I’m so excited that the 2007 rose season is almost here!  Warm-climate gardeners will already have completed their spring pruning, while cold-climate rosarians are still waiting for the soil to warm.  Prune when the forsythia blooms in your neighborhood.

The 2007 rose catalogs offered some inspiring choices this season, so I hope you’ve ordered all the varieties that make your heart sing!  Check out the wicked orange floribunda, ‘Vavoom’ the pure medium pink ‘Gentle Giant’ and the deep purple shrub, ‘Rhapsody in Blue.’  Also new for 2007 is the most beautiful climber I’ve ever seen, ‘Soaring Spirits.’  Its photo doesn’t do it justice.  

You can always be sure the All-America Rose Selection winners will perform in your garden.  This year, they are ‘Strike It Rich, a wonderful golden yellow grandiflora, the coral, pink, and yellow shrub, ‘Rainbow Knock Out’, and the creamy white floribunda, ‘Moondance.’

Seems like rosarians can always find the space for a few new varieties every season, so don’t hesitate to order a few more.  Just plant them closer together!  Rose plants do very well when the centers of the planting holes are just 18 inches apart.

When ordering new roses, keep in mind that they are virtually all hardy perennials and can be grown most everywhere.  Yes, even in Alaska!  But if you live in a climate where winters are cold, some roses may require some winter protection.  I shovel a few full spades of soil over the crown of all of my new roses to ensure their survival over their first winter.  After that, only the hybrid teas and the most tender of the floribundas get covered.  

Unfortunately, it’s nearly impossible to assign degrees of hardiness to roses.  Even within the rose classifications (hybrid tea, floribunda, grandiflora, miniature, polyantha, climber, and shrub,) each variety (cultivar) has its own unique characteristics, including winter hardiness. But very generally, if you don’t want to mess with winter protection, don’t plant hybrid teas or grandifloras.  Most floribundas, climbers, shrubs, and miniatures will be fine with little or no protection in all but the coldest climates.  Oh, and in Alaska, you have to protect all roses!

Before your roses arrive, decide where you’re going to plant them.  I like roses in beds by themselves because they like more water and fertilizer than other perennials do, so it’s more convenient to provide for them when they’re all together.  But they are fabulous in the perennial beds and in your landscape plan.  Keep underplantings to a minimum to ensure disease prevention through good air circulation at the base of the plants, and keep the roses away from the acid-loving evergreens.  Roses like a fairly neutral soil pH, so they’ll be unhappy if they’re planted among the rhododendrons.

There are lots of disease-resistant or disease-free roses on the market these days and they are a good choice if you don’t want to ever spray your roses.  But many of the older varieties that are so entrancing may be susceptible to blackspot or powdery mildew when the weather’s right.  To help prevent rose diseases from invading your garden, keep the centers of the plants fairly open with judicious pruning.  This allows good air circulation around the foliage.  Water roses at soil level, and avoid getting water on the foliage where it encourages blackspot spores to grow.  Keep rose bed soil clean and free of debris, promptly removing the prunings and fallen leaves that are havens for disease spores.  

Once your new rose plants arrive, take very good care of them.  Mail-order roses will arrive bareroot and dormant.  Open the package immediately and keep the roots immersed in buckets of water until you can plant them.  A rose with dry roots is a dead rose, so protect your investment!  Rose plants you buy at your local garden center will be potted and should be kept constantly moist, but not soggy, until you plant them.  Plant bareroot roses as soon as you possibly can.  Potted plants can be kept in their pots longer, but be sure and get them in the ground sometime in the early spring.  In cold climates, rose roots need the entire growing season to get established enough to survive winter.

It’s best for cold climate rosarians to avoid packaged rose plants from the supermarket or home improvement store.  The roots of these plants have been pruned severely to fit into the pots, and may not grow fast enough to support the top growth.  A bargain isn’t always a bargain.

Best of all, the roses you plant this year will bloom this year and for many years to come!  You’ll find that growing roses is really very easy, but that most people think they require mysterious culture practices.  So when you show up with armfuls of fabulous blooms, everyone will think you’re a gardening genius!

Considered ‘nearly blue,’ ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ flowers are smoke-blue/purple, set of by lovely gray-green foliage.  This remarkable shrub grows tall and upright and is great as a pillar.

Nothing will make your spirits soar like ‘Soaring Spirits!’  This amazing climber is an exceptionally vigorous grower and sends out huge, showy clusters of ever-changing pink, yellow, and cream blooms.  It’s a must-have!

‘Strike It Rich’ with this amazing grandiflora!  Very disease resistant and strongly vigorous, the plant produces plentiful flowers of deep golden yellow polished with rosy pink.  A 2007 All-America Rose Selection, it’s a winner, all they way around!

‘’Rainbow Knock Out’ is a compact, bushy shrub that’s very disease resistant and nearly care-free.  It’s an overachiever when it comes to flower power!

‘Moondance’ has large clusters beautifully formed buds that open to sparkling white blooms held atop deep green leaves.  It’s a fabulous floribunda! GG

Ann Hooper is the president of Primary Products and will always answer your rose culture questions by e-mail and she be contacted at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it . Request a Primary Products catalog at www.primaryproducts.com or by calling 800.841.6630.