David Thompson Lives (For Now)

It is a poorly-kept secret that our Government officials, soon after being elected or appointed, quickly learn to use Friday as a day to dump bad news on the unsuspecting public.  Few of us, the over-taxed serfs, take notice of anything except family and fun on Friday nights and weekends.  The goal is to divulge the bad news Friday after the newspapers have been written and then hope that it'll be forgotten by Monday.  Following that example, I'm going to use the dead of winter to finally discuss 'David Thompson' in Garden Musings.  Maybe that way someone, somewhere will still find him worthwhile to grow.

'David Thompson' is one of the Explorer Series Collection of roses.  It was released by Agriculture Canada in 1979 and bred by Dr. Felicitas Svejda.  Named after a famous British-Canadian fur trader, 'David Thompson' is officially a medium red Hybrid Rugosa rose that repeats occasionally throughout the summer.  My mature, 11 year old specimen has never grown lower than three feet tall nor higher than four feet tall, and it has is 3-4 feet in width as well, a rotund aging specimen much like the local gardener.  The leaves are strongly rugose, and the flowers open quickly to flat semi-double disorganized disks with golden stamens.  'David Thompson is thought to be the result of an open pollination between 'Schneezwerg' and 'Fru Dagmar Hartopp'. 

I thoroughly hate this rose.  It holds a prominent spot in my back landscape bed and I have regretted placing it there from that first summer at this house.   Why, you ask, do I hate 'David Thompson'?  Let me count the ways.  First, the official description of medium red really means, in similar fashion to other roses described as medium red, that it is really a lousy shade of glaring bluish-pink that clashes with the clear pink tones of 'Carefree Beauty' to the west and the pale pink of 'Fantin Latour' to the east (see the photo below).  Second, the frequent white-streak added to the petals only make them look less refined. Third, even though a relatively small Rugosa, it is a thorny vicious beast, grabbing me every time I dare to shortcut across the bed within its reach.  Fourth, although it doesn't sucker far, it does sucker, slowly expanding the width of the clump and threatening to take more lebensraum than it deserves.  Fifth, the flat flowers are as uninspiring in form as they are in color, and they bring to mind a teenager's messy bedroom-nest, a phenomenon that I hoped to have left behind by this stage in life.  Sixth, although described as being "strongly fragrant", it has only mild, if any fragrance, to my personal sniffer.  All of that, and one more thing; the petals crumple quickly in the extreme heat of August, like fried pink potato chips.

'Carefree Beauty', left, and 'David Thompson', right

After reading my previous not-high praise, your second question must surely be, "why don't you spade-prune him if you hate him so much?"   To my constant chagrin, I must, in fairness, disclose that "David Thompson" remains so carefree and healthy that I have not yet become disgusted enough to take that final act, even though I annually reconsider that decision during the first bloom period.  'David Thompson' needs no extra water, no fertilizer, will almost always have a bloom or two somewhere, and he is bone-cold hardy down to USDA Zone 2.  He blooms almost incessantly, although never prolifically after the first flush.  It never has blackspot or mildew or insect damage.  My only hope is that he succumbs to a good infection of Rose Rosette disease.

I did have a good laugh while researching this rose.  A comment from "Monika" on the helpmefind.com listing for 'David Thompson' states it is an "ugly Rugosa thing establishing its sucking roots in my garden only because I mistook it for 'Henry Kelsey', but hey, it blooms!"  Monika, whoever and wherever you are, I think that sums up my feelings on 'David Thompson' perfectly!

Folksinger

I am fully aware that in my advocacy for the Griffith Buck roses, I often veer dangerously close to being mistaken for a mouth-foaming, rabid animal, or else, in this zombie-crazed era, a Koolaid-drinking zombie.  Yes, for the record, I am a rabid supporter of Dr. Buck's rose program.  His career work breeding and selecting roses in my general region and with no extra winter-care or pesticides has benefited every rose-lover in the MidWest.  Those principles certainly resulted in a number of beautiful and healthy roses for the Kansas climate.

