East to Grow Roses

If you subscribe to this blog than you now Dale and I visited with Chris Warner the Oso Easy rose breeder while in England. Getting to his Shropshire home was not easy even with a GPS unit. English addresses are a tad bit strange and the GPS does not like them. Thank goodness for cell phones!

Chris Warner in his rose breeding greenhouse

It was a great pleasure to visit with Chris and the get a better feel for how he breeds and selects his roses. For example - he leaves any diseased seedlings in his greenhouse seed beds so there is plenty of fungal inoculum available to infect and show which seedlings have the greatest disease resistance. We got to see all phases of his testing and selection. It is in the later stages in the process where Chris gets ruthless about culling out any diseased seedlings. Still even at these stages there are old rose plants near by to infect any susceptible roses.

One of Chris's most disease resistant roses in the Oso Easy line is a bright and cheerful red rose with a yellow center called Urban Legend. This rose is so healthy and floriferous it has been awarded the Lord Burleigh Award for Best Disease Resistant Rose, the Chauncey Beadle Award for Best Shrub Rose at the 2018 Biltmore International Rose Trials at the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, N.C. and the American Rose Society Award of Excellence. Now I have to be totally honest with you when it come to this rose. When it was time to name this rose, we considered several other names, including Barbed Wire, Brinks and ADT. These names may seen a bit strange, but you have to understand this is a very thorny rose, and because so it is perfect for planting under windows in high crime areas. There is a real need for security plants and the names were our attempt to position this rose for that very purpose. We settled on Urban Legend which speaks to it usefulness in fighting crime but also to its award winning disease resistance and flower power.  

A container shot of this roes sent to us by a customer in Texas

Urban Legend on the left and nock out on the right in out test garden. 

Chris has also made a name for himself with his hybrid Hulthemia Persica rose breeding sold under the series name Ringo Roses. Ringo Yellow is a magically colored rose with yellow, red pink and white in the bloom. His Ringo roses are substantially hardier and more disease resistant than anything else in the catagory. Ringo has proven it self by winning awards at the Hauge Rose Trials, first place at the Lyon Rose Trials and Gold at the Gold Standard Rose trials.      

The original Ringo Rose from Chris Warner

Ringo is sold under the Proven Winners brand in the USA

Ringo® Double Pink (Rosa 'Chewdelight), also a Hague Rose Trial First Class Certificate winner, comes with a fuchsia pink flowers, a dark magenta center and having 15 to 25 petals. It too has been a worldwide hit with rose growers. 

Ringo Double Pink rose flower

Ringo Double Pink did excellent in our container rose trial

It is always a pleasure to spend time taking plants with a plant breeder, but it is even more so with Chris. He has such a depth of knowledge and such great enthusiasm for roses and it is evident in his plant introductions. They are smart and elegant. Beautiful, yet useful. Healthy, yet happy. I cannot wait to return to Shropshire, England!

New and Interesting Plants seen in the UK

We'll I had a few moments to go through some of my pictures from England and gleened out a few to share. The first one is an English Oak (Quercus robur) tree we say along side the road. It was so large we just had to stop and get a picture. Turns out it has a name - The Big Belly Oak and is one of the largest in the country.

We had a chance to visit the Berberis traials at Wisely. I hope to revisit them in this blog at a later time but they had Sunjoy Gold Pillar Berberis 'Maria' there and it looked great. The color was bright and there was no mildew or bunring as with some of the other yellows.

This is a very nice Buddleia grown not for it's flowers but rather its silver foliage. I think Plant Haven offers it. It's called Silver Anniversary. It have white flowers but that's not the reason to grow it. It was developed by Peter Moore.

Another plant by Peter Moore is Choisya Goldfingers. What a pretty container plant for the patio. I suspect it's a good plant for California or Oregon but not for the rest of us. Still very stunning.

This is a variegated from of Hydrangea a. pet. with dusty variegation. It comes from Japan and I believe it's been patented but I forget the name.

Schizophraga is a relative of the climbing Hydrangea. This unusual selection has yellow blotches on the leaves. I kind of like it but I think many people would think it has chemical damage

I have always loved this shrub but have never had success growing it. It's Sophora davidii - a member of the pea family. This plant was loaded with blue flowers and was quite stunning.

Plants on Trial - Lonicera vines

It’s a shame that Honeysuckle vine has gotten a bad rap. Lonicera japonica, the Japanese Honeysuckle vine is to blame of course. It has proven to highly invasive, particularly in the South East. Birds love the fleshy fruit and deposit the seeds along fence rows and thus miles of fence lines in the East have been engulfed by this aggressive vine. As with most invasive plants, it is a regional issue. The USDA plant database shows it as being escaped in Michigan, however, I’ve never seen it to be a problem. The point is that there are many excellent vines in this genera that are well behaved and garden worthy depending upon where you live. In addition there are also native species that get neglected simply because of this guilt by association.

On my trip to England, I was fortunate enough to catch some of the early flowering varieties of Lonicera in bloom at the RHS trials in Wisley Gardens. The bright orange, red and yellow flowers drew me in and the thick, sweet fragrance lured me even closer and I ran from plant to plant clicking photos and sticking my nose into each bloom inhaling the rich aroma. These are twining vines and they need support to climb. They will not adhere to brick or bark as would ivy or climbing Hydrangea. And as a twining vines go these plants require more structural support than Wisteria or Clematis. At Wisley they loosely wrapped a tube of chicken wire around wooden poles with the vines planted in between the two. This worked brilliantly, as the British say.

