Serendipitous Apricot

I was delighted, while walking the mad dog Bella on my evening rounds, to see this bloom of 'Serendipity' standing up tall and begging to be noticed.  I grow few roses that develop a classic high-centered Hybrid-Tea form, but this demure gal is clearly one of them.  Perfect enough for a Victorian, perfect enough for me!

'Serendipity' is a 4 foot tall Shrub rose that is considered to be a Hybrid Tea by some sources.  I understand the confusion now that I've seen her high-centered, double bloom.  Blooms are large (4-4.5 inches) and mostly one to a stem but she also occasionally clusters.  She was introduced by Dr. Griffith Buck in 1978.  Her official color is given on the Iowa State Buck Rose website as "Mars Orange (RHSCC 31 C) over a buttercup yellow (RHSCC 1 6C) base and becoming pale Orient pink (RHSCC 36B) with age."  Translation:  she's mostly apricot and she pales to pink.  I would add that she has more pink tones than orange when she develops in cooler temperatures.

She's been in my garden for two years and she has held her own against the climate, although I wouldn't describe her as vigorous, and she certainly wasn't cane hardy this past winter, growing back from about 6 inches high this spring.  In the garden, I would have said last year that the blooms open rapidly in one or two days to a loosely arranged cupped form, but here in the house she has maintained that high-center bud form for 4 days.  To my nose, she has a moderate to strong, very sweet fragrance.  Some describe her as apple-scented, but I don't.  No blackspot on this one, over the past two seasons.  One nursery states that this rose was previously sold as Mango Blush, a found rose, with a mild fragrance and some repeat.  I don't know if Mango Blush is actually 'Serendipity,' because I think the fragrance is stronger than described and I think 'Serendipity' reblooms more consistently than "some repeat."

'Serendipity' may not be my first choice of a Griffith Buck rose to grow, but she's not a terrible rose either, and she has a great Hybrid Tea form for cutting.  I'd tell you that her apricot color is unmatched, but I know better because there are several Griffith Buck roses with better orangey tones. 'Serendipity' is said to be a cross of two seedlings; (Western Sun × Carefree Beauty) X (Apricot Nectar × Prairie Princess).

Token Hybrid Teas

'Tiffany'

Yes, I grow some Hybrid Tea Roses.  A few.  A very few.  A small fraction of the Hybrid Teas that you would find in a regular rose garden are mixed among my Rugosa's and Canadian's and Old Garden Roses.  Except for a few Griffith Buck roses that are officially listed as Hybrid Tea's, however, I can count the classic Hybrid Teas in my garden on the fingers of both hands.  I grow 'Olympiad', 'Garden Party', 'Pristine', 'First Prize', and 'Double Delight', and....two that I  absolutely can't do without; delicate and refined 'Tiffany' and her older and more softly-colored sister, 'Helen Traubel'.
 
'Tiffany' is a 1954 offspring of 'Charlotte Armstrong' X 'Girona', bred by Robert Lindquist.  This delicate medium pink rose with a yellow base to her petals has a tremendous fragrance, strong enough to make her the second winner of the James Alexander Gamble award for fragrance from the American Rose Society in 1962.  She was also a winner of the coveted AARS award in 1955.  Blooms are large, double, and very high-centered on long stems.  She grows in my garden as the own-root clone of a former grafted $3.00 bag rose, a tough start to life on the prairie, but one that keeps her coming back year after year.   She is not cane hardy in my garden, and she needs occasional spray for blackspot, but as a rose princess, she's welcome to stay as long as she likes.

'Helen Traubel'

'Helen Traubel' is also a cross of 'Charlotte Armstrong', but this time the promiscuous lass dallied with a Kordes-bred Hybrid Tea named 'Glowing Sunset'.   This apricot-hued Hybrid Tea bred in 1951 by Herbert Swim has a larger bloom than 'Tiffany', with an average diameter of around 5 inches in my garden, and she grows a bit taller.  'Helen Traubel'  opens a little more loosely and quickly and I prefer her coloration, blushing and glowing at the same time.  Fragrance is moderate, not nearly as strong as 'Tiffany', but still lovely. 

