Roses- those old varieties

Grandpa and some of his roses, in his later days 

Rose catalogs are starting to arrive and looking at them always stirs a bit of nostalgia in me.  When I was a child I could look down from my bedroom window next door onto my grandfather’s rose garden and smell the roses on the first warm days in June.  And on some days my mother would rush around shutting the windows as my grandfather sprayed his precious roses with DDT or Malathion, which smelled like cat pee.

In winter my grandparents poured over the catalogs, selecting the new roses that they would try.  My grandmother frequently gave me the catalogs when they were finished and I would see where my grandfather had circled a rose or made notes about it in the catalog margins.  I learned about tea roses and grandifloras and black spot and bud count and fragrance types as I read the catalogs and planned the rose garden I would have some day.

My grandfather made little metal tags that he used to laboriously punch the names of the roses into with a set of metal bars that each had a letter on the end.  These tags were mounted by each bush.  His rose garden was surrounded by bricks painted white.  When I was young the rose garden was always impeccably weeded-by my grandmother and sometimes with me helping.  My grandparents belonged to a garden club and there would be days when people strolled the gardens while my grandfather extolled on the virtue of one rose or another.

When my grandfather got older and sicker, his rose garden was less stylish and more cottage like, with huge unpruned bushes of the hardiest rose varieties spilling petals and fragrance into the garden like mature ladies of the night, still pretty but a bit blowsy.  When my grandfather passed my grandmother tried to keep up with all the gardens- they had many- but when she remarried her second husband turned the rose garden into a huge food garden. Only a few roses survived along the fence.  One of those roses, a Harrison Yellow, we called the graduation rose because we all had our pictures taken in front of it in our graduation gowns, even my mother and her sister.  I have plants started from that rose in my garden now.

When I moved into my first home I immediately wanted to plant roses.  My lot was very shaded however and I had only a limited spot where roses would thrive.  There was one rose already in the landscape.  But I planted some, the climber Blaze on the garage wall and a few tea roses in a spot of sun in the front. A vegetable garden took up much of my sunny area but I even had a rose in the center of it.

Multiflora rose

When I moved to the country twenty some years ago I had much more room but my time was more limited and the roses I have chosen for my gardens here are basically hardy, low fuss, landscape types.  I have several Knock-Out varieties and Meillands and of course my Harrison/Graduation rose.  A multiflora rose that I keep pruned grows at the side of my front porch.  It’s one of those pesky non-native invaders we are supposed to hate and destroy but it’s so pretty and fragrant when it blooms that I let it stay.

Recently I was looking through the rose offerings of several catalogs.  I noticed several roses that I grew or that my grandparents grew that are still listed.  With the thousands of roses that have been developed over the years any rose that has stood the test of time and is still popular enough to be offered after 40 years- or longer- have passed has to be a winner.  If you like roses and want to plant some oldies but goodies here are some roses to reminiscence with.

‘Arizona’ is a peachy pink and yellow grandiflora with a wonderful sweet scent.  It’s very vigorous and went on the market in 1975.

‘Baronne de Rothschild’ is a hybrid tea with magenta red petals with a white back.  It is very disease resistant and has a strong spicy scent.  It is a Meilland rose and was first offered in 1968.

‘Adolf Horstmann’ is a hybrid tea of a rich gold hue, touched with salmon.  It’s large, hardy and vigorous with a slight fragrance.  It was developed in 1971.

‘Cariba’ is a large, strong, hardy tea rose.  It has flowers variegated in yellow, orange and red and each bloom is different.  It has a mild fragrance and was first offered in 1972.  I grew this rose and it always attracted oohs and awes.

‘Color Magic’  is a hybrid tea that seems to change color as it ages, from ivory pink to deep salmon red blends with numerous blooms of various hues on each plant.  It has a strong, fruity scent and was developed in 1975.

‘Chrysler Imperial’ is the classic red tea rose with a strong old rose scent.  It’s vigorous and hardy and still worth purchasing even though its debut was in 1953.  I remember this beauty very well.

‘Chicago Peace’ and ‘Peace’- If you like classic tea roses you must have ‘Peace’ in your garden.  It’s a mildly fragrant blend of pale pink and yellow roses on a large, vigorous bush.  It took the rose world by storm when introduced in 1945.  Rose growers suggest this heritage rose needs less fertilizer than modern roses to remain healthy.  ‘Chicago Peace’ is a deeper pink sport of ‘Peace’ that came out in 1962.  I remember my grandfather’s urgency to have this rose when it was first introduced and how proud he was of it.

‘Don Juan” is a velvety red double flowered climbing rose that rivals ‘Blaze’ in popularity.  Its roses are generally produced in early summer and are intensely fragrant.  It was introduced in 1958.

‘Fragrant Cloud’ is a lovely, deep orange-red tea with a beautiful fruity rose scent.  It’s very hardy and more compact than other old tea roses.  I have grown this rose several times and I am thinking about buying it again. 

‘Iceberg’ is one of the few white roses in the oldies but goodies section.  It’s a single flowered floribunda with large fragrant blooms. It blooms almost continuously and makes a large robust bush.  It is often included in lists of the top 10 roses.  I have grown this rose and found it charming.  It was introduced in 1958. 

‘Miss All American Beauty’ or ‘Maria Callas’ as they prefer to call it in Europe, is a tea rose of exceptional hardiness and disease resistance.  It has deep red-pink blooms with a lovely old rose fragrance.  It was introduced in 1968 and was one of my grandfather’s favorites.

‘Mister Lincoln’ is another classic deep red tea rose with a wonderful rich rose scent.  It’s a large, sturdy plant that was introduced in 1965.  You’ll find this rose in many of the inexpensive dormant rose collections in stores and its worth buying. 

‘New Dawn’ is another climber or pillar rose. It produces pale pink, double, very fragrant flowers in clusters in early summer and occasionally repeats bloom.   It was introduced in 1930.  I had this rose growing at my old house in Pontiac, one of the few flowers that was there when I moved in and I wish I had started a cutting of it. It is tolerant of light shade and indeed at my old house it scrambled up and leaned against an old mulberry tree.

‘New Day’ was one of the tea roses that I grew at my old house in Pontiac.  Its light yellow with a good spicy scent and blooms profusely.  It’s also disease resistant and was introduced in 1972.

‘Perfume Delight’ lives up to its name with a wonderful fragrance. It’s a deep pink and the flowers are very large.  I found that this rose had fewer blooms than some other tea roses but it’s very beautiful.  It came out in 1974.

‘Queen Elizabeth’ is an older grandiflora rose, producing flushes of true pink roses in large candelabra style groupings.  It’s very hardy, has a nice scent, and turns into a large shrub over time.  It was one of the roses in my grandfather’s garden and was introduced in 1955.

‘Tropicana’ was another rose that caused a sensation when it was introduced in 1963 and I remember my grandparents being very proud of having it in their garden.  It’s a coral–orange tea rose with a strong scent. It’s another rose you’ll often find in the packaged roses offered in garden shops and worth purchasing.

‘The Fairy’  is a very old variety of polyantha rose.  It produces clusters of tiny light pink double roses in flushes through the season.  It’s very hardy and grown on its own roots.  The sturdy disease resistant plants were often turned into low hedges and this rose separated our yard from my grandparents yard for a considerable distance. The fragrance is a mild apple–like one.  This plant is in the bloodlines of many modern landscape roses and was first introduced in 1932.

There you are- a selection of oldies but goodies to consider if you are going for a cottage garden look or like antique varieties of plants.  

Harrisons Yellow