TGIA (Thank God It's Autumn)

'Touch of Class'

Until this weekend, I had nearly forgotten the blessings of Autumn here in my Flint Hills garden. There are fewer roses in the garden as the temperatures drop at night, to be sure, but the roses that make it to bloom ahead of the coming winter are often of perfect form and are much less likely than the roses of Spring to be damaged quickly by the prevailing prairie winds.  This 'Touch of Class' is as close as I ever see to a rose show quality bloom.

'Prairie Harvest'

The colors and hues of roses are spectacular and sometimes different in the Fall here!  I don't see the pink blush on the petals of this 'Prairie Harvest' from buds that pre-bake in the summer heat, and I believe the demure tint added to the normal light yellow increases the allure of this rose.

'Lavande'

The lavenders can often be deeper and bolder toned at this time in the fall.  This is 'Lavande', a floribunda that I purchased cheap from a local and now out-of-business discount box store many years ago.  I suspected at the time that I was just buying a mislabeled 'Angel Face', but there really is a 'Lavande', a florists rose, bred in Canada by Bruce Rennie.

'Granada'

'Granada' shows off its bi-color blooms and its scent here when the summer sun doesn't roast it into submission within hours.  This rose is one of Mrs. ProfessorRoush's favorites.  I can take it or leave it, personally.

Have you noticed that "orange roses" actually really look a little orange as Halloween closes in?  This miniature rose, whose name I've long forgotten, always picks October to remind me that it still deserves a place in my garden.

Viva La Autumn!

Too Hot for April Moon

Batten down the hatches! Unusually for me, I'm not going to try to spin any perfect yarn about my love for the rose in today's blog.  Dr. Griffith Buck's 'April Moon' is one of those roses that I've tolerated, but that has yet to grow on me.  It isn't that it is terribly diseased, extremely ugly, or a sparse bloomer, it is simply never quite lived up to my expectations for it.

'April Moon', introduced in 1984, is officially described as a "medium yellow shrub", with "lemon yellow buds" tinted red, opening to double (25-30 petal) blooms of lemon yellow (color code RHSCC 14C).  Here's a neat note;  according to helpmefind.com, 'April Moon' has "28-30 petals.....large double (17-25) petals) bloom form."  Let's make up our minds, shall we?  Is it 30 petals or 17?   'April Moon' is supposed to grow 3 foot tall and four feet wide and have a sweet fragrance.  It was a cross of 'Serendipity' with a seedling of 'Tickled Pink' and 'Maytime'.    

So what is my problem with 'April Moon'?  Let me count the ways.  First, I would never in a million years have called her lemon yellow.  The only blossoms I ever see are white with maybe the mildest yellow tinge.  Perhaps she just can't stand the summer heat in Kansas.   Buck's 'Prairie Harvest' is a much better yellow from that breeding program, if still a very light yellow one.  Second, the rose is barely double in my eyes, seldom reaching 20 petals. And it opens so fast that I've never been able to photograph a bloom in that "half-open" phase.  It seems to be tightly wound in bud one day and then fully open the next.  It has no fragrance that I can find, and three years old, my plant has barely made it to two feet high, let alone three.  In fact, my 'April Moon' is so different from descriptions that I wonder if I was sent the right rose when purchased.

Are there positives about this rose?  Yes, of course there are.  It does seem to be completely hardy without dieback in my Zone 5b climate, and it has good disease resistance.  The photos on this page were taken recently and you can see from the healthy foliage that blackspot is not an issue on this rose (remember that I don't spray for fungal disease in my garden).  The bloom does repeat well throughout the growing season. Most importantly, if you are the sort of rosarian that likes to rave about golden stamens, then you may like this rose because it has stamens in spades.  Me, I'm not ready to spade-prune this rose, but so far, it has been a poor sister to 'Prairie Harvest'. 

Healthy Prairie Harvest

One of the first Griffith Buck roses I ever grew, and still one of my most cherished roses, is 'Prairie Harvest'.  I've mentioned her before in this blog, but she deserves her own little moment alone in the spotlight. In fact, for Midwestern gardeners who seek out the Buck roses, 'Prairie Harvest' is a "must have" rose.  Hardy yellow roses are difficult enough to find for Northern climates, let alone hardy yellow roses that are also ironclad healthy.  'Prairie Harvest' is one of my healthiest roses and the light green, glossy foliage is a nice contrast with that of the Rugosa clan.  I never spray fungicide on this one and the perfect foliage holds on through August with minimal leaf loss, little blackspot, and no mildew.



A young, two year old 'Prairie Harvest'

Although the foliage IS spectacular, 'Prairie Harvest' is my favorite of all the Buck roses because of the blooms. Unlike many of the Buck-bred roses, these hybrid-tea style, 4 inch blooms hold their form well, not quickly opening flat or showing their centers as many of the Buck's are prone to do. The rose is fully double with 40-45 petals, and quick to repeat, with continuous single flowers and floribunda-type sprays throughout the summer and fall.  But it is the soft-yellow color, more potent in the center and fading to white on the edges and as it ages, that makes this rose stand out for me.  The yellow-white blend of the newer acclaimed floribunda 'White Licorice' reminds me of this rose. The color mixes well in the garden, not like the gaudy pink of 'Earthsong'.  It also has a nicer, neater bush form than 'Carefree Beauty' (one of its parents), and it is just as healthy and hardy here in my Flint Hills garden as either of these other well-regarded Buck roses, solidly cane-hardy in my Zone-5 garden.  In fact, the overall form of this rose is far better than most modern hybrid teas, with a nice vase-like four foot tall by three foot wide shape at maturity.



