are roses dead?

I’ve been mean­ing to men­tion a piece I read in the local paper a few months back. Dick Streeper, gung-ho local rose grower and one of the founders of the Inez Grant Parker Memo­r­ial Rose Gar­den in San Diego’s amaz­ing Bal­boa Park, men­tioned in his piece how “The world’s lead­ing com­mer­cial asso­ci­a­tion of rose pro­duc­ers, All-America Rose Selec­tions, in busi­ness since 1939, has recently lost about two-thirds of its mem­bers. That has caused a sub­stan­tial drop in rose sales and a drop in the num­bers of good new vari­eties being intro­duced. Iden­ti­fy­ing and buy­ing good, newly intro­duced roses is sud­denly more difficult.”

I won­der, though, if the drop in rose sales actu­ally led to the drop in AARS mem­ber­ships and not the other way around. There was a point a cou­ple decades back when the splashy hybrid teas and flori­bun­das with their rose-show flower shapes started to get passed over as peo­ple seemed to move towards the nos­tal­gic beau­ties of the David Austin roses, flow­ers that looked like old roses but had a lot of the mod­ern rose qual­i­ties of more reli­able repeat bloom­ing and some­what bet­ter dis­ease resis­tance. Other breed­ers par­tic­i­pated in this renais­sance and old timey roses were all over.

It’d be inter­est­ing to sales reports for all these plants. I won­der if we, the fickle pub­lic, just got tired of them. Or at least we didn’t see any­thing new and shiny to take their place and stopped buy­ing them in the same num­bers. Roses can live for a long time, and really, how many roses do you need to buy in a life­time? And for fickle gar­den­ers, has there been any­thing new and excit­ing to cause us to uproot some of the plants we have?

I’ve men­tioned before that I had over a hun­dred plants in the house where I grew up. My cur­rent liv­ing sit­u­a­tion is down to just one rose. And that one got dug up from its spot in the gar­den and plopped in a pot this past autumn. It’s one of the plants I planted at my parent’s house in the 1970s and the only plant that I brought with me. I hope it sur­vives the recent trans­plant. So far so good.

Open­ing Flower on Green Rose

Even that plant is the green rose, a vari­ety dat­ing to the early 1800s and pos­si­bly the 1700s. And the last rose I bought was one of our local species Rosa minu­ti­fo­lia (a rose which did not sur­vive an attempted trans­plant). So you can see I haven’t been doing much lately to sup­port rose breeders…

July 22 2010 06:30 am | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags:

9 Responses to “are roses dead?”

  1. Colleen Miko on 22 Jul 2010 at 9:01 am #

    I’m afraid that I’m doing the AARS no favors either. I sel­dom rec­om­mend roses to clients, with the excep­tion of Rosa glauca (syn. R. rubrifolia)and Rosa rugosa hybrids which I have in my home gar­den. Part of the prob­lem where I live is that roses are sim­ply deer food, with the excep­tion of R. rugosa. Not to men­tion that most roses are suc­cep­ti­ble to dis­eases that thrive in our moist cli­mate. I think that a rose MUST be fra­grant to war­rant the effort it requires–and so many of the tough, dis­ease free ones lack this charm. Though I must say I might go to the extra work for your cool green rose.

  2. Elephant's Eye on 22 Jul 2010 at 10:58 am #

    We have roses, but I want them fra­grant, or beau­ti­ful, prefer­ably BOTH. Rather than this season’s freak. We buy our roses at Ludwig’s, and they opened a nurs­ery in the West­ern Cape, kindly just in time for us to plant in our new gar­den. They do need water­ing in sum­mer, and for that effort the roses we chose must be special.

  3. ryan on 22 Jul 2010 at 8:29 pm #

    Roses are dead, long live the roses. I have no inter­est in them and would say that the major­ity of our clients aren’t inter­ested, but we do get occa­sion­ally get clients request­ing them. I actu­ally find it dif­fi­cult in those instances; because I don’t like them, I have a hard time fig­ur­ing out what a rose lover would want.

