EarthSong

Did you ever have a love-hate relationship with a rose?   I have one with a spectacular rose that should be on the top of everyone's list, but it just can't ever seem to make it to the top of mine. 'Earthsong', a 1975 introduction by Dr. Griffith Buck, has so many positive attributes that I almost feel guilty telling you that it is not one of my top ten roses, but it just isn't okay?  Please don't think less of me for it.

What, you might ask, is my complaint against a 4-5 foot tall continually-blooming rose with perfect hybrid-tea-like bud form?  A grandiflora that is unfailingly completely hardy in my zone 5b climate without any winter protection?  A rose that I haven't had to trim at all for 3 years but which maintains a perfect vase shape all on its own?  A rose that self-cleans its fully double blooms and leaves a few nice orange hips behind for winter interest?  One that never, ever requires me to take up defensive positions with a fungicide- or insecticide-filled sprayer?

My sole problem with this rose is the color.  Variously described as "deep pink," "fuchsia pink," and "Tyrian red" (which is the same as Tyrian Purple and I've never actually seen that color), 'EarthSong' is just a little too much on the "hot" pink side for me.  A little too showy and vivid for either a Iowa State horticulture professor to have introduced, or for a Kansas State veterinary professor to feel comfortable inviting to a mixer with just any other group of plants.  I find the color just a little garish, a little bold, a little too vibrant.  Against a nice bright yellow (I have it next to floribunda 'Sunsprite'), it'll even make your eyes bleed. But alone in the garden, it will certainly stand out from surrounding green plants.  And my own-root 'EarthSong' cloned itself with a runner this year in an attempt to endear me to it.  I moved the runner over between bright red 'Illusion' and 'Red Moss', where it hopefully won't be quite so grating.

'EarthSong' is a cross of 'Music Maker' and 'Prairie Star', the latter another disease free and perfect rose that is a much more acceptable cream in my garden.  A candidate under evaluation at present for the EarthKind designation, 'EarthSong' should perform well in just about anyone's garden.  Just as long as you don't mind the color.

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.