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Roses
Hi, im Ash from north wales. im disabled and i use a wheelchair. I work at a garden center and i have been struggling to learn about plants. I was told that as i work at a garden center it's a good idea to know a little about plants. I asked my line manager what types of plants should i know a little about? She replied, Roses are topical right now. Have a read up on them. Types, pruning, diseases. Could someone here help me to learn please?
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Well roses are a large and diverse group and breaking them down into different types can get very complicated and there is a lot of new terms for you to learn, but I will try…
The Main Characteristics of roses:
1. Roses can be climbing or free-standing plants.
2. They can be repeat-flowering throughout the season from late Spring to early Autumn or once-blooming (sometimes called summer-flowering) where they have one big display of flowers in the summer, usually around June, but that’s it.
3. They can have a single flower on the end of a stem, or a group of flowers on the end of a stem, called a cluster.
4. They usually have thorns and are often fragrant.
5. The flowers are often called ‘blooms’ - it means exactly the same thing.
6. Growing roses is not complicated, but they are hungry and thirsty plants so they do need more care than many other garden plants, to keep them healthy and blooming.
The Main Types (or classes) of Roses:
1. Hybrid Tea - these are usually stiff and upright, with single blooms on the end of long stems, the sort of rose you often see in florist’s bouquets.
2. Floribunda - these have lots of clusters of blooms and often repeat flower very profusely for a long time.
Confusingly, types 1&2 are often lumped together and called ‘Bush’ roses!
3. Shrub - this category is a bit mixed, they can be modern hybrids of all sorts of roses, they can be very ancient roses, but basically they are free-standing rose shrubs, sometimes upright but often arching with nodding flowers.
4. Patio - these are compact roses, you can grow them in pots on a balcony or on your patio.
5. Ground Cover - these grow wide and spreading to cover the ground
6. Climbing Roses - there are a few different types of climbing rose, they vary a lot, but they will all need supporting by some sort of structure and tying into that structure. Climbing roses can be grown up obelisks, fanned out against walls, over arches and pergolas and even grown up into trees.
Pruning and diseases are big topics! I think it would be best to try and familiarise yourself with the main characteristics of roses and their main classes first. Then once you are confident with those, we can tackle the rest 😊
This might also be useful:
https://www.gardenersworld.com/plants/rose-types-explained/
On the David Austin site, click on SHOP then SHOP BY TYPE, e.g. I chose ‘Hybrid Tea’ here:
https://www.davidaustinroses.co.uk/collections/hybrid-teas
You can do the same with floribunda or shrub roses. David Austin was a famous rose breeder and the roses he bred are sold as ‘English Roses’, but they are still shrub roses, or occasionally climbing roses, so don’t let that confuse you, it’s just marketing.
Your line manager has set you a difficult task!
https://youtu.be/Hrmd4AzyXqo