  4. tina on 24 Jul 2010 at 5:28 am #

    I don’t think it is the rose in par­tic­u­lar that is los­ing sales though I’d be inclined to think that the less AARS mem­bers the less roses that are pur­chased. I think the fact that every back­yard breeder out there is breed­ing flow­ers and plants and mak­ing such a wide vari­ety avail­able to every­one is the rea­son for the drop in sales that cer­tain elit­ists used to enjoy sim­ply because they had the mar­ket wrapped up. Now a days folks can go to Lowes or some other big box store and get any­thing they want very cheaply. I’m not sure how those stats add up in sales of all roses but it seems like these roses would be dis­counted and there­fore not show as much in sales? Or there again, it may be that with the droughts and recent rise in con­scious­ness about spray­ing and main­te­nance that the Amer­i­can pub­lic has shied away from roses. I know I would never ever buy a spe­cial cul­ti­var of roses just to have it. All my very few roses are easy no spray or care roses. They have to be because I am too busy else­where, as are many other folks in soci­ety. Which brings me to another facet of the argument-is it pos­si­ble the Knock­out series are tak­ing from the All Amer­ica club fans? I don’t know what the issue is but I think the econ­omy has a way of work­ing it out for roses. The grow­ers will have to adapt and change to chang­ing tastes or go the way of the dinosaurs. The AARS is the same way. Gar­den clubs across Amer­ica in gen­eral are hav­ing trou­bles get­ting and keep­ing mem­bers so it is prob­a­bly more than just roses. Any­how, don’t mean to be such a talker but that is just the debater in me com­ing out.… Have a grand week­end James. Love that green rose. I cer­tainly would expect your one rose to be a bit dif­fer­ent as your gar­den is so unique.

  5. ricki - sprig to twig on 24 Jul 2010 at 12:44 pm #

    I pay very lit­tle atten­tion to the roses that were here when we moved in, but they thrive and make bouquet-worthy blos­soms any­way. Maybe they are only finicky if pam­pered?
    Plants go in and our of fash­ion, so I wouldn’t count roses out just yet.

  6. lostlandscape on 25 Jul 2010 at 5:26 pm #

    Colleen, the New York times had a recent piece about the new tough-as-nails gen­er­a­tion of roses that unfor­tu­nately were also about as un-fragrant as nails. I guess I’m for­tu­nate(?) to live where deer aren’t a prob­lem, though they used to roam through these hills before sub­ur­bia sprawled.

    EE, I’ve seen at least one of your posts where you fea­ture your roses. They seem like a reward­ing and spe­cial part of your gar­den. I enjoy the scents of many roses, espe­cially those that are on the spicier, peppery-er end of the spectrum.

    Ryan, the roses I grew up with were def­i­nitely prima donna rose-garden roses, not ones designed for get­ting along well with other plants in a land­scape. I could see some of the infor­mal species, maybe some of the pink natives, mixed into your plant­i­ngs. But I’d guess most of your clients want rose-garden varieties.

    Tina, thanks for your thought­ful com­ments. I enjoyed read­ing them. The whole chang­ing econ­omy of the hor­ti­cul­tural industry–and it is an industry–is a fas­ci­nat­ing topic. How do social and cul­tural ideas gets expressed in gar­dens? You men­tion the disease-resistant roses that thrive with­out spray­ing, and that def­i­nitely seems to be an adjust­ment to peo­ple want­ing to go greener in their gar­den­ing prac­tices. As more of the land­scape roses get greater play, I think that what is dying out is the old-fashioned notion of what a “rose” should be. But roses will be always be around in some form.

    Ricki, I’m def­i­nitely not count­ing them out totally. But I won­der if things like gar­den­ing pro­grams on TV and the web today are giv­ing peo­ple more ideas of what they could be grow­ing, not just roses.

  7. Wendy on 25 Jul 2010 at 5:50 pm #

    I have sev­eral roses, here before I moved in, which I come to really love. Yes, there are prob­lems with dis­ease and all, but I always think I’ll make a bet­ter effort to take care of them. They really are very reli­able though and I per­son­ally think they’re very beau­ti­ful. I love a sin­gle petaled rose as well as the roses with enor­mous petal counts! And fra­grance wise??? NOTHING beats an old fash­ioned tea rose.

  8. Wendy on 25 Jul 2010 at 5:50 pm #

    btw, I do find it so sad that the orga­ni­za­tion has lost 2/3 of it’s members.

  9. Christine on 03 Aug 2010 at 7:13 am #

    Look­ing at the gar­dens around here, it seemed that roses had their hey­day along with camel­lias in the 50’s. Per­haps that gen­er­a­tion has given way to some­thing else? I always won­der what land­scape design­ers are going to look for to date the gar­den in 50 years– bam­boo?
    I com­mis­er­ate with Ryan– my clients some­how assume I hate roses just because I warn them of all the main­te­nance issues, but I actu­ally find them enchant­ing when they’re not cov­ered with blackspot, rust, mildew, aphids, etc…
    I have to give props to the green rose, how­ever. That’s pretty special.

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