Roses Ideas, Tips & Guides

I do not want to start by worrying you but I am probably going too anyway! After an early summer of brilliant rose displays the down side is the number and volume of enemies our roses are having to contend with.

It is not quite red enough to be Lancastrian but I am happy to call it ‘a rambler from Manchester way’ in tribute to the old folk song (and the very old folk of Lancashire). You knew there may be a sting in the tail!

First introduced in the 19th century the lineage of Hybrid Tea roses goes back to crossing or hybridising a tea rose with a hybrid perpetual rose. The first example was supposedly ‘Madame Bravy’ x ‘Madame Victor Verdier’ but many more have followed to great acclaim. One such was a rose called ‘Peace’ which has sold, under several marketing names, over 100 million plants world wide.

June is a wonderful time to appreciate the variety of easy care patio roses that are now available.

The GardenAdvice team is currently working on an AI program that aims to bridge the gap between our proposed GardenAdvice garden designs and planting schemes and demonstrating the proposed results to our clients.

When I first started exploring roses, I thought myself to be pretty educated once I knew the difference between a David Austin and a Knock Out. And then I discovered a whole new world of

Britain is known for introducing us the best of the best — think Princess Diana, Harry Potter and fish and chips. Now we can thank the UK for bringing us a fantastic sun safety idea: the 3-hour-gardening rule.

As part of your Premium access, you can send your gardening questions to our horticultural experts each month. They will then answer a selection of the questions they receive, and share the advice at the end of the month.

My name is Rajini. I am from Bangalore, India. I have a terrace garden and would like to share these pictures.

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Every gardener knows the routine. You spend the day outside working, and you eventually find yourself overheating. Maybe you strip down to a short-sleeved shirt. Only now, your arms are getting sunburnt an

Rob Cardillo

The Elizabethan Tower where Vita had her study. Credit: Shutterstock

BHG / Mira Norian

While old gallica and rugosa roses are largely trouble-free, other types of rose are often troubled with disease. Bred to bear large flowers over a long period, many are plagued with problems such as mildew, blackspot and rust. Traditionally, rose breeders and growers would treat their roses with fungicides to prevent or cure these diseases, so they weren’t considered much of a problem.

The Barbie Dreamhouse has stood as an aspirational symbol of the ideal home ever since Mattel debuted it in 1964. With its cheerful pink hues and bounty of furniture accessories, it evokes feelings of comfort, happiness, and pure reverie among the youngest members of each generation. If you want to channel a bit of that light-hearted fun and nostalgia into your everyday life, here are 20 of our favorite Barbie-themed home goods that should do the trick.

Well, the answer is not tricky. Keep them well maintained, provide optimal growing conditions. Give access to full sun or provide some shade, if you’re growing a flowering plant like impatiens. Besides all these basic requirements, here is this most important tip, which can improve the productivity of your flowering plants–Deadheading.

Lenten rose is one of the first perennials to flower each new gardening year. The plant’s name comes from its typical spring bloom time in northern climates that coincides with the religious season of Lent. However, in South Carolina, Lenten rose may bloom earlier, often starting in late January. Lenten rose is the common name for hundreds of hybrid crosses of Helleborus species and their cultivars. The flowers of these species start pink, magenta, or white, and then gradually fade to light green. The flowers remain on the plant for several months.

Consider living plants as an alternative to traditional cut flowers for Valentine’s Day this year. Cyclamen, kalanchoe, and miniature roses are all great alternatives.

Tired of planting the same old marigolds, petunias, and begonias? Try some different annuals in your garden this year. Many provide pollen and nectar for pollinating insects and attract hummingbirds. Here are a few of my favorites that I always incorporate into my landscape. They will perform well in South Carolina’s hot, humid summers, and with proper care, these annuals will continually bloom until frost.

“Of all the flowers, methinks a rose is best.”

Do you have a shady garden where you would like to plant perennials? Hostas, ferns, and Lenten roses are the usual choices, but there are a number of wonderful perennial selections to choose from that will add bloom, texture, and color to your landscape. Here are several of my favorite early spring bloomers.

Cotton rose mallow (Hibiscus mutabilis), a member of the Malvaceae family, is one of the latest blooming hibiscuses and a popular plant found in many South Carolina gardens. When in bloom, the 4- to 6-inch flowers may be either single or double and range in shades of pink and white. Many times, there will be multiple flower colors on one plant.

There are approximately 15 species of hellebores that are perennial, and the majority are native to southern and eastern Europe. Other common names for this plant are Christmas rose, and Lenten rose. Most of the hellebores readily available today are hybrid crosses of nine species giving us a wide variety of flowers in both their form and color. In addition, the variation of the leaf color and texture will add year-round interest in the garden.

Another group of tested and trialed garden plants have proven themselves winners in the All-America Selections (AAS) program. The twelve 2022 winners include four flowers and eight new vegetables for home gardens. Two flowers were even AAS Gold Medal Award winners this year, an honor reserved for a breeding breakthrough.

