February 18, 2022
Valentine’s Day has come and gone, which means it’s time for my favorite garden chore: pruning roses. I love pruning of all kinds, at least, the non-metaphorical kind. But pruning rose bushes takes me back to my parents’ house, with their immense days of dry summer sun and luxurious swaths of space for roses to grow unshaded and unencumbered. I liked being the one to don good gloves and fend my way amidst the thorns, bringing order to unruly canes. When I prune my parents’ roses, I have to choose which of the many healthy canes to keep, selecting only the prize few for the honors, and leaving a vase-like scaffolding from which endless luscious blooms will flow all summer long.
It is different at my house. Tucked between row houses, with big trees filling in shade where the closely spaced buildings don’t, I probably shouldn’t be growing roses at all. Come pruning time, sometimes I’m lucky to have any good canes to leave at all. But I love them too much not to try, so each year since we moved in I’ve planted a few.
Before we jump into the pruning, let’s take a little tour:
2017: Peace rose and “Two tone” rose, I think a bootleg of the patented “Double Delight.” But delight it did not–I don’t think either of these ever arrived. Direct Gardening, you owe me! What did grow from the bareroot package I received and planted in a prime front-fence spot was a measly yellow rose with stubby twig-like canes, and flowers that quickly turn pale and lose the tight rosebud shape. It’s terrible in bouquets. Nevertheless, it persists, and each year I neglect to move it to make way for something I love more. I daydream about an Eden Climber drooping over the fence with pillowy piles of petals. Maybe this year I’ll get around to making my dream reality.
2018: Fragrant Cloud from the legendary Behnke’s, RIP. Nate’s mom has grown them for years, more beautifully and vigorously than I do, and he has developed an affection for them. True to their name, they dispense a lovely, potent perfume and maintain a lovely classic rose shape as they undergo a beautiful color transformation from dark red to salmon. Our bush is in the back yard where it gets plenty of light til the Japanese maple tree’s leaves fills in. Then the canes stretch away from branches’ shadow in search of sun.
Mother of Pearl, also from Behnke’s, a nod to my grandmother, Estella Pearl, and the baby girl I birthed that summer. Lovely salmon flowers in a perfect rose shape, they look stunning in a vase and will, with any luck and more years of patient care, grow up over my front fence, like the stunning images of front fence takeovers on garden company websites and period dramas. Possibly with an Eden Climber, if I can help it.
Angel Face, a spontaneous purchase from Home Depot on its last legs when I bought it. It was an ugly sight, but I loved the look of the rose on the label and for $4.99 I was willing to take a chance. I’ve been nursing it to health ever since. Last year, I was so proud of how healthy and full it grew in spring, dotted with the most lovely small purple blooms with a strong perfume. But come early summer, it got a bad case of black spot, a constant battle in DC’s humidity, then underwent a terrible drought while we were away for six weeks. Now it has only a single healthy cane remaining, probably worse than when I first bought it. I’m resigned that this might be the end of Angel Face, but not quite ready to write it off. As spring comes into full flush each year, I’m amazed anew at how a few short weeks can transform a rose from a few barren sticks to a proud stand of glossy leaves and fragrant blooms. This rose, more than any other, reminds me that what looks beyond saving may still find a way to generate life.
2019: Three more nice roses from Behnke’s. I originally planted two in a corner of the backyard that I was warned would not allow enough light, a David Austin Mary Rose and a Twilight Zone Grandiflora. I’m stupidly stubborn, insisting on defying the laws of full sun required in a desparate attempt to generate more blooms. But it doesn’t work, of course, because the beautiful full bushes pictured on the tag only thrive in the right conditions, and my shady backyard isn’t it. The Twilight Zone didn’t get enough water; the initial setup for our automatic drip system was a bit haphazard and the water didn’t extend far enough down the line; it died after the first or second summer. The Mary Rose managed, growing more of those long, leggy canes, but didn’t produce many flowers. A third rose, Arctic Blue, went into the ground next to the Fragrant Cloud and offers clusters of tiny flowers in hyacinth colors, cloudy blue purple that brightens to a blue-tinged pink. They don’t all flower at the same time, and don’t seem to flower at all if cut while closed, so they’re nearly impossible to put in a vase. But at least they’re a pretty distraction on the way to the compost bin.
