It’s that time of year again when the roses put on a spectacular show, and this year the roses outdoing themselves.
I have been involved in roses most of my life, dating back to when I was 14 and began taking a real interest in my dad’s nursery business.
In March, we would receive our first shipment of bare root roses and it was my job as a helper to sort, grade and tag them before heeling them in to sawdust bins to display for retail sales.
The man in charge of this was Walter Spiller, who lived just north of us on Ethel Street and was a retired tug boat captain working the rail barges up and down the lake.
I was just as interested then as I am now with people and their endeavours, so I really enjoyed listening to Walter’s stories of his days on the tugs.
It was Walter who initially taught me the difference between the various classes of roses. In those days, retailers handled only a few.
The big three then still are today: Hybrid Tea, Floribunda and Grandiflora.
There were also climbers and a few hardy shrub roses such as the Rugosa varieties and a few species of roses such as Austrian Copper and Harrisons Yellow. I don’t believe we had any miniature varieties back in the 1960s. I think these began to appear in the ‘70s.
It was while working with Walter during rose season I learned about bud grafting and I have enjoyed this gardening procedure many times since by grafting various varieties of fruit onto one tree and even made a climbing rose sporting about six different colours.
What a difference today’s rose selection is compared to the old days. We now have several different groups of shrub or landscape roses which are often planted in mass.
The Meidiland roses were introduced in the ‘70s. In 1983 Bonica was chosen as an All-America Winner becoming the first landscape rose to do so. The Easy Elegance series from Bailey’s Nurseries in the US are living up to their early hype as being resistant to insects and disease and the Morden series from Manitoba is becoming famous worldwide for its many attributes.
Many of the City of Kelowna rose beds are now filled with Morden Blush and Morden Sunrise.
Also look for Canadian Artist and Canadian Explorer roses as well as Hardy climbers, Pavement roses and Carpet roses among the many others.
Sure glad I learned about roses back in the day when it was much less complicated.
Check out the fabulous display the roses are putting on this year and take a sample to a local garden centres and see if you can find a match.
