Chapter 9

Great Modern Roses   

Two Dozen Best Bets

First I should declare the biases that dictated these selections.  I think roses should be fragrant.  Other admirable qualities have to be tremendous to make up for lack of scent.  I also prefer large blooms to small, and blossoms that reach the fully open stage to those that stop short of it.  Finally, I like lots of blooms at regular, short intervals from spring through fall.

With those biases in mind, here is my list of two dozen readily available, surefire winners.  Order is by color, not preference.  All varieties have been ranked 8.0 or higher by voting members of the American Rose Society.  As mentioned in Chapter 2, scores between 8.0 and 8.9 are given roses deemed "excellent."  Scores from 9.0 to 9.9 are those called "outstanding," a rating not issued casually, since only five modern roses, excluding miniatures, carry it at the time of this writing.  The perfect 10.0 has yet to be awarded.

Following the name of each variety, you will see its heritage.  The female parent is always listed first.  Sometimes there is multiple parentage.  Occasionally, a parent will be labeled "unknown."  I may be giving you more information than you need at this point, but your thirst for these facts will grow as your interest grows.  You may learn that you like a variety so much that you also want its child.  Or you may get so fed up with something that you want nothing more to do with it or its progeny.

I've selected the photographs for the twenty-four varieties according to my idea of their best stages of bloom.  For most, this occurs somewhere between the half and three-quarter stage.  A few are outstanding in bud, some when fully blown.

Mister Lincoln

Chrysler Imperial x Charles Mallerin

The great American hybridizing duo of Swim and Weeks crossed Chrysler Imperial and Charles Mallerin to get two wonderful, dark red seedlings for introduction in 1964.  One was Mister Lincoln, the other Oklahoma.  Meilland of France produced Papa Meilland the preceding year from the same parentage.

In 1965 Mister Lincoln won an All-America award.  It has since earned a 9.1 rating and has become the favorite dark red rose of the majority of rosarians in the world.  This hardy, robust rose is long on fragrance.

Mister Lincoln should always be grown one to a stem.  Fortunately, that is easy to do, since new growth needs disbudding less often than most hybrid teas.

While both Oklahoma and Papa Meilland are similar to Mister Lincoln in that they are also dark red (even darker) and intensely fragrant, Mister Lincoln outdoes them primarily because the bush is a prolific bloomer.  It has a nice habit of growing upright and can be readily pruned to the classic urn shape.

I can't count the people who have asked me if I've seen the "black rose," then argue when I claim it doesn't exist.  Mister Lincoln is as black as I care a red rose to be while it's in bud.  As it opens, the center petalage proves to be a much lighter, cherry red, and it's intensely fragrant all the while.  The blooms appear with satisfying regularity, with a quick repeat bloom cycle.  Admittedly, Mister Lincoln has a tendency to "blue" toward the end of its very long vase life.  But let's give it a break.  No one has yet produced a perfect 10.0.

Fragrant Cloud

Unknown seedling x Prima Ballerina

Tantau of West Germany has hybridized some terrific roses, but his best in my book came in 1963.  Fragrant Cloud didn't make it to the United States until 1968, and has been a favorite ever since.  In Europe it is also known as Duftwolke and Nuage Parfume.

Here's a hybrid tea to silence those critics of modern roses who complain about lack of scent.  Stick their noses into some of these blooms; the fragrance is ravishing.

Although it has only twenty-five to thirty petals, the bloom is exceptionally well formed.  Its official color classification is orange-red (I think of it as lipstick red), a color I've found no one ambivalent about.  You either love it or hate it.  Not a soul, however, will quarrel with the fragrance, and it boasts a host of international awards for that very quality.

Fragrant Cloud should be disbudded for true hybrid tea blooms of one to a stem.  It will produce sprays if this strikes your fancy, but for this variety, I don't find multiple blooms on one stem desirable.  The color is not one that mixes well, except with white.  I prefer it all by itself in bud vases.  As the bloom ages, it can take on a silvery cast that many find appealing.  (It looks awful under fluorescent light, however.)

Blossoms of this cultivar have a persistent fault that will probably concern you only if you plant to exhibit.  One or two, no more than three, outer petals have a greenish white streak through the middle.  As the bloom open, you won't notice them since the outer petals fold back and conceal the color difference.

The streaks don't bother me, and unless I plan to exhibit, I leave them.  They are a fault in exhibition and cost points.  In that case, or if they bother you, remove them as instructed in Chapter 8.

Precious Platinum

Red Planet x Franklin Engelmann

If you had asked me which rose variety I was most worried about when we planted our first bushes at Garden Valley Ranch, Precious Platinum would have been my ready answer.  The bushes were puny compared to everything else we planted.  Our Precious Platinums are now among the most vigorous growers in the field and must be pruned ruthlessly just to keep them within bounds.  Blooms will appear in profusion almost whether you prune or not, but the bush will take over if you're not careful.