To be brutally honest, though, there are a few Buck roses that I am a little less enthusiastic about, and 'Folksinger' is one of those at present.  'Folksinger' is a yellow-blend shrub bred by Dr. Buck in 1985.  On paper, I should be absolutely crazy about this rose, which is a cross of 'Carefree Beauty' (one of the best roses to grow in Kansas) and 'Sunsprite' (long my favorite yellow Floribunda and a very fragrant one). I agree that  'Folksinger' is fragrant, but to my nose it is a step down from the award-winning  'Sunsprite'.   The initial color of the double flower is actually a peachy-orangey tone that I really like in roses, but on the downside, it fades quickly.  In fact, that rapid fade touches on my biggest complaint about 'Folksinger'; the Hybrid-tea style buds look great and then often, before I can enjoy the bloom, it opens up quickly and fades to off-white (see the bloom at the right, only one day older than the same bloom at the upper left).  I guess I have a second complaint as well; I initially thought that it repeated quickly as a very young own-root rose, but this year I feel the repeat of this rose is fairly slow; both 'Queen Bee' and 'Bright Melody' in the same bed have bloomed three times while 'Folksinger' is just coming into a second wave of bloom.

The bush is about 3 foot tall and round in its second full Summer here in my Kansas garden, just short of its mature expected height of 4 feet, and I do have to be honest and admit that the foliage is a perfect glossy medium-green and very healthy.  No fungal sprays or insecticide needed here.  It is fully hardy in my garden and is reported to do well down to Zone 4 winters without protection. 

'Folksinger' is certainly a rose that I will keep growing, and perhaps it just needs to make it to maturity to win over my heart.  Then again, maybe it is the climate change and the heat this year that the rose is not just responding to.  I may find I like it better in cooler Fall.  Or perhaps next Spring.  Or perhaps the Spring after that.  Dr. Buck could not have been wrong.

Buck Rose Blackspot Review

Now that I've seen others state on the Web that it has been a bad blackspot year for their roses, I feel confident enough to come out of the fungal-shame closet and agree that I've been entertaining the same thought.  I don't know if it was the early March warmth or the cool nights of recent weeks, but blackspot has been a struggle at the K-State rose garden at this early date. In my own non-spray garden, I also believed that the roses were a little "fungus-ier" than normal.

So I resolved to note down the degree of blackspot damage on all my roses and did exactly that this morning.  And, you know what?  I think that maybe it is not quite as bad as I thought.  I seem to have been misled by an early defoliation of one of my 'Prairie Harvest' (normally quite resistant), and the damage on my 2-year old Paul Barden rose, 'Jeri Jennings'.  'Jeri Jennings' definitely got  the black spots aplenty, but 'Prairie Harvest' just seemed to turn yellow and defoliate all but the top leaves. I'm still not sure if that was blackspot-induced or drought-induced.  She seems to be coming back.   The rest of my roses are mostly doing quite well, in contrast to my undocumented impression, with exceptionally bad disease only on floribunda 'Rhapsody in Blue', English Rose 'Golden Celebration', and pink floribunda 'Gene Boerner'. 

For reference's sake in this modern era of gigabyte data and online searchs, I will report the blackspot tendencies of three of my rose groups, the Griffith Buck roses, the Canadians, and the Old Garden roses, today and over the next two Mondays.  Today, we'll tackle the Buck roses, at least those roses who are at or beyond their second season with me.   The first number is the estimated percentage of leaves with blackspot and the second number the estimated percent defoliation.  The list, of course, begins with Carefree Beauty, an Earth-Kind® decorated rose and often a resistant control rose in disease plot-tests.