It was a tad early to see the majority of these vines in flower, so what follows is a snapshot of some of the early flowering varieties.





The showiest plant in bloom was Lonicera x heckrotti (Goldflame Honeysuckle) which to the best of my knowledge is a hybrid that contains the genes of three species; our native Lonicera sempervirens, Lonicera etrusca a Meterianian species and L. implexa a species native to Africa. It is an everblooming vine with rose-pink tubular flowers adorned with an orange-yellow interior. The plants I sniffed were wonderfully sweet and intoxicating.

Lonicera x italica is another early bloomer. It too was fragrant but the blooms were not as showy as Goldflame.




Our native species Lonicera sempervirens was in flower. While it does not have the fragrance, I love the contrast between the intense orange-red flowers its attractive blue-green foliage. The flowers are more pendulous, more tubular than other and so you only get a slight glimpse of the yellow hues hidden within the tube.




Two Lonicera periclymenum (Woodbine Honeysuckle) cultivars were in flower. The cultivar ‘Munster’ sported yellow flowers with a hint of pink in the buds, while ‘La Gaserie’ was a lighter cream-yellow and pink in bud. Both plants had good fragrance. The cultivars ‘Belgica Select’ and ‘Graham Thomas’ were showing buds but were not in flower. The popular cultivar ‘Serotina’ was even further behind.

Lonicera x tellmanniana, Lonicera henryi, Lonicara x brownii and their cultivars were not yet in flower.

If you are interested in learning more about these interesting vines I would suggest you visit http://www.clematis.com.pl/wms/2494791.html. It is the website of ornamental vine expert and Clematis breeder Szczepan Marczyński.

I’ve visited Szczepan in Poland a few years ago and fortunately for me the Lonicera vines were in full bloom. Oh how I love fragrant plants.

Off to England

Later this week Dale and I are heading to England. The plan is to visit plant breeders, small specialty growers and hopefully find some new plants for North American gardens. We’ll start the tour with a stop a Wisley Gardens in Surrey. The Royal Horticulture Society conducts plant trials at Wisley so we will have a chance to see a number of plant trials and evaluate cultivars growing in side by side comparisons. It should be fun.

Another stop will take further north in Shropshire, where we’ll visit Chris Warner, the OSO EASY rose Breeder. We have been growing and trialing Chris’s roses for about 7 years but this will be the first time we get to see his breeding program up close and personal. While the rose market is difficult at the moment, we are getting great feedback from both growers and gardeners on the Oso Easy roses. This does not surprise me as Chris is one of the best rose breeders in the world. His plants have superb disease resistance, excellent hardiness, attractive glossy foliage, and unique vivid flower colors. Oso Easy Paprika seems to be the early favorite, but Chris is getting praises for all his roses. Our visit with Chris will give us insight into potential Oso Easy roses.

Do you know any of breeders or interesting nurseries in England that we should visit? If so – please send me an email. Perhaps we can fit in a few more stops.

The Royal Horticulture Society Issues Final Report

About 150 years ago German physician and botanist Philipp Franz von Siebold introduced Hydrangea paniculata ‘Grandliflora’, the Pee Gee Hydrangea, from Japan to the Western World. For nearly a century, Grandiflora reigned supreme and was the only cultivar available to buy. It was so ubiquitous that people eventually came refer to the whole species as Pee Gee Hydrangeas.

Today the market has been flooded with cultivars and we have over 40 selections to choose from. I’ve grown most of these selections and have chosen my favorites. Limelight and Pinky Winky Hydrangea are most certainly the top two plants on my list. Well scientists at the Royal Horticulture Society in England appear to a similar opinion.

The Royal Horticulture Society just completed a five year evaluation of 47 Hydrangea paniculata cultivars. The results are in – Limelight and Pinky Winky (‘DVPpinky’) earned the highest rating of Excellent (3 stars) and both were awarded the prestigious AGM – RHS Award of Garden Merit. And how did Pee Gee fair? It received the lowest possible rating of no stars – (average to poor).

While I sincerely appreciate the time and effort the RHS put into this study - in the end this trial is kind of like those scientific studies that go to great lengths to prove what we already know.

Black Lace Elder - Sambucus nigra 'Eva'

Black Lace™ (Sambucus nigra ‘Eva’ pp# 15,575)

The appeal of Black Lace is its unique black leaf color that sets it apart from all other plants. Plants with black leaves are few and far between, especially for the perennial garden. In the array of shrubs it is nearly non-existent. Not only does it portray this characteristic, but many others. Its fine texture and lacy look is comparable to that of a Japanese Maple. For the novice gardener, it would be easy to get them confused. One way that it can be distinguished is the fact that Black Lace has beautiful pink blooms in early Spring & Summer. Then in the Fall it produces dark black berries that can be used for making wine and jam or for attracting wildlife. It is also multifunctional as a stand alone accent plant, mixed in a perennial and annual border, container gardening or as a hedge. It is exceptionally hardy and will do well from Central Minnesota to North Carolina and west to California (Zones 4 to 7).

For More New plants visit the ColorChoice Website