For all its robustness as a grower, Precious Platinum's bushes produce some of the classiest hybrid tea red roses there are.  What's more, the fragrance is long on classic tea flavor.  Blooms have two other distinctions:  they're stiffly substantial and they get prettier as they open.  In fact, I'm not fond of Precious Platinum in bud.  Until blooms reach at least the quarter-open stage, they're mostly matte black and reveal little of the bright, clear red that is to come.  As buds begin to open, their true color is revealed.

When Precious Platinum blooms reach the half-open stage, it's, Katie, bar the door.  If you yearn for huge, fragrant red roses, this one's for you.  Don't worry about how big blooms become--when you go to cut them, you'll find proportionate stem and foliage.  I like everything Precious Platinum does from the half-open to the fully blown stage.  Color won't fade, and substance is held even in the petals that eventually drop.

Dickson of England has declared a hybridizing platform to develop the perfect red rose.  He has given us some great ones, such as Red Devil and Portland Trailblazer (Big Chief in Europe), but Precious Platinum gets my vote for his best effort so far.

Precious Platinum is one of those roses that may perform better in one season than another.  For us the best blossoms come in early fall.  Spring bloom is nice, but September works magic.

Europeana

Ruth Leuwerik x Rosemary Rose

Why it took Europeana five years to reach American shores after de Ruiter of Holland hybridized it in 1963, I'm not quite sure.  It was an All-America Selection for 1968 and has since endeared itself with two characteristics that will keep it in the floribunda foreground for a long time to come.  First, its color.  There are lots of reds, but not enough rubies.  Europeana is a dark red that holds its color from start to finish.  Second, Europeana is the most exemplary floribunda I know for geometric inflorescences of multiple blooms on one stem, rather than blossoms placed randomly here and there.  Europeana read the show rules and took them to heart.  You still have to remove the terminal bud, but once you do, sit back in confident anticipation of a great spray of bloom.

I must admit that I didn't like Europeana when I first saw it.  Rosette-shaped blooms weren't what I was looking for.  Now Europeana has grown on me, and I see why it's such a great rose.  Fragrance is light but definite.

If the color and size work for you, Europeana is a terrific landscape rose.  It's low-growing, almost as wide as tall, and clothed in glossy dark green foliage that retains strong hints of mahogany.

Europeana has dominated the exhibition floribunda class for more than a decade, but a rival is making its way up through the ranks--Showbiz, a bright red floribunda that was the only All-America Selection for 1985..When I first heard about Showbiz, rumor had it that it would push Europeana off the show table.  It's too soon to know what will happen in exhibition since Showbiz has only recently been entered in competition, but my money's on Europeana.

Duet

Fandango x Roundelay

Once, for lack of something better to do, I kept count of every rose produced on every bush in my private San Francisco garden.  Duet was the hands-down winner.

You'd expect a workhorse to be some other color, but here it is, producing scads of medium pink blooms with a darker pink reverse.  What's more, blooms last and will open fully from bud, on the bush, or in a vase.  Fragrance isn't strong, but it's there.

Duet is classified as a hybrid tea, as it should be, but it was first introduced as a grandiflora because of its tendency to produce multiple blooms on one stem.  It needs disbudding.  Foliage develops into a dark, glossy green, but when it first appears, it may have a funny habit about which you should be warned.  While foliage of most varieties starts out fairly flat, Duet's is sometimes curly.  Simply leave it alone, and it will flatten. The bush is hardly exemplary in its growth habit; instead of the desired urn shape, growth is very zigzag.  Proper pruning can correct a lot, and no matter what you do, blooms will follow.

Sometimes when blooms are mature and you cut them from the bush, you notice that there are large gaps in foliage.  What's more, leaves can be whimsically attached to their stems.  If you're exhibiting, you can twist the foliage around and it will eventually behave.  If you're arranging, you won't notice the difference because you'll have so many stems that their collective foliage will mass nicely.

How does a workhorse perform at the show table?  Duet isn't famed for its exhibition value, but I've won Queen of the Show with it.  What's more, it made the King (second place) look like a commoner.

Duet was an All-American Selection in 1961 and has been a rosarian's rose ever since.  If you plant a bush of it, you'll join the fan club.

Dainty Bess

Ophelia x K. of K.

Back when I first admitted an interest in growing roses, I declared that there would be no pinks or singles in my garden.  I was told that in time I'd come around to singles, but that I had to get over my aversion to pinks right away--more great roses are pink or blends thereof than any other color.  I've now come full circle.  Here is a pink single I wouldn't want to do without.

The reason I paid little attention to single varieties at first was that I thought they were not fragrant or long-lived.  I was wrong on both counts.  Many single roses are strongly scented and have as long a vase life as any of the more heavily petaled varieties.  Dainty Bess is certainly one of those, and even when cut in tight bud it will unfurl itself in a vase.

