This Season's Best New Roses
The All-American Rose Selections (AARS) is a nonprofit organization that promotes the best new rose varieties. AARS award winners have been evaluated around the country in an extensive two-year testing program, which judges everything from disease resistance to flower production to color and fragrance. Four outstanding roses were chosen for 2005. Look for them in rose catalogs, nurseries and garden centers this winter and spring.
'About Face' is a grandiflora with a very novel 'backward' bicolor whose light color of deep golden yellow is carried on the inside of the petals with a darker, bronzy, orange-red backside. The old-fashioned flowers are large, long-stemmed and have a mild apple fragrance – perfect for cutting. The plant is vigorous, upright and bushy with excellent disease resistance.
'DayDream' is a low-growing, compact landscape shrub rose reaching just 2 feet high. The massive clusters of fuchsia-pink blooms will flower all summer long, making it an ideal ground cover. Each lightly scented single blossom is wide and flat, resembling a little button. Foliage is glossy, deep green and highly disease resistant.
'Elle' is a hybrid tea that produces shell pink flowers with deep yellow undertones. Combining a strong, spicy and citrussy fragrance with a high-centered classic rose bud, it's a wonderful cut flower. The dark glossy foliage provides a nice contrast to the soft, non-fading flower, and offers above-average disease tolerance to mildew and black spot.
'Lady Elsie May' is an upright spreading shrub rose with a vigorous, uniform growth habit and excellent disease resistance. Coral pink flowers are produced in clusters on strong 12-20-inch cutting stems. Each flower is approximately 3½ to 4 inches wide and has 12-14 petals. Slightly fragrant.
Some other new varieties to look for include 'Tuscan Sun', a deep apricot-orange floribunda; 'Yellow Ribbons,' a bright yellow ground cover rose, and 'Voluptuous,' a beautiful, deep pink hybrid tea.
To get your new roses off to the best possible start, plant in full sun and well-drained soil. To fertilize and protect from insects and disease, use Bayer Advanced™ All-In-One Rose & Flower Care Concentrate just as the plants begin to grow next spring. One application feeds and protects for up to six weeks.
Products Mentioned In This Article
Bayer Advanced
