Why I Hate Roses

Yes, roses can be seductive. They have gorgeous flowers, they often smell quite nice, they can have strong historical and private associations for many people, and their names are just great (Mr. Lincoln, Julia Child, Maria Callas, Queen Elizabeth, Johann Strauss, . . . ).

But my perspective on roses allows me to see past their charms. Kay has a smallish collection of rose bushes. (For me, far too many; for most rosarians, far too few.) I help dig the holes for planting them, pull the weeds under them, water them, stake them, and pull Japanese beetles off them. And I try to comfort Kay while she agonizes over their illnesses, which is practically all the time.

I see roses' ugly side. Here, in sum, is the brief against them:

1. They need a lot of preparation. Roses are bushes. They need big holes. A normal perennial-sized hole won't cut it. In our yard, where the soil is basically dry mortar holding together a vast jumble of grape-sized to fist-sized rocks, digging a rose hole means using a heavy crowbar-like tool more often than a shovel.

2. They don't shade out weeds. Roses are fussy. They don't like to be crowded, and they don't like to share their beds with non-roses. Their beds consequently have a lot of sunny, open space that is perfect for weeds. Mulching helps somewhat, but you still need to get down on your knees and reach under and around their thorny branches to keep the weeds down.

3. They're always in trouble. Roses seem to be sick all the time. The leaves are turning yellow and dropping; the buds are bending over and dying; they're loaded with aphids and Japanese beetles. Sometimes they just seem to have general malaise, like a widow who's lost her husband and her will to live. Roses never become "established." They're always on the brink of disaster. Worst of all, some of their problems seem to be curable only by soaking the ground around them with chemicals so bad that they can't be sold anymore.

Are roses so wonderful that we should put ourselves through this, when we could have a bright, exuberant perennial bed for a small fraction of the toil and worry?

Refreshment

Maybe it's just my imagination, but a little overnight rain seems to enliven the plants in a way hand-watering can't seem to match. Some fast-moving thunderstorms came through our area between dusk and midnight yesterday. This morning, everything looked perkier. The slight droops were gone. The leaves and stems had an optimistic air, like a man with a spring in his step.

If You Want Something Done Right . . .

Gardening is one endeavor that gives truth to the adage, If you want something done right, you should do it yourself. Last spring, we doubled the length of the rose bed in the front yard, from about ten feet to twenty feet. Time, however, got away from me, and I neglected to weed and mulch the new bed after we put in Kay's additional roses. By August, when the bed finally seized my lapels and demanded my attention, the space between the roses was like a vacant lot. Hard as concrete and veined with Bermuda grass, clover, portulaca, maple seedlings, dandelions, plantain, and who knows what else. Every evening for over a week, I then spent two hours with a hand spade digging out each weed, cum roots if possible, and then blanketing the day's recovered area with mulch.

Our rose bed in the back yard really needed the same treatment. But by the time I was done with the front bed, I just could not face the same job with the even longer back bed. So we hired someone to weed it for us. The woman we hired is a fine garden designer (she laid out the perennial bed along the front of the house) but not such a great weeder. I think what she did was essentially hoe off the tops of the weeds and then mulch.

Now it's the following season, and the difference between my hand weeding in the front and the weeding-for-hire in the back is apparent. The front bed (which I freshened up yesterday) had just a handful of weeds. The back bed, meanwhile, has a green mat of clover, tufts of grass, and a weed I haven't identified yet but is common in our yard. I need to do to the back rose bed what I did last year in the front: laborious hand weeding, inch by inch, until the bed is clear.

Our Ferns So Far

Bit by bit, we've been adding ferns to the garden. Two springs ago, we planted one tiny Japanese painted fern (Athyrium niponicum 'Pictum'), in an open spot under one of the garage windows. It's since become somewhat crowded and blocked by neighboring perennials, but I'm not ready to move it just yet.

Last year, we planted three ferns, all at the back of the annual bed near the back door: another Japanese painted fern (which started out much larger than our first one and is now a big splash of silver when you come up the hill), a Christmas fern (Polystichum acrostichoides), and a variegated holly fern (Arachniodes simplicior var. variegata). The Christmas fern seems to be in good shape, but we're waiting to see how the holly fern will do. John Mickel, in Ferns for American Gardens (Timber Press 2003), says that his variegated holly fern doesn't awaken until early June in New York. Ours currently has only two small fronds, still not completely uncurled, and three crosiers. We also have a maidenhair fern that was planted by the woman who laid out the bed along the back of the house; I think it's Adiantum capillus-veneris.

So far this year, we've added six ferns: In front of the gnome on the east side of the back yard, an Athyrium filix-femina (lady in red) flanked by two Polystichum polyblepharum (Japanese tassel ferns). An autumn fern (Dryopteris erythrosora) in an empty spot under the dogwood in the front yard. An Athyrium 'Ghost' fern that Kay fell in love with, by the gate into the front yard. And another athyrium, 'Branford Beauty,' at the western end of the bed along the back of the house. The label of the Branford Beauty fern says that it's "a perfect cross between Lady Fern and Japanese Painted Fern!" I'm not sure if I wouldn't really rather have something more robust in that spot, but we'll see how it develops.

Memorial Day Weekend 2008

Today is the third of three glorious days of gardening. On Saturday, we dug the spent tulips out of the annual bed by the back door and put in impatiens. (We ran out of impatiens and need to buy more today.) We also planted heliotrope in the bed in front of the livingroom window, replaced several sickly-looking wave petunias in the bed by the dogwood, and planted a few leftover marigolds, deadnettle, and another groundcover in an open spot along the back of the house (I need to check the name on that last one). Kay trimmed the big taxus beyond the annual bed, opening up the path between that bed and the taxus again, and we used the truck to haul those trimmings plus some large fallen pine branches out to the mulch pile.

Yesterday, I continued my project of reclaiming the neglected bed between the forsythia and the big taxus. I cut down and raked out the violets, lily-of-the-valley, and assorted weeds, and then spread water-logged newspaper over the bed and covered the newspaper with mulch. (A little brown toad came along with the mulch.) I still have half the bed to be tamed. I also planted a false sunflower in the front, in the corner by the holly; sawed off the less comely side of our split redbud; and weeded and mulched half of the front rose bed.

In a few moments, before it gets any warmer, we're going to put marigolds, petunias, and ageratum in the bed around the mailbox, and after that it's another trip to the nursery.