Dainty Bess has been the most popular and acclaimed single hybrid tea for sixty years.  It has only five petals, but they're broad and fragrant.  They also completely surround a center of maroon stamens.  Maroon might not seem like a big deal if you don't know that 90 percent of stamens are yellow.  I think Dainty Bess would be a winner if its stamens were yellow.  Maroon makes it a shoo-in.

Most people describe the bloom as dusky pink.  That's one of the shades, but there are more, depending on where the bloom appears on the bush and how much sun it's exposed to.  Blossoms close at night.

The bloom is so fragile-looking that you expect a tender bush to go with it.  Dainty Bess is quite the opposite, with an upright, tall, prolific plant clothed in tough foliage.

I wish my Dainty Bess were as tall as those I've seen in New Zealand and Australia.  My bushes don't grow higher than four feet no matter what I do, but their long-stemmed blooms are second to no other single,

Aquarius

(Charlotte Armstrong x Contrast)

x

{Fandango x (World's Fair x Floradora)}

The only reason Aquarius isn't considered even greater than it is, inspite of its horribly complicated parentage, is that it's in such a tough color class; pinks are abundant.  Aquarius does have some extras going for it though; it's outstanding in sprays or one to a stem, and the color is downright incredible.  When you  look down into a good bloom, it seems as though a tiny artificial light has been inserted into its base--it fairly glows shades of pink with an ever-so-slight hint of lavender.

Aquarius is an outstanding grandiflora.  It's prolific, almost naturally urn shaped as a bush, and covered in thick disease-resistant foliage.  It was an All-American Selection in 1971.

Blooms begin with buds a dark pink blend and fully open as light pink blossoms.  And they last.  Once I took a dozen to an Aquarian friend of mine on the 4th of July.  I told him that I could never have them on his birthday (January 31), so this was my premature gift.  I took them in tight bud, knowing they would open fully because of the conditioning I had given them.  I had to restrain myself from calling to learn what happened, though I later heard they opened.

If you can't decide how to approach disbudding, Aquarius is the rose for you.  It's wonderful one to a stem, in sprays, or both on the same bush.  If only two or three buds form at the end of a stem, I leave the terminal bud and remove the smaller ones.  If four or more buds form, I remove only the terminal bud.  Since the blooms of Aquarius are a bit too small to suit me, I like sprays where overall size make up for smaller-than-average individual blooms.

Queen Elizabeth

Charlotte Armstrong x Floradora

Queen Elizabeth  was the very first grandiflora.  It was created by the great American hybridizer Walter Lammerts in 1954 and was the All-American Selection for 1955.  It was voted the world's favorite rose in 1978 by the World Federation of Rose Societies.  Thirty years after its introduction, it's the number-one exhibition rose of the grandiflora class.

Queen Elizabeth's numerous plaudits are well deserved since it is indeed a regal bush and bloom.  The Queen is a very tall grower.  Don't try to coerce her into shorter height by pruning too low, or she will spend most of the growing season reaching the height at which she blooms comfortably.  After growing for two years, my bushes are 8 to 9 feet tall when I face them for pruning, and I reduce them to a minimum of 4 to 4I/2 feet.

If you have height limitations in your landscape, plant something else.  If you can respect its lofty habits, Queen Elizabeth will reward you with panicles of rose and dawn pink blooms of thirty-seven to forty petals each, occurring mostly in clusters.  Disbudding should be geared toward producing these multiple blooms on one stem.  The bush will produce single blooms no matter what you do, and they're pretty, but the sprays are more impressive, and once bushes are established, you can easily cut inflorescences with two-to-three-foot stems.  The foliage is large, dark, glossy, and leathery.

Besides its stately bush, Queen Elizabeth's disease-resistance is a great plus, as is its vigor.  Wini Edmunds says in her catalogue:  "They can be grown by anyone who can make weeds thrive."  She's right, and the benefits are every so much more rewarding.

The 9.1 rating by the ARS is no accident; it has been reviewed regularly for thirty years.  I think it will be some time before the Queen is dethroned, although Gold Medal is in hot pursuit of the number-one exhibition grandiflora spot.

Cherish

Bridal Pink x Matador

When this rose was being tested for All-American Selection, I heard an expert (who should have know better) call Cherish "just another pink floribunda."  Boy, was he wrong!

America's Bill Warriner made a clean sweep of the All-America Rose Selections in 1980.  Love, a red-and-white bicolor grandiflora, and Honor, a white hybrid tea, were chosen along with Cherish.  I never took Love seriously; its growth habit is weak and erratic, and the blooms too often lack form.  I like Honor, though not as much as other whites.  Cherish is another matter.  First of all, in spite of its low-growing characteristics, Cherish is a producer.  The blooms are a wonderful clear pink, with high-centered hybrid tea form.  They do occur singly, especially early in the season, but they're best in sprays.

