerpiece.  And, your roses will probably outlast any of them in the vase, with few exceptions. 

The summer rose never tires of its efforts to continuously produce bud after bud.  They may be smaller, in some cases, due to heat and dry periods, but they press on nonetheless.  With a little help by way of fertilizer you can rely on their 30-35 day bloom cycle.

But not all roses are equal.  There are many other types of roses in the world that charm us in different ways.  Take for example the old garden roses, the roses that existed before the introduction of our modern day treasures.  Their ephemeral blooms captivate us in a different way, enchanting us for just a short period of time until they bloom again the following year.

You may have heard of some of these roses, no doubt.  They are known as Gallica, Damask, Noisette, Moss, and Bourbon roses, to name a few.  And to be fair not all will bloom only once per year; some indeed produce multiple flushes of flowers and quite vigorously to boot. 

To me these are the most romantic of all roses.  Some have strong, heady fragrances and the most enchanting blossom styles.  Styles which include the globular shapes of the Cabbage rose, or the cupped or quartered blooms of the Bourbon rose.   They are the roses of Monet and Renoir in all their romantic artistic beauty.  

Lovers of old roses have a different point of view about roses.   When the craze of perennial gardening hit in the 1990s home gardeners desired the English gardening style and often old roses were a part of that design likeness.  Innovators using old roses in English gardens, such as Graham Stuart Thomas, were among the most influential in English garden design.  Gardens had this overgrown exuberance full of lush foliage with a diverse plant palette.   There was a longing here in the US for a particular look and style that was fashionable making old roses still popular in modern times. 

Not only are these roses handsome and unique but they are also useful.  Rose hips in particular a source of vitamin C.  Syrups, oils, jams, perfumes and other products are produced from using the flowers and buds.  Check out this article on enjoying Roses in the Kitchen if you would like more information!  

While there are profound differences in the types of roses around the world, one thing remains constant: roses charm us in one way or another.