Carefree Beauty 0%-0%
Country Dancer 0%-0%
Freckles 0%-0%
April Moon 0%-0%
Griff's Red 0%-0%
Wild Ginger 0%-5%
Hawkeye Belle 10%-20%
Prairie Harvest 0%-80%  or 0%-0%  (one defoliated, the other perfectly healthy)
Prairie Star 80%-20%
Winter Sunset <5%-0%
Earth Song <5%-0%
Quietness 20%-0%
Polonaise 0%-0%
Pearlie Mae 10%-0%
Golden Princess <5%-0%
Queen Bee 10%-10%
Honey Sweet 0%-0%
Folk Singer 0%-0%
Bright Melody 0%-0%
Iobelle 0%-0%
Golden Unicorn 0%-0%
El Catala <5%-0%

I noted roses with "<5%" above when I found a leaf or two with some blackspot, but generally the rest of the rose was unaffected.  The health of most of these roses are not surprising, or should not be surprising for the Buck-bred roses, since Dr. Buck bred and raised his roses under a no-spray policy in a similar climate to mine.  'Prairie Star', 'Quietness', 'Pearlie Mae' and 'Queen Bee' seem to be the only ones that I grow currently with some degree of blackspot present.  Other, that is, than the quandary that 'Prairie Harvest' is presenting me with.  I have one bush almost defoliated and the other unaffected.  I don't know if this year is a quirk from a rose that I've grown for at least 10 years and whose foliage is normally very blackspot-resistant, or whether the rose got damaged from something else like our current drought.  Time alone will tell the me truth.

Magic Number Four

Chipping Sparrow eggs?

It never fails.  Just today, on a day of vacation to work in the garden, I was puttering around as usual, all the while thinking "what should my next blog be about?"  It must be blatantly obvious by now that I could blog ad infinitim about roses, evermore adding one more to the list of roses I've discussed, but Garden Musings already is top-heavy with roses.  If roses were the only thing I ever wrote about, I'm afraid I'd risk alienating some readers.  Believe it or not, I do occasionally try to relieve the monotony here for those who aren't unwaveringly rose-crazy.


Like magic, the answer to my question lay in the 'Carefree Beauty' rosebush I had just trimmed.  There, deep in the heart of this stalwart rose, was a tiny nest, about 2.5 inches in diameter, with four of the cutest little sky-blue-speckled-with-black eggs I've ever seen.  After an exhaustive search through my field guides and the Internet, I believe these eggs are most likely those of a Chipping Sparrow (Spizella passerina).  It is a very common sparrow around here in the summer, and the nest placement, about 4 feet off the ground in a bush, is correct, and the eggs are distinct and resemble the available pictures on the Internet.  Thankfully, these eggs don't resemble one of the many sparrow species in this area that are light blue with lots of light brown spots or I wouldn't have been able to even guess at the origin.  I'll try to confirm the identity with a visual of Momma Bird in the next few days, but it is going to be difficult at best.  I've scared her off the nest a few times today, but haven't been able to discern anything but a quick brown blur darting into the nearby viburnums.
 


Killdeer nest

I also found yet another Killdeer nest today while mowing, also with four eggs.  Why does four always seem to be the number of eggs for birds in Kansas anyway?  This new nest was placed almost exactly where another brood was raised two years ago, on a hillside in very short grass.  I would never find these nests if the Momma wouldn't try to lure me away, feigning a hurt wing.  Today's Momma didn't even bother with that;  she just sat on the nest and fixed me with a baleful eye while I mowed around her.  For the life of me, I don't understand why they don't nest in the taller grass that I never mow, in this case just 10 feet away, but I suppose they have their reasons.  I think they're pretty gutsy to lay these eggs on the almost bare ground.  The wider view below will give you a better idea of how exposed these eggs really are;  the eggs are in the center of the picture.  It must be a tough life to be  Killdeer chick.

Blogger's Bloom Day, May 2011

I don't often participate in Garden Blogger's Bloom Day from May Dreams Garden, but in the midst of a very cold, dreary Sunday, what better way to pass the afternoon than to show some glimpses of my garden and the brightness blooming outside.  Recognize that it's too cold and windy outside today, so these pictures were taken yesterday, but they're still blooming today, all the same.