Cherish's foliage is disease-resistant and large for a floribunda.  Leaves are a dark matte green with a mahogany overlay.  The bushes tend to spread, but this is easily corrected at pruning time for good shape (though they'll always be low to the ground).  Blooms become very large before they open fully, and their vase life is impressive.

I went with Bill Derveniotes, the exhibitor who groomed some of the roses for the photographs in this chapter, to help him compete in the National Rose Convention in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1982.  We took along some blooms of Cherish to enter in a floribunda spray competition.  When fellow exhibitors mentioned how lucky we were to have sprays of Cherish, I didn't understand what they meant; we always have them in sprays.  Apparently, others don't.  However Cherish chooses to present itself, you'll love the blooms.

You'll recall an ideal floribunda virtue is a presentation of all stages of bloom in one spray.  Cherish doesn't seem to know how to spray any other way, making it a formidable opponent at the show table.

Royal Highness

Virgo x Peace

If you've been paying attention, you're aware that I don't much care for roses in bud.  Here's the exception.  There's no more elegant bud in all of rosedom than that of Royal Highness.  It's frosty pink (about as light as it could be and still be classified as pink) and was the first hybrid tea of this color to be selected as All-America.  It was chosen in 1963 and has reigned ever since.

Royal Highness has a number of appealing qualities, starting with an affinity for one-to-a-stem growth.  Stems are long and cloaked in dark green foliage.  Although the open bloom of Royal Highness can be a little loose, verging on blowsy, it's always pretty.  Fragrance is light, but somehow fitting for this color.

The bush is about as classic as the bud.  It's tall, upright, and almost naturally urn shaped, making pruning easy.

When I first grew this rose, I didn't understand the importance of spraying and I didn't regularly apply what I did know.  It seemed improbable that mildew should attack something that looked so impenetrable.  But it did, and it wasn't a pretty sight.  Even so, it's more disease-resistant than most of the roses in this color range.  I didn't include Royal Highness when Garden Valley Ranch was first planted because I shied away from mildewers.  Now that I've learned to control the fungus, we have lots of Royal Highness bushes.

There's more good and bad news when it comes to maintaining Royal Highness.  It doesn't rainspot as much as most roses, but it will rust in a flash if you don't spray preventively.

Royal Highness is yet another winner from the American hybridizing team of Swim and Weeks.  Although it has lost its patent, Royal Highness will stay around until something worthy takes its place--a day not yet in clear sight.

Simplicity

Iceberg x Unnamed seedling

Some years ago, when the cost of fencing materials escalated, as did other building supplies, someone figured out that rosebushes might make comparatively inexpensive barricades.  Armstrong Nurseries was the first to introduce the "living fence" concept.  Its choice of rosebushes was an unfortunate one--Confetti, a garish blend of red, orange, and yellow that just doesn't work unless your  intent is to make a bold, harsh statement.

Jackson & Perkins carried the idea to tasteful fruition when their hybridizer Bill Warriner rose to the occasion with a good bush that produces scades of pretty blooms.  Simplicity, unlike Confetti, is of a color that's easy to live with.  Shell pink to midpink wears well on the eyes.

The bush lends itself nicely to being trained as a hedge.  Growth is compact and columnar, with foliage equally projected everywhere along its height, from base to tip.

Sprays of blossoms should be encouraged since one-to-a-stem blooms are really too small to amount to much.  Clustered on a stem, however, they're downright impressive, and they bloom in exemplary floribunda fashion, with all stages occurring at one time.  Stems are relatively thin, but obviously draw water well since Simplicity's vase life is considered "extended."

There are only eighteen to twenty petals per bloom, so you'll often see stamens in fully open blossoms while you're still enjoying buds to blooms three-quarters open.  The nice part about fully open blossoms is that their stamens are bright yellow and dense.

Foliage is proportionately small and olive green.  Fragrance is light, but fresh.  If you should decide to plant Simplicity as a living fence, you'll never be without roses for the house during its long blooming season.

Pascali

Queen Elizabeth x White Butterfly

I have a friend who has only white flowers in his garden.  Half of them are roses, and they're almost all Pascali.  It's the white rose if you want purity with no shadings of color.

Hybridized by Lens in 1963, this is the only rose of international importance from Belgium.  The name is synonymous with Easter, and the rose was selected as All-America in 1969.  Where it grows well, it performs wonderfully.

Pascali will keep our disbudding fingers busy since it doesn't seem to know that it's prettiest one to a stem.  Blooms are pure white with stiffly perfect form.

Often when I cut a bloom of Pascali, I complain that it's too small.  Some days later (when it has actually grown in its vase) I take back what I said.  The blooms almost always have classic form, rarely with split centers.

When you compare this bush with other hybrid teas, the stems appear weak and unable to support a large bloom, even one with only thirty petals.  But they're strong and prove to be more supportive than larger, thicker stems.  Then, too, the diameter of the stems must lend itself well to drawing water, since blooms last amazingly well.  The ARS rating of 8.7 is well deserved, and Pascali is still among the ten most highly rated exhibition roses in the United States.

