Barden Vigor

While I'm still in the throes of yesterday's post, dreaming about the potential of  a particular rose in my garden, I thought I should update readers on what I hope is the beginning of a beautiful human-rose relationship.  Everyone knows from this blog that I'm a big proponent of Old Garden Roses and Griffith Buck Roses and Modern Shrub roses;  in short, of SUSTAINABLE ROSES.  Well, after a cold winter and a summer of extreme heat and drought, I wanted to show everyone the health and vigor of the Paul Barden rose bands that I planted last fall, little sprigs of green that I hoped could take on the Kansas climate.

In the picture below, the 5 roses in the foreground are the one-year appearance of several of the above pictured bands.  From right to left, they are 'Jeri Jennings', 'Allegra', 'Morning Blush', 'Gallicandy', and 'Marianne'.   These five nice shrubs, all between two and three feet tall now and nicely branched, look like the very picture of health.  Yes, they received a little extra water this summer in the midst of the drought, but  these happy, disease-free specimens received no fungicides, no insecticides, and only a little compost during the summer.  Not a single blackspot-covered leaf among them, either!  The whole picture is a great example both of the vigor and health of the Paul Barden breeding line and of the importance of buying own-root, sustainable roses and having the patience to let them grow.  They're going to bloom their heads off next spring and I'm going to be a happy, very happy camper.

The only worry I had with any of the Barden roses was that I almost lost poor 'Mariane', at the far left.  She had made it through the winter as a single cane standing proudly in the snow only to snap off at her base in the early Spring winds.  Another cane soon came up in April but some little rabbit made an early meal out of that one.  I didn't have much hope she would reappear a third time, but appear she did, a testament to purchasing own-root bands, and this time, protected by the collar of an old milk jug, she made it to early adolescence, now almost as full as the rest of them.

The Griffith Buck roses I planted in another bed this spring are going strong as well, also without fertilizer or fungicide.  Three of those are pictured at the right, the purchased 'Queen Bee' and 'Folksinger' blooming in the background, and my own rooted cutting of 'Prairie Harvest' in the foreground.  Not quite as large as the Barden roses above, but still healthy and ready to calm down for the winter. 

It's going to be a great spring of roses here in the Flint Hills!