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Easy Elegance Roses
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The name "Easy Elegance Roses" has come up a few times recently. Several friends had remarked how time constriction was beginning to upset the rythmn of their rose gardens and how they would have to cut back. They were all avid gardeners, but roses, with their demanding care and feeding, were slowly being erased by easy care and grow, annuals and perennials. Shovel pruning was rampant!
It was about this time that a garden club aquaintance of mine pointed out that "Good HouseKeeping" had done a little test to find some easy-grow roses that..."need almost no attention." The people at "Good HouseKeeping" had ordered 32 so called easy-care varieties from four different sources. The outcome was that the Easy Elegance Roses came out highly recommended: three out of the recommended four in fact! This then was the answer. A series of roses specially bred to bloom repeatedly, resist disease and demand much less care and attention.
Enter the "Easy Elegance Roses." These are twenty five roses of various shapes and sizes, hybridized by rosarian Ping Lim, who started in California in the 80's but went to work at Bailey Nurseries, an old family owned firm in Minnesota. Here he established a line of easy-care roses.
These roses are ideal for some one who has little time for garden care but wants a rose garden or someone who would like an easy care collection of roses in pots. They come in a wide array of colors and flower forms on a wide selction of bush size, most only within the two or three feet high range. They are hardy so very good for the more northern gardens, pest and disease resistant and, most original of all, they grow on their own roots. Usually roses are gafted on root stocks but these are own-root roses.
Own root roses are very strong when established (usually up to two years of good growth) and hardy to about minus 10 degrees. Most miniatures are own root roses and they tend to withstand very cold winters. They also don't produce root suckers!
There are twenty five roses, grouped into five categories, each with different attributes. Only you can decide which are best for you but you will know that whatever you choose, you will have the minimum of care with the maximum of rose: as near as you can get to "plant it and forget it" rose gardening.
Easy Elegance Roses include the following:
The Garden Art Roses Group.
Centennial...short bush, soft apricot color.
Grandma's Blessing...Old fashioned style, Dusty Pink double blossom.
Kiss Me...Four inch wide pink flowers.
Macy's Pride...named after the Macy's Store, pale yellow buds to creamy white flowers with pink undertones.
Sweet Fragrance.
Yellow Submarine...more upright and formal, yellow blooms.
The Garden Jubilee Roses Group.
Fiesta.
Firecracker...vibrant red blooms.
Funny Face...compact, rounede bush with pink and white blooms.
Golden Eye...red-orange petals with a golden centre.
Hot Wonder...pink florescent blooms.
Island Dancer...ruffled blooms of pink one side and white on the other. Grows about two feet tall.
The Garden Path Roses Group.
Little Mischief...red with bright white center.Very small.
Mystic Fairy...ruby tinted flowers on this ground cover rose.
Pink Gnome...very small container rose 12 inches high with pink blooms.
Sunrise Sunset...groundcover rose with fuchsia pink flowers and an apricot centre.
The Garden Wall Roses Group
Showtime...another good climber.
The Lifestyles Garden Roses Group
Great Wall...semi double blooms of warm pink and clusters of bright golden stamens.
My Hero...red blossoms that fade to deep pink.
Snowdrift.
Making up the twenty five are:
Paint the Town.
Orange Impressionist.
Siera Skye.
Last Tango.
...and a yellow climber, Tahitian moon.
The "Good HouseKeeping"" tests recommended Snowdrift as being very simple to tend, Showtime for the easy care climber and Sunrise Sunset for the easy to grow ground cover rose.
If you are looking for low growing, plant and forget roses, then start by having a look at the Bailey Nurseries site and "Easy Elegance Roses". They may be your answer.
www.rose-works.com helping you get the most from your rose garden.
Look up the Good Housekeeping Tests
Tests done on easy-grow roses.
Return to Types of Roses from Easy Elegance Roses
