Florence Grovida Gardening

Shrub or hedge roses

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Shrub or hedge roses turns out to be a catch-all term for lots of roses. To warrant the title, the rose should have a big, broad, shrubby habit, good weather-resilience (be cold-hardy but also able to tolerate hot, humid summers), disease resistance, and less-refined but often quite pretty and frequently fragrant flowers. Shrub roses are bred to be covered with blooms throughout the summer months.

But wait — there's more. This group has subgroups that are distinctively different from one another. Here are the more widely available ones:

• Canadian or Explorer roses: Yes, these roses are bred in Canada and are thus able to survive the rigors of a Northern winter (most are rated cold-hardy to Zone 4, some even to Zone 3). They're proudly named after famous Canadian Explorers.
• Buck roses: The late Dr. Griffith Buck, a horticulture professor at Iowa State University in Ames, succeeded in selecting and developing attractive shrub roses that are genuinely low-maintenance and able to tolerate the Midwest's notoriously cold winters, fickle springs, and blazing hot and humid summers.
• Rugosa roses: Originally hailing from Asia, these coarse-leaved, extremely thorny bushes are now a common sight along the Eastern seaboard — so much so that people mistakenly think these species roses are native, even to the point of calling them beach roses. Their flowers tend to be single (with just a few petals and blossoms that open rather flat) but come in bright shades of pink, red, maroon, and white. And best of all, they're intensely fragrant, with a scent that's undeniably spicy. The hips that follow in fall tend to be big and bright, which makes the bushes look perky and festive until the birds eat all the rose hips.

Yes, the plant breeders have waded in, mainly to improve the flowers (double rugosas, for instance, sport more petals per flower). Rugosas make excellent, low-care hedges.

1 Meidiland roses: Weather-tough and disease-resistant, these French-bred roses tend to form a relatively compact plant no more than 4 feet high and wide, so less pruning is necessary. The flowers are pretty and sometimes scented.

1 Simplicity hedge roses: The rose-breeding giant Jackson & Perkins bred these roses, and the plants are without peer if you want a casual-looking shrub with plentiful, informal flowers. Overall, these plants are tough and handsome. The original Simplicity hedge rose is pink, though white, crimson, yellow, and purple are also available.