Of all the white hybrid teas we grow, Pascali is probably the most popular with florists.  They don't always realize that the reason they like the foliage is that Pascali is so disease-resistant.  They know well, however, that Pascali is a superb cut flower and it has an unusually extended vase life.

Pristine

White Masterpiece x First Prize

Pristine, a pinkish white bloom that looks like porcelain, caused quite a commotion when it was introduced in 1978.  Another result of Bill Warriner's hybridizing efforts for Jackson & Perkins, Pristine quickly climbed to the top of the chart of great exhibition roses, where it is likely to remain.  It gets my vote for the rose of the seventies.

The bush and the bloom are unusual in combination because few plants growing this hardily produce blossoms of such delicate color and form.  Bushes look as if they would resist anything from disease to bodily interference.  Pristine is a rampant grower and sends up large numbers of thorny, tough canes.  It can grow very tall if you let it, but it will also respond to controlled shaping.  The foliage is large and tough and starts out as waxy, mahogany red, turning dark green as the bloom matures.  New canes are also dark red and obviously bursting with vigor from the number of stems swelling out all along their length.  The arrangement of twenty-five to thirty large petals is unique for modern hybrid teas.  It actually resembles a gardenia bloom.  The petal edges are a pronounced lavender-rose pink.

Usually blooms in this color class are fragile and ephemeral.  Not Pristine.  Blooms last, and petals always have sufficient substance to present nice form.  The fragrance is less than we might like, but that's the single flaw I find.  Whites are not known for their fragrance, and Pristine actually has more than most. Stems are very long, and if you remove their vicious thorns, one long-stemmed bloom makes a wonderful "bouquet" for a bride to carry down the aisle.

Disbudding isn't needed very often, but side buds should be removed to get full hybrid tea beauty.  I must admit, however, that I've seen sprays of Pristine that would knock your socks off.

Iceberg

Robin Hood x Virgo

The Kordes clan of Holstein, West Germany, has made countless contributions to the world of roses.  Their hybridizing efforts have been so prodigious that they developed an entirely new botanical species of roses along the way.  It seems odd that perhaps the finest Kordes effort came so early--in 1958 when they introduced Schneewittchen, now better known as Iceberg.  The prestigious World Federation of Rose Societies picked Iceberg as the only floribunda among the federation's five favorite roses selected to date.

Iceberg blossoms are pure white and almost always appear in sprays.  Petal count is low, so there are often fully open blooms to look at while sprays are still fresh.  Fragrance is moderately strong and clean.  Foliage is light green, small, and glossy.  (It's also particularly prone to mildew.)

Iceberg makes a fine bush for landscaping, since it will do almost anything you want it to.  With moderately severe pruning, bushes will remain compact and low enough for foreground plantings.  Pruned for garden display, plants will easily oblige with growth sufficient for backgrounds.

Disbudding seems like a special chore, for bushes produce so many sprays, and all, it seems, at the same time.  But your efforts will pay off with masses of icy white sprays that last well on or off the bush.

Someone recently asked a panel of rose breeders to name their favorite rose.  Most of the experts couldn't see beyond their own hybridizing palettes and seized the opportunity to laud roses they had created themselves.  Not Sam McGredy of the famous Irish rose dynasty.  He dodged the question at first by saying that he wished he'd been asked to name the best  rose in the world.  "That would be easy--Iceberg."

Color Magic

Unnamed seedling x Spellbinder

If you want to make rosarians really squirm, ask them to name their favorite rose.  They can rattle of their favorite ten, but coming down to one is pretty tough.  Some years ago, I decided that I had to pick my favorite so that I could give a shorter answer to that popular question.  Color Magic is my choice.  It meets my three chief requirements:  blooms are large and irresistibly fragrant, with a scent, I believe, all its own, and it can  be prolific.

When Bill Warriner introduced Spellbinder in 1975, I knew he was on to something great.  Three years later, he crossed Spellbinder with an unknown seedling and got Color Magic.  He won an All-America Selection for that particular effort.

The bloom's basic color is apricot pink, but this hybrid tea is truly a blend, with colors ranging from dark rose pink all the way to a rich, buff beige center.  The size is simply staggering, and the more blooms open, the more beautiful they become.  Fully open ones will easily fill a nine-inch space, and the exhibition stage between half and three-quarters open is something to behold.

I think I can identify Color Magic fragrance blindfolded.  It has that quality some call classic tea scent, but it's strong and full-bodied.  Stems are long and large, and if you can grow the bush well, you must treat it harshly to keep gargantuan growth from developing.

