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.

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.