These grand old dames are not viewed equally in rosedom.  'Tiffany' is widely viewed as a proper and refined lady of high acclaim.   'Helen Traubel' has a bit of a poor reputation, the black sheep of the sisters as it were, to the point where she is called "Hell 'n' Trouble" by some sources.  Various rosarians complain about the blooms of the latter nodding with weak necks, and a tendency for blackspot.  Personally, in terms of health and performance, I prefer 'Helen Traubel' over 'Tiffany' in my vicious climate.  In my garden, 'Tiffany' needs coddling, is only marginally hardy, and while her blooms are beautiful, I wouldn't ever describe the bush as vigorous.  In contrast, I've watched a dozen bushes of 'Helen Traubel' for a couple of decades in the Manhattan City Rose Garden, and out of a group of probably 40 different Hybrid Tea and Floribundas, she is consistently the most hardy and vigorous.  In fact, most years she is cane hardy without added protection at that garden.  'Tiffany' died out in the City Rose Garden and at the KSU Rose Garden.  I've only grown 'Helen Traubel' about three years in my own garden, but already she has twice the number of healthy canes as 'Tiffany'.  Both roses need blackspot preventatives in Kansas, so there isn't a clear winner in that regard.

All things considered, I think these two roses are a perfect example of roses who respond better to some climates and grow poorly in others.  I also see them as a rallying call for the importance of regional rose trials and lists of best regional performers.  It doesn't matter to me how large or beautiful a rose blooms in California if it won't stand up to the wind and heat of Manhattan. Kansas.  



'Helen Traubel'

 

Intuited Love

'Red Intuition'

This, friends, is the rose that ProfessorRoush has been waiting for.  I don't recall where or how, but somewhere last year, I came across a picture of 'Red Intuition'.  Given my fondness for striped roses, it was inevitable that this one would eventually grow in my garden.  I bided my time over the past year, staring daily at the post-it note above my phone with only its name listed in my poor penmanship.  And this Winter, while ordering roses for the current season, I obtained it from Palatine roses in Canada.  

And ever since then, I've been waiting still.  The bare-root, grafted rose came on time, went straight into the ground, and began to leaf out.  I had a brief scare with our very late April frost, which knocked it back a bit even though I had covered it up overnight, but it shook off the frostbite and eventually sent up a bud.  A bud that opened slightly 3 days ago, as you can see below at the left, and then proceeded to tease me petal by petal until today, in the late afternoon, when it was finally fully open (as above) and met all my expectations.

'Red Intuition' is recorded as discovered in France by Guy Delbard in 1999, and introduced in 2004. It is patented in the US as DELstriro.  The rose is described as red, with dark red streaks, stripes, and flecks, and double with 31 to 39 petals (it's also listed as having 17-25 petals on the same page of helpmefind.com).  It's a large bloom of about 4.5" diameter, borne solitary or in small clusters.  The bush is described as tall, nearly thornless, and with semi-glossy foliage.  'Red Intuition' is a sport of 'Belle Rouge' (or DElego), a 1996 Hybrid Tea by Delbard.

'Red Intuition' is certainly a beautiful rose all on its own, but my interest in it goes far deeper than its stripes.  There is a "lost" Griffith Buck Hybrid Tea rose that Dr. Buck patented and named 'Red Sparkler' and I'm playing a hunch.  I've only seen one really poor picture of it (the same picture is reproduced everywhere), and to my eyes it was the splitting image of 'Red Intuition'.  Official notes indicate that 'Red Sparkler' was the same 4.5" diameter size as 'Red Intuition' and had a similar number of petals, but it differs in that it is listed as a velvety red rose with pink AND WHITE stripes so maybe I'm all wet.   My concern is that 'Red Intuition' has leathery, semi-glossy foliage, while 'Belle Rouge' reportedly has glossy foliage, so if 'Red Intution' is a sport of the latter, it was a double sport, both in foliage and in flower color. That would be darned unusual.  Add that to a rumor that Dr. Buck is rumored to have sent bud wood of 'Red Sparkler' to Europe at one time and maybe you can understand why I'm going to get a plant of 'Belle Rouge' and grow it right next to my 'Red Intuition' to compare the foliage.  Just in case the lost rose isn't really lost.

