Choosing Roses
by: Christian Harper

Last month, I wrote about planting bareroot roses, a process that many people mistakenly find mysterious and challenging. Hopefully, I helped dispel those notions but for those of you still more comfortable with plants in plastic containers, the potted roses have arrived! Actually, they've been in local nurseries for several weeks now. Faced with the lush, fully leafed out and ready to bloom status of these plants, most of the bareroot roses
have been consigned to the bargain racks, potted up by staff for sale later, or (sniff) sent to the big compost pile in the sky.

If you're still eager to either introduce or add roses to your garden, the Big Question for many people is "How do I choose from so many?"

Recommendations from friends and fellow growers is your first option. Rose lovers are always keen to share their opinions on the best red tea rose or the heaviest blooming floribunda. Perhaps a particular variety at Olbrich Gardens caught your eye (or nose) last summer and you wrote it down in hopes of buying one this year. Maybe a glossy catalog or magazine picture has seduced you into attempting a re-creation in your yard. If you're still standing in front of a hundred different roses feeling clueless, maybe you should let someone else do the picking by choosing an All-America Rose Selections winner.

You may have wondered what the story is on this patriotic sounding designation. Are these really the best roses? Who gets to decide and more importantly, how? Is it just a beauty contest or is there some real substance to the awards?

First of all, this is a totally different All-America rating than the one given to annual flowers and vegetables. All-America Rose Selections, Inc. (AARS) is a non-profit organization dedicated to rose research and promotion. Comprised of representatives of almost all the major rose growers and introducers, the sixty year old program tests hundreds of new varieties to determine which, if any, can be recommended to the public as exceptional.

These roses go through two-year trials at 22 test plots at gardens across the country. Boerner Gardens in Milwaukee, Chicago Botanic Gardens, and Lyndale Park Gardens in Minneapolis are the three closest to Madison. Each year, dozens of roses, nameless except for an identification number, are graded on 15 different attributes by professional judges. Some of the traits considered are color, fragrance, vigor, growth habit, flower production, disease resistance, novelty, and overall value.

Roses must score well in all categories and perform well in all climates, including up here on the tundra. After two years of scoring, winners are chosen, but results aren't announced for one more year to give the growers enough time to produce new plants for the public. Some years there is only one winner. The last seven years have seen two, three, or four winners.

Prior to their availability to the general public, the winning roses are provided free to 136 public gardens across the country for a year-long sneak preview. Olbrich Gardens is lucky enough to be one of these gardens and last year had the additional honor of being named the AARS Outstanding Public Rose Garden for 1997. Each spring, we receive eight plants each of the next years winners. Right now, we have 32 plants growing that represent the four 1999 champions. I am forbidden by AARS from giving out their names until June 1, but they will all be labeled and
probably blooming shortly after that. One of them is the first climbing rose to win in 23 years. I can tell you all about the 1998 winners, just now available at local nurseries, but entering their sophomore season for us here at Olbrich.

Of the four winners we previewed last summer, 'Fame!', a deep pink Grandiflora, was my favorite.  It's a strong color, not for the shy, but it's displayed on some of the most perfectly formed blossoms you'll ever see. And there was lots of them, even on our smallish first-year plants.  Almost as impressive was 'Opening Night', a red Hybrid Tea, and the first true red tea winner since one of its parents, 'Olympiad', took home the honor back in 1984. Its other parent, 'Ingrid Bergman', has always been a favorite of mine, with velvety petals that everyone wants to
touch.

Joining 'Opening Night' is another Hybrid Tea, 'Sunset Celebration', best described as creamy peach in color, though each pretty bloom seems slightly different. I was less impressed with this rose, though I generally reserve judgement until roses have gone through a second season.  Sometimes it just takes them awhile to get going, particularly if the plants were small the first year.

The last winner for 1998 is a Landscape rose, 'First Light', whose most noteworthy attribute might be its compact (some might say tiny) size.  Landscape roses, loved by many for their hardiness and ease of care, are typically fairly
large plants. 'First Light' bucks this trend by displaying clusters of five to seven-petaled light pink flowers with prominent purple stamens on 18-inch tall plants. These will work nicely for tucking into small spaces where other roses might not fit.

Speaking of Landscape Roses, two more of my favorite AARS winners were in this category, the similarly named 'Carefree Delight', a 1996 winner, and 'Carefree Wonder', a 1991 champ. I love the former for its incredible hardiness and long arching canes bearing hundreds of white centered, pink blooms. 'Carefree Wonder' is the Landscape rose I recommend to people who want a more hybrid-rose type bloom. When this variety has its first flush of bloom at Olbrich Gardens, it draws visitors like a magnet.

If you'd like to read more about AARS roses and see some beautiful photos of them, I highly recommend a new book by Rayford Clayton Reddell. Titled, naturally, "All-America Roses", it is published by Chronicle Books. This excellent little tome details Reddell's forty favorite winners and tells of his conversion from harsh critic of AARS to
a demonstration trial judge for the same. This is a quick, light read, full of good humor and valuable information for everyone fom rank beginners to seasoned pros.

Another good source of information is the AARS web site at www.ars.org.