Roses surviving despite neglect
jeff_zephyr
11 years ago
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harmonyp
11 years agomendocino_rose
11 years agoRelated Discussions
Neglected Hedge Roses
Comments (6)I'll bet they can look spectacular! Personally, I don't like to remove more than a third of a plant at any one time. With the heat and the fact the lower parts are defoliated, I would wait until Fall before doing anything to them. Once you know you aren't going to get record high temps, you can begin whittling them down to the size you want them to be. In Zone 9, you should probably be more concerned about heat than cold, so beginning to thin them out, "lace" them as is done to trees to open them and permit light and air to their interiors. With their being old and woody, you want to leave them an escape when you cut them. By not taking more than about a third off their height, they can more easily sprout from available buds and, hopefully, begin new basal breaks. Once this begins, more can be removed from their tops. Should there be any really awful looking lower, woody canes, those can also begin to be removed to create room for new basal breaks. Thick, old, woody canes are more easily sun burned. If where they grow is exposed to long periods of direct, hot sun, particularly between two drives with all of that reflected, radiated heat, allowing them more foliage cover while it's hot should prevent any heavy heat and water stress. Beginning the pruning (except for those growths which may be blocking the drive, path, etc.) will allow them to continue feeding and shading themselves until it's cooler and they can relax a bit. At least, from the description and what I imagine your conditions are like, that's how I would approach it. Kim...See MoreOld, neglected roses
Comments (12)Yes, the fact that they are actually BLOOMING at this time of year, in spite of being old & neglected, is evidence that they are good strong plants. Start by taking out dead wood. Then water, mulch & do a conservative feeding, say, mid September. You should get a nice fall "flush" of flowers. Benign neglect has preserved a lot of old hybrid teas. The ruthless annual pruning, "as advised" by many publications or individuals can be rough on plants, especially in hot zones. They ARE shrubs, after all & whacking back healthy canes all the time robs them of healthy leaves & wood. Sure, you can prune to shape or to encourage a plant to send up young wood. But in zone 10, for now, I'd just give them care & take out dead canes until you can observe these old treasures & find out more about them--good luck!...See MoreNeglected old memorial rose garden
Comments (7)It looks like someone cared a lot about the garden and then no one did anymore. It is really sad. The roses look pretty good despite the neglect. I hope some rosy gardeners find it again someday and bring it back to its former glory. Maybe if you posted the name of the town someone living nearby will be motivated to go and tend it?...See MoreNeglected [Tea] Roses, 1887
Comments (29)Anyway, getting back to the point of this thread.......... When I see old references mentioning roses that are no longer "with us", I wonder if it's necessarily a bad thing. Yes, it's a "bad thing", in my opinion, when roses are gone simply because fashions changed, despite being good garden plants. But even now, many similar roses are released, perhaps attempting to latch onto the popularity of the first of that type to be introduced. Over time, gardeners declare which are the better garden plants of that group, and discard the rest. As an example, think of all the HTs and Grandifloras chasing "blue" -- in shades of silvery lavender through purple. If we were to list every individual of this "color genre" introduced, surely we'd find some that were not so hot in the garden, and also offered nothing novel compared to their peers. Many have ancestry in common, so it's not even a case of an entire line going extinct if one is outperformed by another. Let's say 100 years from now someone comes across references of a popular lavender HT named for a beloved singer/actress of her time. The reader is intrigued, and searches for this cultivar, only to discover it is now extinct. "Oh, how sad....to have lost a beautiful rose named for Barbara Streisand." Other lavender HTs survived to this future date, but 'Barbara Streisand' wasn't one of them. Was it because it was more dependent upon fungicides? Was it because others of its genre eventually outclassed it? Or was it because, as a whole, the lavender HTs went out of style, and only a handful of the best survived? There will be those future-people bemoaning us living now for not saving this rose. Of course, nostalgia has an effect of minimizing faults. Despite other lavender HTs surviving to 100 years from now, rose lovers of the future will mourn for those which haven't. This is completely different, however, from an entire class of roses dropping from favor simply because of a fashion for something different, especially when roses of that class were once highly praised for their garden performance. To me, it's a bit sad to read of distinctive old roses that are gone, but many I read about were just subtle variations from roses that did survive to today. When 'Park's Yellow Tea-Scented China' first came to Europe, it was a novelty. Over time, other yellow Teas emerged, many simply "seedling of..." others already introduced. There is a historical loss with 'Park's Yellow', for sure....but I think losing some of the others wasn't as critical -- especially when healthier yellow Teas survived. Or, in another area, how many "...seedling of 'La Reine'"-type roses must be preserved, when so many are so similar, the main differences being their health in the garden? One more thing to keep in mind -- for every rose introduced, many other seedlings were culled. For all those seeds germinated, many others were discarded. For every hip ripened, many others were dead-headed. Selection occurred -- and continues to occur -- at many levels beyond just the nursery deciding what to carry. :-) ~Christopher...See Morelou_texas
11 years agojerome
11 years agomelissa_thefarm
11 years agojacqueline9CA
11 years agobuford
11 years ago
seil zone 6b MI
11 years ago
ingrid_vc so. CA zone 9
11 years agojeannie2009
11 years agoJessicaBe
11 years ago
hoovb zone 9 sunset 23
11 years agotaoseeker
11 years agojeff_zephyr
11 years ago
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