Pleasing Profusion

'Alchymist'

I blogged yesterday that my garden had exploded with roses and I thought that everyone deserved at least a little peek at the bounty therein.   There were 170 rose bushes blooming when I counted yesterday.   'Alchymist', with a rainbow of colors in one bloom, leads the way into my scenery and provides the hook for my readers to take a peek.  'One of my two 'Alchymist' is blooming the best and healthiest I've ever seen it, so I'm reaping the rewards from deciding to trim this stiff-armed climber into a bush form.

My front bed (below) is alive right now with color all over from the roses, irises, peonies, and a weigela.  I took this picture as I was taking prom pictures of my daughter yesterday evening.   The roses seen are (left to right), cheerful tricolored 'Betty Boop', scarlet 'Hunter', yellow-orange 'Morden Sunrise', and cardinal 'Champaign' in the shade at back.

My back patio bed is a string of shrub roses.  Just barely blooming, at the top, are white 'Madame Hardy' and pink 'Fantin Latour', with the more profuse pink flowers of (back to front), 'David Thompson', 'Carefree Beauty', 'Prairie JOY', (not Prairie Sunrise'), 'Zephirine Drouhin', and 'Jeanne Lavoie' stealing the show.  Oh, and a deep red 'Dark Lady' at the bottom by the pot.

'Variegata di Bologna'

My main formal rose bed (below), which contains almost 50 roses, simply boasts roses too numerous to name, but it is a wave of color.  Front and center in the foreground is towering 'Earth Song', with a shaded bright yellow 'Sunsprite' beneath its feet and a 'Garden Party' to the side.  However, every year I await one special rose from this bed, the scrumptious 'Variegata di Bologna', pictured from yesterday at the right.

I can't show everything today, there are just too many roses out there in the garden proper, but I'll leave you with a taste of the bed I call my "rose berm".  This was my first shrub rose planting, and the west end of the bed, seen here, has a number including (roughly left to right) 'Linda Campbell', 'Iceberg', 'Double Red Knockout', 'Harison's Yellow', 'Souvenir de Philemon Cochet', 'Hawkeye Belle', and (in the foreground), 'Rose de Rescht'.  Yes, you didn't read it wrong, I have a 'Double Red Knockout' front and center despite my ranting about them.  Nobody's perfect.

  I hope all your rose days to come are as happy and contented as mine are right now!

Marvelous Marianne

'Marianne'

My roses exploded yesterday.  Completely exploded.  Rose bushes that had not opened a single bud the day before were covered with blooms.  And along with that profusion of blooms, the first of my long-awaited Paul Barden Hybrid Gallicas, 'Marianne', made her opening debut, the belle of  yesterday's ball.

'Marianne' (ARDgoldeneyes) has had a tough life out here on the prairie, as you can guess from the pictures of these blooms that each show a little wind-storm damage.  She was planted in the fall of 2010, so the rose bush that you're seeing has really had only a single summer's growing season, and a hot, dry one at that.  Early on during the spring of 2011, some marauding animal or the relentless prairie wind broke off the single cane of her band and I thought I'd lost her, but back she came from the roots, fighting for her life.  She's about 2 1/2 feet tall right now, and a little wind-beaten from recent weather, but demure and beautiful nonetheless.  At mature height she is supposed to be a 5 to 7 foot tall rose.

'Marianne'

These blooms on the young 'Marianne' are approximately 3 inches across on the first day, and I expect as the bush matures, the blooms will stretch a little larger.  They are very double (advertised as 40+ petals, although I haven't counted) and as delightfully fragrant as their Old Garden forefathers.  The blooms, as you see, range from a blush white to the more expected peach tones and it will be interesting to see what the Kansas sun does to their coloration.  'Marianne' is not a very thorny bush, polite to my bluejean legs as I pass by, and she shows no sign of blackspot or petal loss at present.

'Marianne' bush, 2nd year

'Marianne' was bred by Paul Barden in 2001 and introduced in 2005.   She seems fully hardy here in Zone 6A (the former 5B), having survived one rough snowy winter as a band and also last winter's dry but mild temperatures.   If you are looking for more information about her, the best source is undoubtedly Barden's own website entry about 'Marianne'.  There, he writes "This Hybrid Gallica is a robust rose, as one might guess from a glance at its parentage. It has, in my opinion, inherited many of the best traits of each parent; the wonderful vigor and coloring of 'Abraham Darby' and the bloom form and disease resistance of 'Duchesse de Montebello'."   It is rare and delightful in rosedom to get so much good information straight from the breeder.

Myself, I would only add that 'Duchesse de Montebello' is one of my favorite OGR's for Kansas and I had high hopes for 'Marianne'.  Hopes that were fulfilled with my first sniff of the first blossom.

Purple Power

'Purple Pavement' has been given its time on Garden Musings, but there are many roses out there in rosedom with deeper purple hues, and a couple of them have started blooming here in Zone 6A.  Among the purples, I grow the Old Garden rose 'La Reine' (right) currently blooming its head off, and the newer purple floribunda 'Rhapsody in Blue' (bottom left), just coming on.  Both are the "most purplish" ever, a hypercolorful  phenomenon that I feel is occurring in all my pinks and purple roses this year.  I don't know if it is the result of the hot March/cold early April/hot late April weather here or something else, but the colors of many roses all across town are much deeper this year.  I'm not complaining, mind you.

'La Reine', in 2005

'La Reine'  is an 1842 Hybrid Perpetual bred by Jean Laffay.  In my garden, this is a stiff upright bush of perhaps 5 feet in height.  It is an almost thornless rose and sports a very double flower about 4 inches in diameter, and it does rebloom once or twice during the year.  Some pictures on the web show it as pinkish-purple, and others as more purple like my picture this year, and you have to be careful to differentiate this rose from the shell pink bourbon 'Reine Victoria' when you search for it.  Pictures on the web show 'La Reine' in shades from pink to purple, and I've got pictures from 2009 that show this same bush in carmine-pink, and from 2005 (left) with pinkish-purple tones.  I much prefer the deeper purple of this year's blooms.  If these seasonal color enhancements hold true, I can't wait to see 'Charles de Mills' and 'Cardinal de Richelieu' this year!

'Rhapsody in Blue'

'Rhapsody in Blue' (FRAntasia) is a newish shrub rose bred by Cowlishaw in 1999 and introduced into the United States in 2007.  This semidouble rose opens flat with a  nice smokey-purple color and yellow stamens, but I am so far underwhelmed by the (lack of) vigor in the bush and the slow bloom repeat.  It reportedly grows to almost 8 feet in some areas, but it has yet to top 2.5 feet tall in my garden, partially due to extreme winter dieback in several of the 4 winters I've grown this bush.  What the heck, I'll give it a few years, now that I'm 6A and not 5B, and see how it does over time.