Tag: shade tolerant

Rosa glauca

One of the great things about this species rose is that it’s attractive for more than one feature. The rose goes by more than one species name, the other common one being Rosa rubrifolia. Sometimes the latin name will reveal something about the plant, and in these two names, there’s a bit of a contradiction: glauca means grey, and rubrifolia means red-leaved. Both are sort of right, and both are sort of wrong. The leaves are green, and yes, there’s a matte grey or blue tinge to them, but there’s also a red or purple tint in the veins and stems. Okay then… that makes the leaves greenish, bluish, greyish, purplish, reddish and then usually yellowish before they drop. That’s a lot of color!

Rosa glauca

The flowers are attractive, but small and simple. They have five petals, which are darker pink towards the edges and lighter towards the center, where they give way to the prominent yellow stamens. When the flowers are finished their early-season display, the plant goes to work on setting a large crop of red hips, which can decorate the plant well into the winter.

Depending on how and where you grow it, Rosa glauca can be a 4 foot shrub, or grow to as high as 10 feet. It will grow happily in part shade, and like most species roses, will accept less than perfect soil conditions.

Stanwell Perpetual

I don’t have a great nose for scent in roses, but when my timing is right, I can find a good Damask scent in ‘Stanwell Perpetual’. If you don’t know the scent I’m talking about, it’s what you’d smell in a perfume made with rose oil, which is harvested and distilled from Damask roses. As insensitive as my nose may be, I can tell you this: not every rose has this same scent. Some people describe the other rose fragrances as fruity, as spicy, or compare them to tea or cloves or licorice. I can’t really get all that specific myself, but I can pick out the scent of a Damask rose in this one just fine.

‘Stanwell Perpetual’ is a chance seedling from a garden, so the actual breeding would be a guess, but it most closely resembles the Scots rose, Rosa spinosissima. I do also grow the species, and they look alike most respects, but the flowers in ‘Stanwell’ are larger, fuller, scented, and instead of setting hips, ‘Stanwell’ repeats bloom later in the season.

Stanwell PerpetualThis is the rose in a 1 gallon pot. This picture is taken after the soft pink of the largest bloom has faded to a creamy white, but I do like the way this picture shows off the foliage and abundant buds. The habit of the rose is low growing, and because of its toughness, ‘Stanwell’ is great for putting on a sunny bank, or even in a more shaded location. It will, of course, do better in a more pampered location, but if you need a rose for a challenging location, you could hardly do better than this one.

Ballerina

I get some sideways looks when I describe ‘Ballerina’ as one of the tougher roses around. Maybe it’s the name. And certainly the dainty little white flowers with pink edges don’t shake the perception. When people think of tough roses, they’re more liable to think of something like a rugosa rose. By the very name (meaning “rugged”) and by the dangerous looking spines on each stem, rugosa roses seem built for toughness. And they are tough, don’t get me wrong, but put one side-by-side with ‘Ballerina’ in a somewhat shady location, and see which one comes out on top. ‘Ballerina’ can also stand up to wet conditions, hot conditions, cold winters (say zone 4ish) and it still blooms its head off all season.

Rosa 'Ballerina'‘Ballerina’ is an agreeable shrub to work with. It can grow as large as 6 feet high if you let it, and if you do, it blooms so impressively that it takes on the look of a hydrangea. It’s also quite happy to be trimmed to a smaller size to fit your landscape. Introduced in the 1930’s, it was ahead of its time, fulfilling the role in the garden that the popular landscape roses (like the ubiquitous ‘Bonica’) do today.