For some reason, I tend to take and display more closeups of flowers, so consider this a rare look at part of my landscaping;  the back patio, blooming with, from foreground to background, 'Jeanne Lavoie', 'Zepherine Drouhin', 'Morden Blush', 'Prairie Joy', 'Carefree Beauty', and 'David Thompson'.  A little later, 'Fantin Latour' and 'Madame Hardy' should join the picture.  The blue/white flowers at the top are irises.  Click on it if you want to enlarge things. 

I think 'Carefree Beauty' deserves a closeup of its floriferousness, don't you?

'Morden Centennial' and deep red 'Hope for Humanity' are providing some color elsewhere in the border.

Of course, I love roses, but I'm not all about them.  The irises in this mixed iris-daylily bed are starting to bloom.  The red splotch at the center top of the picture is another rose, though; Rugosa cross 'Robusta'. 

Elsewhere, clematis 'Jackmanii' is trying to grow up a trellis near my gazebo, and some blue columbines are putting on a show in the front landscaping.

So, 'Rise-N-Shine' gardeners, the weather in Kansas may be cold, but there be flowers out there! Not pictured yet are the peonies, and a host of other clematis and irises and......

Autumn Color, Winter Sunset

One of the rarest colors of roses has always been that perfect apricot-orange color that I, myself, happen to really covet.  Do we like it only because it is rare?  Is it just a hard color to reach with a rose-breeding program?  Is it rare because yellow, itself, is such a relatively new color in Western-bred roses, considering that they were unknown before the Persian rose was introduced to Europe?  Regardless, it seems like every rose that hits that perfect hue of golden-peach-orange ends up on the popular list, whether it is 'Alchymist' or English rose 'Abraham Darby', or the new Paul Barden gallica 'Marianne'.

 Every year, as Autumn rolls around and provides other red and gold hues to mix in arrangements, I appreciate more and more the glorious display and delicious color of another of these copper beauties, the Dr. Griffith Buck-bred rose 'Winter Sunset'.  'Winter Sunset' is a shrub rose introduced in 1997 whose deep saffron-yellow buds open as large, fully double orange-yellow blossoms. Parentage of this rose is supposed to be the Buck rose Serendipity (seed) and a cross of Country Dancer and Alexandra (pollen). The blooms are borne continually from June through frost in clusters of 3 to 7 flowers on a three foot tall shrub.  The foliage of 'Winter Sunset' is dark green and glossy, and here in my Flint Hills garden it seems to be almost completely resistant to blackspot and I've never seen mildew on the plant.  This rose, like many of the Buck roses, is completely cane-hardy here in my zone 5B winters.

If I've had any difficulty here with 'Winter Sunset', it is that new canes seem to be easy to topple in the Kansas winds, so I have to make sure I "tip prune" each new cane before it reaches two feet high so that I cause the cane to strengthen and thicken before the large flowers weight it down. 

 

'Winter Sunset' will eventually open to expose a more yellow base and golden stamens, and it ages to a pink-orange hue on the outer petals, but the hybrid-tea style buds open slower than most of the Buck roses in my garden and so I get to enjoy them longer, both outside and, if cut, as house roses.  Fragrance is slight but present, and Mrs. ProfessorRoush tells me that she considers it fragrant so I don't quibble over its true degree of fragrance.  In a vase, with red fall leaves and foliage from other shrubs, it will make a dazzling group for the house.

 
So if you are in the market for hardy, unusual, healthy roses, try 'Winter Sunset' in your garden.  I consider it one of the best flowers Dr. Buck created, rivaled only in health by 'Prairie Harvest' and 'Carefree Beauty'.

Carefree Perfection

Readers of this blog already know that I'm partial to many of the roses bred by the late Griffith Buck.  It's a sure thing that Professor Buck created a number of marvelous and hardy roses specifically for the Midwest climate, but many of them remain unknown to rosarians in other areas where roses grow easily and large.