Also in 2019, Zephirine Drouhin. Wooed by the stunning photos of this climbing rose taking on the most magical archways and wall-covering shapes, charmed by the descriptions of “wonderfully scented, deep rose pink blooms” (David Austin) “produced in great quantities on a continual blooming bush” (Heirloom Roses), not to mention the fact that it is thornless, and critically for DC, “prefers warmer climates” (David Austin), I buy one and pot it in the ground to the side of our house, in land that may or may not technically belong to our neighbor. There’s a sidewalk between our houses, leading back to their shared outdoor deck and the entrance for most of the units in the converted house-to-coop made possible by a bump-back that’s twice the size of the original house. To the left of the sidewalk is a little lawn, their property. To the right is our house, and a buffer of about a foot of earth. It may technically belong to the neighboring lot, but we’re the ones who have to deal with termite damage in the rotting tree stump left behind when they cut down an old mulberry tree to make way for the bump-back, so planting a climbing rose in the space seems like a fair trade. Also the neighbor who lives in the front apartment, the one who let me use her laundry machine, gave me the OK.
The spot gets excellent sun–too much, when you’re sitting on our porch at certain times of the day. I dream of a rose that will in time form living shades in the hottest part of the year. Three summers in, there’s good progress underway. From the bareroot plant I start with, through the solid prune in February, starting each spring and lasting throughout the fall, even into mild winters, the rose cranks out numerous long, thin flexible canes. Left untended, they grow into the adjoining sidewalk, waving in the breeze, threatening to maim passersby. I try to keep them threaded into the trellis as they grow, and not only to avoid causing my neighbors harm (or to regret their consent to the rose). There’s a chemical in the plant that basically stops the production of flowers below the rose at the top of the cane. That’s why in most roses flowers grace the top of each stem, but don’t peek out from the sides. Fine for a bouquet, but with a climbing rose, you don’t want a handful of long canes with one stunning bloom, you want a tsunami of blossoms. To get that, you have to trick the plant’s orientation, make it think the vertical canes are the horizon, and the side shoots are the up and down canes. The plant can be trained, tied up around stakes, wire, a trellis, an arch–any kind of structure allowing the plant to grow into a form that isn’t natural. (What’s natural is waving in the breeze maiming passersby.) It is this unnatural state that allows for a stunning cascade of flowers.
Each year in the spring I go down a rabbit hole of videos on how to prune and train the rose, never sure I’m getting it quite right. Every year when I finish it looks like a tangle of bare sticks, an ungainly kids’ craft project. And every year, a couple months later, the bare canes explode into new foliage and a tumble of “the most consistently blooming, large flowered climbing rose . . . deep rose-pink, fragrant, and produced in great quantities on a continual blooming bush” (Heirloom Roses).
Upon purchase, I chose to ignore the additional David Austin note: “controlling disease can be a problem.” This proves to be true – my beautiful fresh foliage starts getting black spot and I see pesky light green aphids marching about the stems by mid-summer. It’s an effort to keep it in check, but the continual blooming bush makes it worth it.
2020: I add some lazy online Home Depot purchases, in pots set in the neighbor’s front sidewalk tree boxes (with permission), so I can move them as necessary. Oklahoma, a lovely red and “Lady X,” a pale lilac. Both are promising, but leggier than ideal, always searching for the sun, story of my garden. The third rose I’d ordered was out of stock, so I transfer the 2019 Mary Rose to the front in a pot. It’s happier, but even here I’m short on sun, insisting the roses make do outside their happy place.
In the fall, I splurge on 3 roses from Heirloom Rose, which will bloom for the first time next summer: Abraham Darby, full, ruffly pink flowers. Jude the Obscure, with large fluffy peach roses; my mom’s are to die for, just like the ones on the company’s webpage and I’m hoping for some as swoonworthy some day. Purple Plum, also fluffy, but darker. They come with strict instructions not to use granular fertilizer in the first year to avoid harming the baby bareroot plants. Disregarding the warning voids the warranty! I dutifully buy a bottle of, if we’re being honest, what is essentially decayed liquid fish, and hold my nose while I dispense it in diluted form at the roots. They’re scrawny to start with, but as they’re planted along the side of my house where we actually get sun, I’m daring to hope.