What keeps this variety from earning a 10.0 in my book is its propensity to die back (as discussed in Chapter 4), more so than any rose I know.  Often at pruning time, after the dieback is cut off, there aren't enough canes left to justify leaving the bush in the ground.  I'm getting somewhat better at handling the problem by cutting dieback off as soon as I spot it, and I certainly haven't given up because once I produce a good bloom, I remember that no other rose I know can beat it.

Double Delight

Granada x Garden Party

I saw a photograph of this rose before seeing the bloom itself and was sure that the suppliers were playing a trick on us.  Double Delight is indeed something else.  Blooms really are red and white, and the colors are dramatically combined.  Red sprawls irregularly over the white petals.  Sun and variable weather conditions produce different color patterns so that no two blooms are ever exactly alike.  Add to this a strong fragrance and great form, and it's clear why Double Delight is so popular.  It was selected as an All-America Rose for 1977 and quickly zoomed into the top ten of exhibition roses.

The bush is strong and produces an amazing number of blooms.  
All degrees of openness are nice, but the exhibition stage is best.  It is also perfectly wonderful when fully open, and the colors remain strong, as does the spicy fragrance.  Medium green foliage is abundant, but not particularly notable.

Double Delight is considered to be moderately disease-resistant.  That it's not covered in mildew all the time is a wonder, considering its heritage.  Its parents, Granada and Garden Party, set standards for mildew in most large rose gardens.

Three years after its introduction, Double Delight produced an offspring, Mon Cheri, which, although not quite as impressive as its parent, is also a wonderful rose, particularly if you prefer pink rather than white combined with red.  It, too, is fragrant, large and produced in large quantities on a bush quite similar to its predecessor.

Armstrong Nurseries has recently introduced a climbing version of Double Delight for those of you who might want to splash your garden walls or a trellis with red and white.

First Prize

Enchantment seedling x Golden Masterpiece seedling

There was only one All-America Rose Selection in 1970, probably because nothing else could stand up to hybridizer Boerner's First Prize to share the honors.  Once First Prize was introduced, it cut a beeline for the number-one spot in the list of exhibition roses.

First Prize is a fabulous rose for lots of reasons, one being its fantastic blend of colors.  It starts out as a high-centered pink, but with deep pink outer petals.  Before it has finished opening, beige becomes the center's major color.  Blooms reach amazing proportions with only twenty-five petals, probably because not a single one is misplaced in the creation of classic hybrid tea form.

The bush of First Prize is deceptive.  It looks as though it's doing all the right things until you go to cut blooms and find too many with short stems.  If you catch new basal breaks in time to snap them, you'll be rewarded with some long stems.

For those who have to consider what freezing weather might do, I'm told that the bush is winter tender.  I can attest to its tendency toward mildew in spite of apparent vigor.  When it produces blooms the size of dinner plates, though, it's easy to forgive all the faults.

For the first few years I grew First Prize, I thought it scentless; then one day I got a hint of its perfume.  Other people I know still detect no fragrance.  If you're after strong scent, don't plant First Prize.  If you think you might someday like to exhibit, don't think of doing without it.

Competition can be toughest when it's between family members.  In 1978 First Prize fathered Pristine, which has given it a run for its money.  Father and child are likely to fight for the number-one spot in rose showiness for some time to come.

Granada

Tiffany x Cavalcade

Hybridized by Lindquist in 1963 and an All-American Selection in 1964, this hybrid tea is as popular twenty years later as it was when it was introduced.  It strongly complies with two of my requirements in that it is a prolific bloomer and intensely fragrant.  My quarrel is with its size; it's smaller than I would like.  But the blooms come regularly and in abundance.  Many call it the "birthday cake rose" because it looks so like the confection roses used with icings to decorate baked goods.

Its most impressive colors include vermilion, scarlet, and lemon yellow, the combination of which yields an eye-blinking fluorescent quality.  The bus are urn shaped and can be cut tight; they'll still open, and the colors will intensify.

The bush of Granada can be identified even without blooms to help.  Plants are low to medium height and clothed in somewhat crinkled foliage that is distinctly toothed.  Often, another distinguishing characteristic is a set of highly decorative sepals, which can be amazingly long, elegantly framing the blooms.  Unfortunately, the bush tends to be a bit tender and prone to mildew.  All in all, however, it's a fine rose, and many consider it one of the most fragrant of modern introductions.

Granada has another endearing characteristic:  it has always been the first rose in my garden to bloom.  Understand that when roses finally bloom in spring, weeks after you wish they had, the first bloom is a welcome sight.  Granada used to be the last to bloom for me as well.  Now Gold Medal has that particular honor.  But there is rarely a time when I can't find some Granada to cut, and that's a comfort when I take my shears to the garden knowing I must return with some roses.

Sea Pearl

Kordes' Perfecta x Montezuma

When Dickson of England introduced this unique floribunda, he didn't choose its name casually; it grows and blooms best in coastal climates.  There it defies the generality that floribundas are low growing.  (Actually, I think it's misclassed by the ARS--it should be a grandiflora.)  Where I grow it, the bushes are taller than any other floribunda in sight, and reach a greater height than most of the hybrid teas as well.  And it will do you no good to try to change its tall growth habit with severe pruning.  It will bloom more quickly if you prune it tall.

