Quiet, Demure, and Uninspiring

'Quietness'

I've kept mum (pun intended) for quite a while about 'Quietness', one of the "post-Griffith-Buck" introduced roses that were reportedly bred by Griffith Buck, and I suppose I should finally say something about it.  It's not that I haven't noticed the rose in my garden or watched its every bloom develop and open, my silence simply stems from a lack of enthusiasm.  I just don't know yet how I feel about 'Quietness'.  I can tell you that I'm not stark raving mad, avid, or agog about it at the present time.  Perhaps all the Internet hype about this rose had me expecting more. 



'Quietness'

'Quietness' was introduced in 2003 by Roses Unlimited, and she quickly gained acclaim as a show rose and garden performer.  I have to agree that Quietness' is a good rose and that she is a good cutting rose for the house.  She is the light blush pink of a new baby's cheeks and very full of petals, a double rose of some 40+petals that is also blessed with a strong perfume.  I don't know the proper term for the petal shape, but I would call it a "bi-lobed" petal, with almost, but not quite, a fringed rim.   The blooms start out in classic Hybrid Tea form, open full, and are quite large, almost 4" inches in diameter.  Blooms are often, as pictured here, borne in clusters and may be seen in several stages on a cluster.  All these are carried on a healthy bush more Hybrid Tea-form to me than shrublike.  Leaves are moderately resistant to blackspot for me, with <25% loss this year for me (as always, without spray).  This rose grows tall, 4-5 feet, but is not terribly wide in my garden at present.  Overall, I'd say she is lighter pink, slightly smaller, and more double-flowered, but otherwise resembles 'Queen Elizabeth'.  Is that an endorsement or a slight?

Esteemed rosarian Paul Zimmerman, writing from South Carolina, raves about 'Quietness', saying she is the easiest keeper in the garden of one of his friends, and "If you are looking for a stunning, soft pink, non stop blooming, smell-o-rama experience, than Quietness is the rose for you."  In an even more impressive endorsement, Peggy Rockerfeller Rose Garden curator Peter Kukielski  and his staff at the New York Botanical Gardens rated 845 roses for 3 years for hardiness and disease resistance and the winner was 'Quietness'(!), just ahead of 'Home Run' and 27 spots ahead of 'Knock Out'!   So perhaps, my specimen just isn't quite old enough to shine yet, or perhaps 'Quietness' does better in other climates such as the Atlantic seaboard, than it does in the MidWest.  If the latter is true and she performed adequately but not spectacularly in Dr. Buck's Iowa State proving grounds, that could explain why Dr. Buck didn't release the rose during his lifetime.  Right now, based on my experience this year growing a number of young Griffith Buck roses and as I noted earlier, I'd have given the best-newcomer nod to 'Chorale', another light pink, and for me, more rapidly repeating, Buck rose.

Update 09/27/2013;  Okay, I take some of it back.  Looking at 'Quietness' again, I realize that I overestimated its blackspot and that it actually has practically none and has retained all its foliage while 'Chorale' has lost about half its foliage.  I stand by the observation that 'Chorale' repeats its bloom faster.

Griffith Buck Rose Chart

I'm sorry, I am aware that this is a somewhat unusual post for Garden Musings, and it completely lacks any attempt at literacy or style, but I'm too excited to show you something.  I spent most of yesterday working on a talk I have to give in late September at the annual Extension Master Gardener state continuing education conference, and I put together a handout listing the Griffith Buck roses that I'm pretty proud of:

The sample above is a small screen clip to show you the chart I made.  It lists what I think are all the roses (99?) bred by Griffith Buck and introduced to commerce either prior to or after his death.  As many rosarians know, there are a couple of Buck roses that were introduced over the decade following his passing,and then approximately 8 more, collected from his friends, were introduced in 2010 by Chamblee Rose Nursery of Tyler, Texas.  To create the chart, I pulled together information from several web sources, my own experience, and, most prominently, an old xeroxed description of cultivars that is of unknown provenance and dates back at least to 1987.  Even so, there are still some gaps in info.  In case you are wondering, the "grey" background items are Buck roses that I've never seen or grown.  The "white" are roses I currently have in my garden, although many aren't mature yet.

UPDATE:  I was able to add the table to page 3 here on this blog.  It doesn't format as perfectly as my Word document pictured above, but at least I can keep it updated better than a jpg file on Photobucket.  It provides the pictured information such as color, height, etc on each one, as well as my best estimate of blackspot resistance in my mid-continental climate. The legend for the chart is at the bottom.  I hope everyone finds it useful and I plan to update it as I receive more information.Enjoy!
 
I left this paragraph from the original post in case you want to download the original table jpg's, but this info will not be updated:    Since I thought that this information might be useful to others, I've posted page 1 of the list here, on Photobucket, and page 2 of the list here.  Once opened, if you click on them again, they will be less fuzzy.   I think these will print out fine although the small subscripts get a little lost, but I couldn't figure out how to post a PDF to either here or Photobucket.  If anyone else has a better idea, please let me know.   The chart is two pages.

Yes, I'm Ready

On first read, I disagreed with Meghan Shinn, opining in this month's Horticulture Magazine that it was time for the gardening season to end.  The young and beautiful Ms. Shinn said she was tired of it all and that the garden had run its course.  I disagreed initially because I wasn't sure I was ready yet for the end of the roses, for the finish line of the grasses and asters.

But Meghan's editorial did come during a week of 100+ temperatures here in Kansas.  And the drought is back in full force and I'm beginning to think about carrying water to young plants and I just don't want to do it.  I'm not young and energetic like the fresh-faced Ms. Shinn, I'm old and achy, tired of summer and tired of weeds and tired of endless cantaloupe that need picking.

