| I am starting a rose garden this summer, and would like any ideas on the best types of roses. |
| There are so many different types of roses and named varieties within each type that it would be impossible to begin to tell you what to try -- it would depend if you were looking for a particular color or fragrance or growth habit and so on. Since you are new to roses you might want to look at a book or two about roses to help you understand the general categories and then the distinctions between them and then between the different named varieties. One I particularly like is "Roses for Dummies" by Lance Walheim, ISBN 0-7645-5031-4, Dummy Press. Since I am not fond of high maintenance plants of which hybrid tea roses are the epitome, I tend to prefer the old fashioned shrub roses such as named selections of Rosa rugosa and a few of the very tough polyanthas; my favorite rose might be "The Fairy", a polyantha, but as I said your choice might be totally different. |