The most well-known and best of these roses has to be the aptly named 'Carefree Beauty'.  Here in the Flint Hills, 'Carefree Beauty' also has to be in the running for the title of Most Perfect Rose.  This clear pink stunner blooms continually and it's resistant to blackspot, drought, and wind.  It's so resistant to blackspot that in a survey by the Montreal Botanical Garden it was found to have only a 0-5% infection rate. The only time I've ever seen 'Carefree Beauty' look under the weather was during the ice storm of three winters ago, when a one-half inch coating of ice broke off several canes and generally made a ragged mess of one of my two specimens. 

'Carefree Beauty' grows about 4 feet tall in my garden and it's a rose that is not prone to send out new canes, but often has a central "stalk" that just widens and spreads over time.  I've rarely seen it without a bloom and the early bloom, as in the picture at the left, will knock your socks off.  Rated hardy to Zone 4b, it is completely hardy with no die-back in my Zone 5 garden.  It even adds winter interest with a nice display of globular orange hips.

'Carefree Beauty', released in 1977, has received its accolades from many sources.  This shrub rose was one of the first named to the Texas A&M EarthKind program (http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/earthkind/roses) and long before that recognition it was a popular rose propagated by the Texas Rose Rustlers with the study name 'Katy Road Pink'.  It's also been recommended by the University of Minnesota and as a solidly hardy rose and it was one of 24 roses that "passed the test" in Longwood Garden's Ten-Year Rose Trials (http://longwoodgardens.org/docs/educationalresources/roses.pdf).  'Carefree Beauty' is truly a rose for any garden and any gardener.

Griffith Buck Roses for the Midwest

With all the hype about and garden center proliferation of the English roses produced by David Austin, I must confess that I'm still not a big fan.  I've grown 'The Dark Lady' and 'Heritage' for a number of years, and the past couple of years I've added 'Mary Rose', 'Windemere', 'Benjamin Britten', 'Golden Celebration', and most recently, 'Lady Emma Hamilton', but I'm not very excited about most of them.  Okay, if I'm stuck in a thumb-screw press, 'Heritage' is a very nice blush pink and 'Golden Celebration', a bright yellow-orange, is probably my favorite performer.  But none of them just strike me as a "Well bust my buttons!" kind of rose.

'Prairie Harvest'

Ask me however, what performs best in my climate and I'd tell you that it's the group of roses bred by the late Dr. Griffith Buck.  Professor Buck was an Iowa State University horticulturist who hybridized about 90 roses varieties, most of which were released to commerce by his wife and daughter after his death in 1991.  Dr. Buck set out to develop roses that were cane-hardy to Zone 4 and which required minimal care in the landscape.  Proof of his success in that regard came from another University program, the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Earth-Kind® Rose Program with the naming of the Buck cultivar 'Carefree Beauty' as the 2006 Earth-Kind Rose® of the Year.  I grow a great number of the Buck cultivars, including 'Earthsong', 'Prairie Harvest', 'Prairie Star', 'Applejack', 'Country Dancer', 'Pearlie Mae', 'Polonaise', 'Hawkeye Belle', 'Griff's Red', and 'Winter Sunset' along with 'Carefree Beauty'.   All of these are great roses for my area, most of them cane-hardy and disease-resistant, but I've got to give a special shout out to 'Earthsong', a fuchsia-pink that does well both in my garden and at the KSU Rose Garden, and to 'Prairie Harvest', a light yellow Hybrid Tea that has the most perfect light-green foliage of any rose I grow.

'Freckles'

Many of the Buck roses are available from Internet sources such as Heirloom Old Garden Roses (http://www.heirloomroses.com/), but you also run across them in the most unlikely places if you know what you're looking for.  I ran across a rare Buck rose, 'Freckles', at a Hy-Vee Grocery Store two hours from home, thought that the name sounded familiar and took a $10.00 chance on it, and ended up with my favorite Buck rose of all.  'Freckles',  is now a three-year old, three foot tall rose in my garden and it has light-pink blooms speckled (as its name suggests) with darker wine spots.  As a single bloom, and as you can see on the right, a rose that comes closer to perfection than any other of the 100+ rose cultivars I grow.