A Better Side

'El Catala'

Wow, the onset of Fall surely changes our gardens, doesn't it?  It also sometimes makes me reassess my evaluation criteria and reevaluate my favorites.  Then again, perhaps my favorites don't change, but it is now, in the cooler temperatures, that I realize that all roses, just like humans, have their good and bad moments.  Sometimes they are a balled-up, crinkly mess, and sometimes, they just shine.  You just have to find the best conditions to develop each one, human or rose.

'El Catala'

Take, for example 'El Catala'.  I haven't been crazy about the performance I've gotten out of this rose all summer, but right now, in the cool days and cold nights, it is the star of its bed. I was wrong about him, wasn't I?  Take a look at this bicolored floral hunk to the left and above.  Completely scrumptious right now,  isn't he?

'Charlotte Brownell'

And look at how the colder temperatures bring out the blush in the cheeks of 'Charlotte Brownell'.  Amazing, isn't it, how a girl can be blushing and brazen at the same time?



'Freckles'

Just as the sun brings out the freckles in a young girls face, the claret markings of 'Freckles' are always enhanced by a little cold weather as well.  I'm learning that Griffith Buck had a number of these subtly streaked roses and I'm trying to grow a few more right now.

'Garden Party'

If I wasn't expecting a garden party after the heat of summer, 'Garden Party' is set on proving me wrong.  My 'Garden Party' struggles and struggles, a common affliction for many modern hybrid teas in this area, but coming out of summer, she's putting out these creamy white, perfect blossoms by the handful every day.



When I talk about favorites, though, there's always one rose whose beauty is never outdone; the everlasting 'Queen Elizabeth'.  When I want a picture of a perfect bud form, I can always count on the Queen to come through for me.

But then, as I pointed out, there is always 'Hope for Humanity', isn't there?  I can't imagine a more perfect cluster of dark red blooms, each vibrating deeply with life and hope.

 

'Hope for Humanity'

I've got quite a colorful landscape right now, this perfect time of early Fall, but sadly it all ends tonight.  I've watched the forecast all week, starting at a prediction of 32F tonight when I first looked, and then dropping steadily each time I checked it.  This morning, the prediction is for 25F tonight, so I know that I'm going to see a hard freeze and my garden is over.  I'm ready for it, though, the baby roses are all tucked into cloches and the grass has been mowed for the final time.  But I'm also not ready for it.  There are hundreds of beautiful roses like these right now and I'm trying to get half of Manhattan to come by and cut some today.  Somebody might as well benefit from a few more moments of beauty.

The Catalonian

'El Catala'

The beautiful, albeit slightly heat-singed, bi-colored rose pictured at the left is the Griffith Buck rose 'El Catala', a tribute to the great Catalan rose breeder Pedro Dot (or Pere Dot i Martinez as he was known in Catalan).  The Catalonians are an ethnic group in northern Spain (including Barcelona) with their own distinct language. As a high school student, Griffith Buck was assigned by a Spanish teacher to find a pen pal from Spain.  Senor Dot became that transAtlantic correspondent, taking the time to befriend the budding rosarian in a mentoring relationship that forged a lifetime interest and friendship, although the actual letters were written by his niece, Maria Antonia.  Pedro Dot's roses are not widely distributed these days, but if you've seen any of them you would most likely have run across 'Nevada', a single white Hybrid Moyesii, or the Large-Flowered climber 'Madame Grégoire Staechelin', both bred in 1927.

Officially listed as a red-blend grandiflora, 'El Catala' was released in 1981.  The classic buds open slowly to reveal double 4 inch diameter blooms of rose-red to crimson-red on the face of the petals and very pale rose on the reverse.  The color seems to intensify in heat and sunlight.  Blooms are borne singly or in clusters up to 8 at a time and have a mild fragrance.  The bush, in its second summer in my garden, is small at present, only 2 feet tall and about 1.5 feet wide, and seems healthy but not very vigorous.  It has a slow repeat bloom, but I've seen no fungus or winter damage here during two seasons.  The seed parent was 'Wanderin' Wind', a Buck-bred pink shrub, and the pollen parent was a complex cross of a seeding of 'Dornroschen' and 'Peace' with 'Brasilia'.  It is the latter ancestor, a scarlet rose with a golden yellow reverse, that the unique coloring pattern of 'El Catala' seems to originate from.   

'El Catala'

I find the coloring to be quite similar to the 1980 William Warriner-bred eventual AARS winner 'Love', although 'Love' tends to be a little more crimson on the inside and a little more white on the outside of the petals than 'El Catala'.   I grow 'Love' here on the Kansas prairie as well as 'El Catala', and it is no contest that  'El Catala' is a much more healthy rose than 'Love', which struggles year to year to keep enough canes alive to reach a bloom-supporting size.  Although the summer heat seems to be doing its worst on the pictured 'El Catala' blooms, they hold their own the rest of the year, adding a nice and very different touch to the front of the rose garden.