The basic color of the bloom is peach pink, diffused with a buff-and-yellow reverse.  There are only about twenty-two petals, but they're used to full advantage the way they form the bloom.  If buds are cut tight, blooms will open fully and reveal golden stamens.

You can hardly believe that the blooms cut in the fall have come from the same bush as those you cut in spring.  Colors remain the same, but they shade darker.  It's hard to decide which is prettier.  Fragrance is there from start to finish.  Florists commonly refer to the lasting quality of flowers as vase life.  Sea Pearl has it in spades.

While its growing habits are not typical of the floribunda class, Sea Pearl's blooming characteristics are ideal.  More often than not, blooms are produced in sprays rather than one to a stem.  And they must be disbudded if you are to enjoy them at their best.  In competition, disbudding is mandatory.  Once you understand what this maintenance technique can do for you, you'll disbud religiously.

Sea Pearl grows upright with wonderful urn-shaped, many-caned bushes.  Some general pruning methods have to be ignored for this variety.

Grown well, the bushes are so hardy that they will support many more canes than most rosebushes.  The foliage is not particularly distinguished, but it is a nice dark green and generally much healthier than most.

Anabell

Zorina x Colour Wonder

I'm not particularly fond of orange as a color for roses, but those who like it are a lucky lot, for there are some impressive orange roses around.  Most come from Europe, more particularly, from the hybridizing efforts of the Kordes family in West Germany, who seem to have the corner on the orange market.  An interesting note is that a parent for many of the orange varieties is frequently an older rose named Colour Wonder.  I find Colour Wonder downright ugly--not because it's orange, but because of its dumpy formlessness.  It's a great example of how complicated the results of hybridizing can be.  While even orange enthusiasts wouldn't want a garden full of Colour Wonder, the rose makes a great parent (either sex).

As far as I'm concerned, two other orange roses from Kordes are worth considering as well as Anabell; both are All-America Rose Selections.  One is Shreveport, named after the location of the national headquarters of the American Rose Society.  Shreveport is a grandiflora with a growth habit much like Anabell's, but with a more nicely colored bloom--more subtle and grading toward yellow.  Another worthy orange is Marina, which has vastly superior foliage to either of the others.  All of these roses are thorny, have similar growth habits, and produce their best blooms in sprays.

Anabell is a prolific bloomer.  While sprays that need disbudding occur most of the time, there will be a fair number of single blooms.  Blossoms are small, but nicely formed, sweetly fragrant, and amazingly long lasting.  Many prefer them fully open.

Foliage is dull but clean, and the bush is a real grower.  You'll leave many more canes on this rose after pruning than most floribundas, and the vigor of the variety will support them.  I've seen other rosarians' bushes of Anabell that are three times the size of mine.  I prune mine low because I have a lot of wind to contend with and too much staking would be required if the bush got very tall.  Also, a lot of the canes produce unmanageable sprays.  Even after pruning, each season's growth will produce bushes taller than I can possibly let stand.

Angel Face

(Circus x Lavender Pinocchio) x Sterling Silver

When Gladys Fisher hybridized Sterling Silver for introduction in 1957, she became one of the most important women to the rose since Empress Josephine by offering mauve as a color for modern roses.  Since then, the mauve color class has progressed to the point that its modern parent, Sterling Silver, is no long considered a strong contender for a mauve rose.  The ARS now rates it at 4.8 (lower than 6.0 is called "of questionable value").  I'd rate it even lower for its pitiful performance, and I dug up all of mine some years ago.  Although people still ask for it, I believe it is mainly because they remember its rather catchy name and sumptuous fragrance.  They don't know that some of Sterling Silver's grandchildren have even finer fragrance and growth habits far superior to their predecessor.  Foremost is Angel Face, hybridized by southern California's Swim and Weeks in 1968, and the All-America Rose Selection for 1969--the first mauve rose to earn this award.

Mauve is still not a color for everyone.  I resisted it at first because of its funeral hue.  I've since learned to respect it as a deserving color class, and if you get to that point, you can't resist Angel Face.  First, as long as it's mauve, it's at least clear, not muddied.  And the fragrance!  It is virtually as strong as any modern rose.

Buds are lovely and high centered.  They open into four-inch flat blooms with wavy petals around a center of golden stamens.  Blooms keep well, even full opened.  Angel Face has irresistible displays of typical floribunda virtuosity with its multiple blooms on one stem, often in all stages of development.

Although others grow large bushes of Angel Face, mine are small.  I believe the fact that I cut almost every bloom that appears must be a factor.

Besides being low-growing, the bushes have a spreading tendency.  They're covered in coppery green foliage that's more disease-resistant than most.