Prairie Harvest was released in 1985 and is officially classified as a shrub, although I would have said it is closer to the Grandiflora clan in its overall form.  The Iowa State University website on the Buck roses describes it as "barium yellow," whatever that is.  To me, this rose is honey-yellow, fading at the edges to white, and in cold weather it may have just a touch of blush pink at the edges.  The fragrance is moderate and sweet, described as "fruity" by some with noses who are undoubtedly more discerning than mine.  Both the yellow center and the fragrance undoubtedly are from 'Sunsprite', a Gamble Fragrance Award winner and the second parent of  'Prairie Harvest', but in my garden, as much as I love bright 'Sunsprite', 'Prairie Harvest' is by far the healthier and hardier of the two.


'Prairie Harvest' with a little Fall blush

I'm sorry to finally write this post, because I know it'll send half the rosarians reading it into a frantic search for a source for this rose, but sometimes, just sometimes, everyone needs a little nudge towards perfection.





Autumn Color, Winter Sunset

One of the rarest colors of roses has always been that perfect apricot-orange color that I, myself, happen to really covet.  Do we like it only because it is rare?  Is it just a hard color to reach with a rose-breeding program?  Is it rare because yellow, itself, is such a relatively new color in Western-bred roses, considering that they were unknown before the Persian rose was introduced to Europe?  Regardless, it seems like every rose that hits that perfect hue of golden-peach-orange ends up on the popular list, whether it is 'Alchymist' or English rose 'Abraham Darby', or the new Paul Barden gallica 'Marianne'.

 Every year, as Autumn rolls around and provides other red and gold hues to mix in arrangements, I appreciate more and more the glorious display and delicious color of another of these copper beauties, the Dr. Griffith Buck-bred rose 'Winter Sunset'.  'Winter Sunset' is a shrub rose introduced in 1997 whose deep saffron-yellow buds open as large, fully double orange-yellow blossoms. Parentage of this rose is supposed to be the Buck rose Serendipity (seed) and a cross of Country Dancer and Alexandra (pollen). The blooms are borne continually from June through frost in clusters of 3 to 7 flowers on a three foot tall shrub.  The foliage of 'Winter Sunset' is dark green and glossy, and here in my Flint Hills garden it seems to be almost completely resistant to blackspot and I've never seen mildew on the plant.  This rose, like many of the Buck roses, is completely cane-hardy here in my zone 5B winters.

If I've had any difficulty here with 'Winter Sunset', it is that new canes seem to be easy to topple in the Kansas winds, so I have to make sure I "tip prune" each new cane before it reaches two feet high so that I cause the cane to strengthen and thicken before the large flowers weight it down. 

 

'Winter Sunset' will eventually open to expose a more yellow base and golden stamens, and it ages to a pink-orange hue on the outer petals, but the hybrid-tea style buds open slower than most of the Buck roses in my garden and so I get to enjoy them longer, both outside and, if cut, as house roses.  Fragrance is slight but present, and Mrs. ProfessorRoush tells me that she considers it fragrant so I don't quibble over its true degree of fragrance.  In a vase, with red fall leaves and foliage from other shrubs, it will make a dazzling group for the house.

 
So if you are in the market for hardy, unusual, healthy roses, try 'Winter Sunset' in your garden.  I consider it one of the best flowers Dr. Buck created, rivaled only in health by 'Prairie Harvest' and 'Carefree Beauty'.

Griffith Buck Roses for the Midwest

With all the hype about and garden center proliferation of the English roses produced by David Austin, I must confess that I'm still not a big fan.  I've grown 'The Dark Lady' and 'Heritage' for a number of years, and the past couple of years I've added 'Mary Rose', 'Windemere', 'Benjamin Britten', 'Golden Celebration', and most recently, 'Lady Emma Hamilton', but I'm not very excited about most of them.  Okay, if I'm stuck in a thumb-screw press, 'Heritage' is a very nice blush pink and 'Golden Celebration', a bright yellow-orange, is probably my favorite performer.  But none of them just strike me as a "Well bust my buttons!" kind of rose.

'Prairie Harvest'

Ask me however, what performs best in my climate and I'd tell you that it's the group of roses bred by the late Dr. Griffith Buck.  Professor Buck was an Iowa State University horticulturist who hybridized about 90 roses varieties, most of which were released to commerce by his wife and daughter after his death in 1991.  Dr. Buck set out to develop roses that were cane-hardy to Zone 4 and which required minimal care in the landscape.  Proof of his success in that regard came from another University program, the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Earth-Kind® Rose Program with the naming of the Buck cultivar 'Carefree Beauty' as the 2006 Earth-Kind Rose® of the Year.  I grow a great number of the Buck cultivars, including 'Earthsong', 'Prairie Harvest', 'Prairie Star', 'Applejack', 'Country Dancer', 'Pearlie Mae', 'Polonaise', 'Hawkeye Belle', 'Griff's Red', and 'Winter Sunset' along with 'Carefree Beauty'.   All of these are great roses for my area, most of them cane-hardy and disease-resistant, but I've got to give a special shout out to 'Earthsong', a fuchsia-pink that does well both in my garden and at the KSU Rose Garden, and to 'Prairie Harvest', a light yellow Hybrid Tea that has the most perfect light-green foliage of any rose I grow.

'Freckles'

Many of the Buck roses are available from Internet sources such as Heirloom Old Garden Roses (http://www.heirloomroses.com/), but you also run across them in the most unlikely places if you know what you're looking for.  I ran across a rare Buck rose, 'Freckles', at a Hy-Vee Grocery Store two hours from home, thought that the name sounded familiar and took a $10.00 chance on it, and ended up with my favorite Buck rose of all.  'Freckles',  is now a three-year old, three foot tall rose in my garden and it has light-pink blooms speckled (as its name suggests) with darker wine spots.  As a single bloom, and as you can see on the right, a rose that comes closer to perfection than any other of the 100+ rose cultivars I grow.