Renewal

Friends, I knew that we had a long, hard winter here, but I didn't know how exactly how hard it was until my normal spring chores came around to my "formal rose bed."  You can see it below and then from a different angle, just after cleanup, open and bare, ready to begin new growth again.

It has been years since this bed looked so bare, so lacking of the beauty within.  It probably hasn't looked this way since I first planted it, over 10 years ago.  In most years of late, as Zone 6B has moved up to our region, I've given most of these roses a mere trim with a hedge trimmer, leaving 3-5 foot bushes throughout the garden.  Only one or two Hybrid Teas get a regular scalping, and sometimes even 'Tiffany' or 'First Prize' stays at the 3-foot level.  This year, however, most every rose was either growing back completely from the roots or had only spotty growth higher on the bush.  I could hear them whispering.  "Renew us."  "Help us."

Many of the 50+ roses in this bed are cane hardy to at least Zone 4, so that really tells me what our winter was like.  The remaining tall roses of the picture are 'Therese Bugnet', 'John Franklin', 'Martin Frobisher'  'Earthsong', 'Variegata di Bologna', 'Red Moss', 'Leda', 'Blush Hip', and 'Coquette de Blanche'.  Notice that most of these are either Canadian Roses or Old Garden Roses.

As for the chopped off group, they're a varied lot of fame.  Two English roses, 'Golden Celebration' and 'The Dark Lady'.  About eight Griffith Buck roses went down, including 'Prairie Harvest' and 'Autumn Sunset'.  'Sally Holmes' and 'Lady Elsie May' became midgets, along with two Bailey Roses including 'Hot Wonder and 'High Voltage'.  Even two Canadian roses, 'Winnepeg Park' and 'Morden Fireglow', got burr cuts.

I would be upset at the winter kill, but, to be truthful, this wholesale destruction needed to happen anyway.  The bushes here were tangled and overgrown, some of them massive things that were shading out more delicate neighbors.  And, in the end, it is fitting that the renewal of this garden took place on the eve of Easter.  What better day to ready oneself and one's garden for a new beginning?

Still Life

I am well aware that the few roses in this vase are crumpled and frost damaged and certainly not the best representatives for my gardening skills.  I collected these last few buds from the garden Monday night just before a forecast hard freeze and it occurred to me that I should display their imperfect forms here for some of you who might believe that I don't grow any classic Hybrid Teas at all. 

Any Hybrid Tea roses in my garden have to earn their way in by fragrance, and they can only stay if they will return year after year in Zone 6B with minimal or no winter coddling and without regular fungal sprays.  Thus, I present to you 'Double Delight', 'Tiffany' (on the left) and two buds of 'Chrysler Imperial' (on the right).  I doubt that three more fragrant roses exist in all of the world.  In my garden, but not blooming right now, are also a decrepit 'Garden Party', a struggling 'Pristine', a miserable 'Granada', a scentless 'Touch of Class', two almost-scentless 'Olympiad',  and a mildewed and constantly balled-up, 'La France'.   'Double Delight' and 'Tiffany' are safe from my wrath, and I'll never live in a garden without 'Olympiad', but the rest of these interlopers constantly live at the precipice of spade-pruning.  Indeed, more than once I've expected and wished for  'Garden Party' and 'Pristine' to expire, only to see them send up a measly cane or two just to irritate me.  Some things just don't know when to die on their own.

I've always been particularly fond of 'Double Delight', however.  It is a marginal survivor in my area, but I fell in love with that overpowering sweet scent back in my adolescent rose-growing days before I knew better.  It was sort of like falling for the beautiful high school cheerleader before realizing that keeping her required you to spend all of your hard-earned minimum-wage money and future college funds on jewelry, ice cream, and restaurant meals.  Yes, she was nice to admire and hold and smell, but, darn it, she was still almost more trouble than she was worth.  And that was even without any bouts of fungus disease!  If you weren't a geeky nerd with no other similar female prospects, you'd have gotten rid of her years ago.  In the case of 'Double Delight', yes, it blackspots and it is an ugly garden bush and it throws up lots of double-centered flowers.  I do believe it is more even fragrant on its own roots than it is as a grafted bush, but if I wasn't still a geeky nerd at heart, I'd have shovel-pruned her long ago.  Or maybe not.  Where would I get another rose of that beauty, fungus or not?