Paradise

Swarthmore x Unnamed seedling

Here's a hybrid tea toward which hardly anyone is ambivalent.  For some, it's a color too weird to have around.  For others, it's too amazing to live without.  Whichever, I wish I had hybridized it, but Ollie Weeks did, and earned an All-America Rose Selection in 1979.  It's silvery lavender, splashed with ruby red on the petal edges and in random blotches into the bloom.  Besides being one of the most unusual color combinations in modern rosedom, it's fragrant.  Finally, it has incredible form.  Even the smallest of blooms will have twenty-six to thirty petals perfectly arranged around a bull's-eye center.

What's wrong with it?  The bush and the foliage.  Leaves are a rather noncommittal green, prone to mildew.  The threat of mildew doesn't worry me; I can control that.  Preventive spraying, though, leads to another problem--the foliage begins to look as if you've taken a torch to it.  In fact, all you did was spray with the same solution you used on your other bushes, and they look fine.  The cause of this unfortunate reaction to spray still eludes me.  But I'll continue to grow Paradise, and so will you if it takes your fancy.

There's a tendency for the bush to die back, as discussed in Chapter 4.  You can cope with that fortunately since the bush is a strong grower and a heavy producer.

Paradise will fit quite nicely into the latest addition to the color classification of the ARS, mauve blend.  If you had seen it in a rose show before this class was available, your natural tendency would have been to move it someplace else.  Now it will seem at home with the likes of Patsy Cline, a recent Armstrong introduction.  I predict that other roses will quickly join this color class--it's popular right now, and those who like it, get to be nuts about it.

Peace

{(George Dickson x Souvenir de Claudius Pernet)

x

(Joanna Hill x Charles P. Kilham)}

x

Margaret McGredy

If Peace were to come along today, I doubt that it would make a very big splash or become an All-America Selection.  The fact is, however, that Peace's arrival could not have been more perfectly timed to make it the most famous rose in the world.  Starting with its parentage, this rose has quite a history.  It was the ultimate accomplishment of its hybridizer, Francis Meilland of France.  Peace budwood was spirited from France on some of the last planes to leave before World War II occupation.  It survived to become the floral symbol of the United Nations' formation in San Francisco in 1946 and was the All-America Selection the same year.  Today it's still one of the top ten exhibition roses in the United States.

I think of Peace as a yellow, although it's classified by the ARS as a blend.  In fact, no two blooms are alike, and this is part of Peace's enduring charm.  I've seen the basic color so pale that it's really off white, with edges dipped in pink.  Sometimes, though, usually in the fall, its color is a deep clear yellow turning to coral orange at petal edges.

Here's a rose I definitely like better past the bud stage, preferably three-quarters open.  The color variations add to its appeal for exhibition, and its form can be exemplary.  It's considered slightly fragrant, though this hardly why you'd buy it.  Bushes are medium height and strong growers.  Foliage is dark and shiny.  It should be grown for one bloom per stem; sprays are disappointing by comparison.  It will remain a favorite forever, if for sentimental reasons alone.

Gold Medal

Yellow Pages x Shirley Laugharn

Here's a rose whose success testifies to the fallibility of the present All-America Rose Selection process.  It was passed over in 1983 when Sweet Surrender and Sun Flare won instead.  Both of those selections, I predict, will be but vague memories in another decade.  But not Gold Medal, and thank goodness the buying public recognized it for the winner it is.  When Jack Christensen hybridized Gold Medal, he gave us a color we sorely needed.  Not many yellows are great performers, but this one's a workhorse, producing scads of rich, yellow, fragrant blooms.

The bush itself is terrific.  It's hardy, nicely shaped, and won't pout if you prune it rather low.  If you prune it high, which it actually prefers, it will still reward you with bowers of bloom.  For this versatility, it's a great landscape rose.  Foliage is abundant, large, mid-green, and about as disease-resistant as that growing on any modern rosebush.

Buds are golden yellow with tawny edges.  Blooms last on or off the bush, making it a favorite for those who want garden display or cut flowers.

Gold Medal is one of the best-behaved grandifloras around--it will do as it's told.  If you like sprays, you can have them with long stems and multiple blooms.  If you disbud properly, they're show-stoppers.  If one to a stem is your thing, you can have them too, and they'll have exhibition form and impressive stem length.  I like both and have some of each on all bushes.

Last Christmas I went out into the field with rather dim hopes of finding roses.  It had already turned cold and had rained incessantly the preceding weeks.  Most of the bushes had given up their last bloom more than a month earlier.  Then I got to the Gold Medal bed.  I cut two-to-three-foot stems (I could afford to; I was about to prune, and the bushes were over my head), most of them sprays.  It's true I had to shake them upside down after I cut them since they were brimming with water.  Once I put them in a large container, people looked at the Christmas tree only after they had rolled their eyes over Gold Medal.

So far Gold Medal is my pick for the rose of the eighties.