While many think of vegetables when using the word garden, the basic definition of a garden, as a plot of soil in which plants are grown, is widely inclusive. Gardeners are passionate about native plants, fruits & vegetables, turfgrasses, roses, houseplants, container plants, mosses, and other plants, too numerous to list.

Are you looking at plants in your garden and wondering why they aren’t flowering?

PEONIES—the big, traditional herbaceous ones, above—are in their peak moment. I grow them in an out-of-the-way spot for cutting only, not in the garden, as I have mentioned before. Have any that didn’t bloom so well? Some tricks of getting a peony’s full cooperation.KOUSA DOGWOODS are having a really good year in my garden, with a proliferation of bloom, above, that I hope will be followed by good fruit set. Last year, the various Cornus kousa didn’t put on such a big show, and then you may also recall the near-disaster I had with my unusual weeping one. Glad I didn’t cut it down.DAME’S ROCKET, or Hesperis matronalis, is to some a wildflower and to others a w

GARDEN CLEANUP HAS ITS REWARDS. There you are poking around with a pruning shears or a rake, cutting some things back and uncovering others, and suddenly you find them: the first brave souls to bloom.  From snowdrops (above) to the bravest shrub of all, a quick rundown of the first heat out of the gate:Helleborus niger, the so-called Christmas rose, is always extra-early.

T HE FIRST RACE AT CUPCAKE DOWNS always has the same winner by a length: Helleborus niger, the Christmas rose, the first perennial to bloom, no matter what. This year is no exception (which is what “no matter what” means, perhaps you guessed) and here it is.

I found ‘Will’ (along with many other good things over the years) at the now-closed Seneca Hill Perennials. Former owner Ellen Hornig dubbed the plant ‘Will’s Wonderful’ because it was given to her by someone named Will, not because either of them knows its actual name. (Update September 2011: As of fall 2009, Ellen was no longer selling it, so for awhile I suggested to readers that another pink, maybe ‘Cambodian Queen,’ from the selection at Lazy S’s might be one to consider. ‘Sheffield Pink,’ which they also have, is lovely, too, but not bawdy at all. In 2010, Lazy S’s added ‘Will’ to its collection–meaning ‘Will’ found a new retail home. Update 2019: Though Lazy S’s went out of business, Avant Gardens also started selling Will.)What Ellen and I and Lazy S’s and Kathy Tracey of Avant Gardens all like about ‘Will’ is that he shows up extra-late, just when you have given up on anything daring to flower, and also the indescribable way he colors up and then fades: a sequence of shocking hues, one nicer than the next. Like I said, I can’t describe it, exactly, but it starts with red buds, opens to wha

Brushwood Nursery, aka gardenvines [dot] com, was founded in 1998 in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, out of a Lord and Burnham greenhouse Dan rented for $5 a year plus upkeep. (Such a deal!) Dan, a University of Delaware horticulture graduate, used to teach at nearby Longwood Gardens and worked with Conard-Pyle, where he got fluent in the propagation of Clematis, which most nurseries call “a nuisance crop,” he says, with their particular trimming schedules and rambunctious intertwining tendencies.Enter a business opportunity: a high dollar-per-square-foot greenhouse crop, and one that not everyone is good at–enter Brushwood. He started selling vines over eBay, eventually launching his own website, and recently outgrew the climate and space in Pennsylvania and moved to Athens, Georgia.The Brushwood collection now numbers more than 500 climbers, with Clematis as the main event—including ‘Omoshiro,’ top photo, which may be the first large-flowered one I ever buy (it’s more than 7 inches across, and fragrant). There are climbing roses, jasmines, passionflowers and more–but let Dan tell

Y ES, AND THE CHECK IS IN THE MAIL, and that rose you’re about to buy is nonstop, that petunia self-cleaning, and the grass-seed mix? It’s low-mow! Uh-huh. Now how come I have flowerless moments and have to deadhead regularly and the only thing that’s nonstop here is the mowing? Oh, and there’s also the fact that my 20-year-old “dwarf” shrubs are not so little anymore.

The song goes on to describe one animal after another:The monkeys stand for honesty, Giraffes are insincere… Here’s it’s more like this (do forgive the lack of meter and rhyme):Peonies are everyone’s darling, except when they refuse to bloom. Kousa dogwoods like to grandstand, and not just in the spring. Allium moly’s a prolific charmer—perhaps too prolific for some zoos. Dame’s rocket is likewise controversial: alien invader, or biennial border beauty? Honeysuckles attra

Contribute a whole post, or a comment—whatever you wish. It’s meant to be fun, viral, fluid. No pressure, just delicious. The possibilities:Simply leave your tip or recipe or favorite links in the comments below a Summer Fest post on my blog, and then go visit my collaborators and do the same. (Their names and links will be on each of my posts, and mine on theirs.)The cross-blog event idea works best when you leave your recipe or favorite links (whether to your own blog or someone else’s) at all the host blogs. Yes, copy and paste them everywhere! That way, they are likely to be seen by the widest audience. Everyone benefits, and some pretty great dia