I always thought roses sucked. Prissy. Fussy. Thick, sweet scent. Roses were for old English ladies who wore white lace gloves, for effeminate and driven horticulturalists or southern damsels in big floppy hats. Definitely not for me.
For six years as a garden designer I have never planted a rose. Never even considered. Roses not once crossed my mind.
Today, the first rose bloomed in my garden. Hot pink and vibrant against verdant late spring green, green, green.
Wait. How did a much maligned Rosa get into my garden? The poor plant was a cast-off from a client. Both the client and his son (still living at home) were adamantly anti-rose. The son’s mother (the client’s ex-wife) adored roses and planted the Razzamatazz Knockout rose – now struggling, unkempt and unloved - by the front door. Abandoned to rose haters.
So, the rose had to go. But where? My assistant – male, burley, from the Bronx – suggested hacking it pieces. Instead, we dug it up, dumped a bunch of manured-up soil in an extra wheelbarrow (landscapers always seem to have three on hand at any given time) and plonked the rose bush down. There it sat in the wheelbarrow planter, leaning up against a white pine, out of harm’s way for two months of demolition, patio and walkway construction, Hurricane Irene and garden installation. I loathe letting a plant die, if I can help it.
After the project was completed we loaded up the rose in my pick-up and chugged up to Chichester to see my assistant’s similarly burly friend wanted it. No, definitely not. “What am I going to do with a rose?” he said.
At this point, I felt sorry for it, I said – “I’ll just take it and put it somewhere.”
So we continued trucking west to Shandaken, put it in yet another spare wheelbarrow and it sat there for most of September. Finally, as fall’s descent upon the Catskills hastened, I implored my boyfriend to help me plant it. The thorns were monstrous; also, I wanted some payback for all the times I planted and dug and weeded on my boyfriend’s farm. We placed it in a front foundation bed filled with all sorts of illustrious native flora planted by the prior tenants – a baker and his urban, native plant loving partner.
A hybrid Knockout rose. I hoped they’d never visit to see this mass-produced, non-native imposter sullying the native plant integrity but then again there were hosta and privet – other ubiquitous foreigners in this same bed – to offer solidarity to the rose.
The rose easily survived its first Catskill winter – unnervingly warm with about four inches of total snowfall – to bloom profusely all last summer and become the frequent object of photos to post on my business’s Facebook page. Its delicate, nearly fluorescent pink flowers appeared like little stars floating in the privet and ferns.
This year, mid June my rose began blooming.
Simultaneously, I decided to add a rose to another client’s garden. The plant palette at this particular site – iris (Germanica and Versicolor), daylily, ladies mantle, weeping redbud, hydrangea, summersweet and box – decidedly romantic was inspired by the quaint trio of house, guest cottage and barn but also by the clients’ fondness for the children’s story, The Secret Garden.
Only one large wooden planter on a newly built bluestone patio off the main house remained empty. What to plant? I picked up the book again looking at the drawings, searching for what perennial might be missing. In picture after picture – roses scrambled over crumbling stone walls, drooped gracefully over birdbaths. A rose. OK.
Off I went to one of the nearby garden centers, assured that they’d have ample assortments of roses to choose from and rose experts to advise me. After all, millions of consumers adored the flagrant hussy rose.
The rose selection at the first store was small with basic colors: white, yellow and pink. Fine. Elegant pastel would do. As I bent over the pots – wanting to read the tags on care and culture – that maddening, romantic, and fabled rose scent wafted up and into my nostrils, opening my heart and softening my stance on these plants.
The culprit: The Sunny Knockout Rose. Blooms spring through frost. 4’-5’H x 3’-4’W. Excellent disease resistance. Zones 5-11. Flowers yellow/cream and white. All of this was gibberish. Only the fragrance mattered.
Now, I covet a scented rose for my garden. An exotic foreign (and flagrant hussy) companion for the unwanted stepchild already there.
