Landscaping with Antique Roses

 

Instead of creating a rose garden, plant a garden that contains roses

by Michael Shoup

"Archduke Charles', which can reach 6 feet in height and spread, is a good choice for planting along fences and taller structures.

For the last 100 years, breeders have put all their efforts into perfecting the rose's flower. Brightly colored blooms, strong stems, and high-centered buds that unfurl into multipetaled flowers have been the rewards. But all this "progress" has come at a cost. With the introduction of so many modern roses, nurseries stopped selling the antique varieties. The irony is that antique roses are tougher, more disease resistant, and more fragrant than the cutting-edge modern roses ever will be.
My passion for antique roses evolved in an odd way. In the early 1980s, in search of a marketing niche, I combed the Texas roadsides for interesting native plants to sell. Many of the plants I came across were displaced antique roses, and many of those were Old Garden roses, varieties introduced into commerce prior to 1867. Others were not as old, but they shared the same survival characteristics of the antiques I had found. I took cuttings of the roses I came across, with the hopes of propagating them and reintroducing them to the local market.  http://www.finegardening.com/design/articles/landscaping-with-antique-roses.aspx