If you’ve never grown a rose simply for fear that you’ll kill it in no time, think again! The National Garden Bureau has designated 2017 as “The Year of the Rose”. According to the NGB: “Each year we select one annual, one perennial, one bulb crop and one edible as our ‘Year of the’ crops. Each is chosen because they are popular, easy-to-grow, widely adaptable, genetically diverse, and versatile.” (Note their term “easy-to-grow”!) The Rose is the US National Flower but they’ve been around for centuries, with the oldest on record dating back 7,000 years ago in China.
Although there are still plenty of prima donnas in the rose world — those sweetly scented hybrid tea and grandiflora roses that send off a few gorgeous blooms per stem and need quite a bit of TLC — modern-day rose breeding has resulted in a full range of low maintenance roses, from taller shrub roses to lower-growing groundcover roses. These newer varieties throw off tons of blooms throughout the summer, providing loads of color for months on end and many are considered to be easy to grow.
One of the early pioneers of the “easy care” rose phenomenon was Anthony Tesselaar, who, over 22 years ago, introduced the exceptionally disease tolerant Flower Carpet® groundcover roses to the American gardeners. Not a rosarian himself but rather a general plantsman and avid gardener, Tesselaar searched for a rose than anyone could grow without chemical sprays or the need for difficult pruning or care. Bred by the renowned German rose breeder Werner Noack, Flower Carpet rose is the recipient of over 25 international awards for disease resistance, making it a favorite of gardeners across the US.
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