Playboy
It’s inevitable. Nothing prevents the arrival of cold weather finishing off another gardening season. As daylight diminishes and temperatures steadily decline, our bushes produce smaller and fewer blooms, but I’m appreciative of anything they have to offer.
Here are some photos of our hardy ever-blooming roses — the final blooms of the season.
Playboy is a showy floribunda giving us clusters of scarlet and gold throughout the summer. I was a bit surprised to find this spray a few days ago as Playboy usually shuts down by late October. (See photo above) The colors are a bit more saturated and deeper than blooms earlier in the season due to less sunlight and cooler temps. This was an unexpected bonus.
Rina Hugo
Rina Hugo: what a season she had! This hybrid tea, hybridized in 1993, is a deep saturated pink and has given us flowers with perfect hybrid tea form — each bloom on the end of a long, sturdy cane.
Rina Hugo (August Bloom)
Earlier in August, while our Rina Hugo was amid a great second bloom, I cut some and put them in a vase. A few days ago, Rina was well into her third bloom cycle on robust 24” canes.
What can I say about Campfire? (Photo below) This shrub keeps on blooming with its ever-changing palette of color. It’s not an exhibition rose by any means, but it’s a 10 as a garden rose adding color and interest in the garden up to first frost. This is the third season with Campfire and it has more than lived up to its reputation as a prolific, colorful bloomer on a highly disease resistant bush with an obedient growth habit — an unusual combination of desirable characteristics found in a single variety.
Campfire
Another late bloomer is Lady Elsie May. Like Campfire, it is extremely disease resistant and with its orange-pink flowers against glossy — very glossy — dark green foliage, it’s a delight to have in the garden.
Lady Elsie May
Then there’s Julia Child. From both my kitchen and studio window, I enjoy Julia’s blooms almost every day. She typically doesn’t have a lot of blooms this late in the season, but each one is perfection. I’m still enthralled by Julia’s form and color and her anise fragrance is an added bonus.
Julia Child
When I was walking through the garden taking pictures, I had a pleasant surprise. Pretty Lady, a rose bush I can’t see from any windows in our home, had given us a perfectly lovely, soft pink rose, surrounded by buds ready to open — if this unusually warm weather continues.
Pretty Lady
So even though old man Winter is lurking around the corner, our roses are maintaining their domain as Queens and Kings of our garden.