Well, maybe I'm not quite that washed up, but as I mowed yesterday, I did decide that I should welcome the wisdom of Horticulture's current editor, not question it.  Perhaps it was dusty, drought-stressed grass, unmowed for two weeks and sprouting unsightly seedheads as the single lure for me to the mower.  Perchance it was the sight of yet another rain cloud passing around me to the North, my dessicated and weary soul fruitlessly begging for relief.  Maybe it was the incredible harvest of crabgrass thumbing its nose at me from the edges of all my garden beds.  Perhaps it was the skinny, unattractive legs of some of the less-blackspot-resistant members of the rose troupe that were spoiling my mood.  The hordes of grasshoppers didn't help, hopping madly on me in the thousands as I mowed, and their efforts to advance my discomfort were aided by biting flies and large nearly-invisible spider webs.  Maybe it was just the heat.

My garden is still attractive, I think, although it has morphed into a white garden and I'm not that fond of monochromatic gardens.  As you can see from the picture above, and see better if you click on the picture, the overall garden is dominated by the white panicled Hydrangea to the left and the tall central column of white Sweet Autumn Clematis, and the Boltonia sp. blob amid the ornamental grass bed and the several white or near white Hibiscus syriacus scattered around the beds.  Add in a few tall white-edged "Snow-in-Summer" milkweeds that I purposely allowed to survive, the remnant blooms of a white 'Navaho' crapemyrtle, and a few pale pinks of various roses like 'Freckles' and 'Amiga Mia', and there's entirely too much white drowning out the more colored roses and Rose of Sharon.  Even my 'Sally Holmes', normally a decrepit specimen that I somehow allow to keep photosynthesizing against my better judgment, has decided to add an unusual number of blossoms to the mix.

After reflection, I think Ms. Shinn is right.  I'm not built for a California or Hawaii climate, with year round weeds and flowers.  I'm a child of the four-seasoned Midwest, always ready to move along with the flow of the seasons.  I'm ready for the first frosts to bring on the end of mowing the relentless prairie grass.  I'm ready for the leaves to turn and drop, ready for the rush to gather the last perfect roses before they are covered by snow.  I'm ready again to dream of those first tender green sprouts of Spring, the world borne anew and damp and fresh.

 

Hydrangea Heaven

Kansas gardens are living proof that not all hydrangeas are created equal.  I have always been a miserable failure at growing the more common blue or pink Hydrangea macrophylla, countless numbers of which I have purchased, watered, fertilized, protected, cursed and eventually mourned over.  My experiences with the more cold- and drought-resistant panicled hydrangeas (Hydrangea paniculata) have been much more promising, however.  Here in the dry sunny Flint Hills, these large shrubs are dependable focal points for the August garden.

 

 

 

'Limelight'

Without a doubt, the most floriferous display in my garden this week is 'Limelight' a fabulous panicled hydrangea that dominates its corner of the garden.  'Limelight' is an introduction from Holland patented in 2002, and it can make an enormous eight foot tall deciduous shrub in the garden, although mine seems to have maxed out at approximately 5 foot tall and wide.  The drought of the past two years seems to have worked in my favor this year, bringing the plant into a display that surpasses any other year.  'Limelight' grows in full sun and on an exposed site for me, completely unprotected from the Kansas climate, and it is cold-hardy to the tips.



'Limelight' Hydrangea

Some of the cone-shaped flower panicles of 'Limelight' are almost a foot long and 6 inches wide. They start out light lime-green and then fade to white and finally gain some pink tones in the fall, and the foliage seems to be resistant to insect and fungal damage here, although the leaves occasionally get a little crisped on the edges by the hot July and August sun.  I only regret that there is only a negligible fragrance and that the shrub is seemingly sterile in its environment, unattractive to bees and other valuable garden residents.

'Pink Diamond'

I grow several other panicled hydrangeas.  'Pink Diamond', pictured to the left and below, was labeled at purchase as a Hydrangea microphylla, but I can't find H. microphylla as a recognized species and online sources list it as H. paniculata.  'Pink Diamond' also provides a good floral display, and individual flowers turn pink quickly at the base of the panicles.  My 'Pink Diamond' shrub is about the same size overall as 'Limelight', and it sits at the opposite end of the same bed, forming white bookends at this time of the year for the other plants in the rest of the bed.

'Pink Diamond'

'Vanilla Strawberry'

H. paniculata 'Vanilla Strawberry' grows almost in the center of the same bed, and this has a much more subtle display than its show-off cousins.  At maturity, it is around four feet tall and wide, a little smaller than the H. paniculata cultivars, perhaps because it grows in the shadow of a towering  'Sweet Autumn Clematis' (seen to the left of the picture below) that also insists on trying to colonize everything within it's reach.  A note of caution is in order about the H. paniculata's:  Wikipedia states that hydrangeas are moderately toxic if eaten, with all parts of the plant containing cyanogenic glycosides.  Human beings sometimes try to smoke H. paniculata leaves, an often fatal action due to cyanide inhalation.  So, kids, don't smoke hydrangeas.

'Vanilla Strawberry' covered by C. paniculata

Although I've previously neglected to mention the garden usefulness of H. paniculata and other hardy hydrangeas as stalwart shrubs in Kansas, I would never leave them out of my next garden.  Right now, I've got high hopes for a yet small 'Pinky Winky' cultivar that I planted two years ago, although it has struggled in the drought and heat of its first two summers.  I'll also disclose that I've failed previously with H. paniculata 'Quick Fire', and with 'H. quercifolia', and 'H. quercifolia 'Little Honey',  but I think the latter native species deserves another try before I give up on it entirely.  It is supposed to have nicely-colored fall foliage that would be a good addition to my October garden.