Landscaping with antique roses: instead of creating a rose garden, plant a garden that contains roses

摘要

For the last 100 years, breeders have put all their efforts into perfecting the rose's flower. Brightly colored blooms, strong stems, and high-centered buds that unfurl into multipetaled flowers have been the rewards. But all this "progress" has comeat a cost. With the introduction of so many modern roses, nurseries stopped selling the antique varieties. The irony is that antique roses are tougher, more disease resistant, and more fragrant than the cutting-edge modern roses ever will be. My passionfor antique roses evolved in an odd way. In the early 1980s, in search of a marketing niche, I combed the Texas roadsides for interesting native plants to sell. Many of the plants I came across were displaced antique roses, and many of those were Old Garden roses, varieties introduced into commerce prior to 1867.