GARDEN WORKHORSE

'Soleil d'Or' hybrid tea rose.

   
     My grandmother never would have thought of a rose as a "garden workhorse." Roses were the prima donna's of the garden -- beautiful, but temperamental and demanding. Gardeners of that generation were constantly spraying and dusting and mulching and worrying about hideous-sounding diseases like "black-spot." Rose gardeners seemed only one step below orchid growers when it came to obsessive pampering and slavish devotion.

     In the last two decades nurseries and botanic gardens have made determined strides toward breeding rose cultivars more suitable for lazy gardeners like me. The new varieties are frequently patented or trademarked and you will see names like "Carefree" and "Flower Carpet" on many pot labels.

     The most recent and popular of these are the 'Knock Out' roses. These roses are cold hardy and have much better disease and insect resistance than traditional roses. I prune mine once a year around the first of March and I give them water when they need it. Otherwise I leave them alone. My wife Wan "dead-heads" (that is, cuts off spent blooms) periodically. This encourages more new blooms, but it is not essential. Knock Outs require significant, but not full sun.

The Knock Out patch at my front steps.

    For this relatively puny effort, my Knock Outs keep blooming from May until after Thanksgiving. When you compare this to the 2-3 weeks peonies are in their glory, you can see why I call them "work horses." It is hard to get more bang for the buck.


     When they first came out, the only problem with these beauties was that they came in only one color -- a kind of dark neon pink. With each passing year, however, more varieties appear. There are now double-blooms, pinks, light pinks, yellow/creams, and coral blooms with yellow centers. Now we can be lazy and picky at the same time.