Yard Intro: Roses

[darkcedars]

In July we moved into a Foursquare built in 1900. Jane was the woman who lived here since the 50s. This is a corner lot with a huge front yard with little areas created by sidewalks.

The Roses
When we moved in, I saw the five ancient, neglected roses and thought "I'm not sure I want to deal with those." Then with just a little water they started blooming. So I have roses now.

Peace Tea Rose - this is the one that first turned my head. It's moderately fruity smelling. This spring's flowers are less pink than those in fall, I will have to see if that's a common thing as time goes on. 
  

Red Tea Rose (possibly Chrysler Imperial or Mr. Lincoln) - heavy classic rose scent (so damask) that I can smell even as I open the door. Perfect flowers. Wicked thorns (seriously I bled, not tiny scratches like others). Spring growth was dramatic. The whole plant was scarlet as it began to grow. I thought it was pretty last year but have now fallen in love.


Tiny Red Tea Rose - very similar to above but not quite the same. It is not doing well at all. I plan to remove this and put something else in it's spot. I would work on it more if it wasn't so similar to the healthy and lovely red rose described above.

Floribunda Medium Pink - I'm trying to decide if this one is a climber. It was right in front of a trellis attached to the porch roof, and it's new growth tends towards being floppy. It has rose mosaic disease but seems healthy. Tons of blooms. Smells of fresh cut apple and a tinge of cinnamon in the sun, without sun almost no scent! Very interesting. At first I thought of getting rid of it too, but the number of blooms and the scent as I weeded the flowerbed nearby swayed me. I know it's a repeat bloomer as I coaxed a couple from it last fall.  It also refuses to take a good photo under ANY light. 
       

Dr. Huey - this is the rootstock that has taken over. Whatever Jane originally planted here is gone. It's a single time bloomer, was virtually leafless last summer/fall with blackspot, and it has zero scent. I will be removing it once it finishes blooming. Might replace with a thornless climbing rose or another climbing plant. On the corner by the steps. 


Mine: Medium to Dark Pink shrub rose, Proven Winner, clearance rack at Walmart fall 2011. - planted at the SE corner of the flowerbed. Shocked it survived transplant as my parents "were handling it" and it had nearly no root. I've put a small piece of it on the NW corner of the house but will likely move that sometime. I'm in a long-term relationship with this rose, I couldn't have left it. The sawflies left it alone and I've never had trouble with disease. 

Things done for the rose area, which are the actual flowerbeds around the front porch:

• dug up the landscape marble chips and swapped for regular mulch. I dug in a little potting soil around the roses as I did this.
• learned to prune! I felt like an enormous chicken as I approached the tea roses but all was well.
• treated black spot in late spring/fall and fought what I now know is sawflies this spring.

The porch had been filled in at the bottom with cement blocks on the sides, and decorative pavers on the front. These are coming down in favor of lattice. I might have left the front ones, but turned out the porch has sunk at the front over the decades. Correcting this meant removing some, which broke them.