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"If life gives you weeds, compost them." (2nd try)

This is my second attempt to write about the once-blooming old roses down in the bottom of the garden where I was working yesterday. I have just adopted this new motto. Yesterday I attacked the sea of nettles invading the garden from the neighbors' neglected property, and spread the piles of pulled nettles over the still-sparse grass in the garden. The soil of our barren hillside has gotten better since we started working on it a decade ago, but it still could use more organic matter. And weeds--our neighbors' weeds--are forever.

The roses are glorious. They've been growing down there for ten years or close, and have turned in magnificent great shrubs, full of flowers. The closer they grow to the drainage ditch, the better they are, but even the more distant roses have taken hold and look contented. R. gallica 'Splendens', 'Violacea', 'Dumortier', are all big happy plants, while too big is the one that I can never remember whether it's 'Petite Orleanaise' or 'Petite Lisette'--its mate grows further down the line--but a massive thorny shrub in any case. I pruned it pretty well, too, last winter. "Petite" refers to the size of the blooms, not that of the plant.

R. helenae, now coming into bloom, has taken over most of the roof of the shed, which it shares with 'Awakening' growing at the other end. If they ever enter into conflict R. helenae will win, so I need to make sure it doesn't happen. R. helenae could use a cleanup, but blessed if I know how to get to the dead and puny growth. I like 'Awakening', in spite of my not being a huge fan of the 'New Dawn' tribe, partly because of how this plant has layered from its original spot by the shed and over to the Italian cypress: now it's growing up both. Down at the other corner of the shed is 'Duc de Fitzjames', with shapely double fragrant pink blooms. There are thousands of roses to which this description applies, and the Duc isn't perfect, being thorny and getting a bit of blackspot in the summer, not usual in my garden. But DdF is a comfortable size, a shrub that you know is a shrub, and it has a nice habit, arching, not stiff, not floppy; it suckers a little but isn't invasive, and is easy to propagate and undemanding to grow. I'm always glad to see it when it comes into bloom.

'Pink Leda' still has suckers running around, in spite of the work I did to eliminate them last winter, so I'll have to flag some more for removal next year. The finely freckled 'La Plus Belle des Ponctuees' is growing vigorously and suckering down the slope, which is fine with me: it's way more desirable that anything else that would grow there, and if it gets in the way I'll just cut it down. The soft-colored little rose that I'm not sure is 'Alfred de Dalmas' or 'Mousseline', normally puny, is flowering well and helping me understand why people like this rose. 'Aennchen von Tharau' is beginning to bloom, and perhaps this year will persuade me that she's not 'Alba Maxima', though I'm not sure about it. I have a tilted (because of the dropping land, steep getting steeper) rebar structure with clematis 'Betty Corning' and a viticella I don't remember the name of, both doing okay, and in the other direction, toward the ditch, a clematis about which I'm genuinely enthusiastic: 'Blue Angel', romping over 'Gloire des Mousseux'/'Mme. Louis Leveque' and 'Souv. de St. Anne'. This is a great plant. I have another down in the shade garden, and it's excellent, too. There are many other roses in this part of the garden and almost all are growing well: it's one of the happier and more successful areas. It's the result of time, mulching, and choosing the right plants. The once-flowering roses, a number of whose ancestors grow wild locally, are well-adapted to our conditions.

There are no roses more beautiful. This is my own feeling, and many gardeners love different kinds. Even those who agree with me may live in places where these roses don't do well; where it's too warm, or where early heat and humidity make their flowering a brief one. But I hope any gardener who has a flicker of interest in these roses will look into them, and will keep in mind that the well-known old roses aren't the only good ones: I grow many obscure ones, and most are thoroughly garden-worthy.

We've had mizzly weather for most of this month, and while most of the warm climate roses, now well past their peak, hated it, the late-blooming 'Crepuscule' has the best color I've ever seen, soft but vivid apricot. It's growing next to a yellow-variegated privet and only a maniac could enjoy the combination, but I do, and in fact if I had room I'd consider adding a line of Paeonia officinalis 'Rubra Plena' at its feet, the reddest peony there is. Possibly it's a good thing there's no room (though gentility can be overdone).

The quality of the spring flowering has been amazingly good considering how dry it is. The sword is still hanging over our head, though, and summer is on the way. The weather may have brought one benefit: today for the first time ever I saw flowers beginning to open on R. hemosphaerica.


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