Meet the new, tougher, high performing roses on our block.

Horsford’s continues to test the list of roses it carries. The aim is to offer the best roses for Vermont conditions - roses that stand up to whatever weather we get and look beautiful all season long. Rose breeders generally have recognized this need, and we are stocking their resulting introductions.

Last summer’s weather was a severe test, but some of our newer roses were standouts.
The ‘Knockout’ series of small shrub roses, including cherry red ‘Knockout’, ‘Pink Knockout’ with single, pale pink flowers, and ‘Blushing Knockout’ in soft salmon-pink tones, kept blooming through wet and humid weather while their foliage stayed glossy; dark green and handsome. They are perhaps the most disease resistant roses of all time.

The newest member of this team is the showy ‘Home Run’ with bright, deep-red flowers and contrasting gold stamens. It is even more resistant to powdery mildew than its parent and doesn’t get black spot.

The ‘Knockouts’ low height and rounded, bushy forms make them good to use in perennial borders in much the same way you would plant peonies, especially with the companion plants having blue/mauve toned flowers such as catmint of sages. The ‘Knockouts’ look good as ever-blooming hedges, planted irregularly along fence lines, or mixed into shrub borders. All are “grand slams” in the landscape.

New to us this season are the everblooming Flower Carpet roses in coral, pink, scarlet and
yellow. All the Carpets have dark, shiny, disease-resistant foliage and a vigorously spreading form that at 1-2 foot tall and a 5-8 foot spread, can perform as a groundcover, carpet a hillside area, or wind through your shrub border. Also new are ‘Easy Elegance’ roses, bred to be northern hardy, on their own roots, with superior disease resistance. ‘Centennial’ is an everblooming double in apricot with pale yellow aging to cream.
‘Funny Face’ is a pink and white, “painted” semi double - superb alone for a small space
or as a group. Besides hot pink, creamy white, and deep red cultivars there is ‘Sierra
Sky’, a fiery orange double, and ‘Tahitian Moon’ with big pale yellow flowers that
bloom all summer, and with a cane length of 5-7 feet so it can either flow or be a pillar
rose.

Other roses that performed well despite the weather last summer were the Explorer roses. ‘William Baffin’ (double, deep pink), ‘John Cabot’ (fragrant rose-pink), and ‘Henry Kelsey’ (double, bright red with a spicy fragrance) looked particularly good. These were bred in Ottawa for cold-hardiness and continuous flowering. They can be grown either as semi-climbers - also called pillar roses - or pruned for shrub form. A lovely way to grow them is winding through mixed borders of shrubs and perennials, or through ornamental evergreens such as yews or junipers. Trained horizontally along fences they will produce even more flowers than when grown vertically due to the distribution of bud-inducing hormones along the upper side of the stems. Joining “ the guys” in the hardy climbing class will be pale pink ‘New Dawn’, a climbing sport of white ‘Iceberg’, and the popular ‘Golden Showers.’

Pavement roses are low-growing (2 to 3 foot tall), super-tough, and very fragrant. The name refers both to their use for carpeting or groundcover and their ability to do well in poor soils beside drives, sidewalks and highways. They are highly salt tolerant, withstand extremes in temperature being hardy to zone 3, and will do well in full sun or partial shade. ‘Snow Pavement’, ‘Purple Pavement’ and ‘Foxy Pavement’ (deep pink) were excellent bloomers producing ornamental rosehips in the fall.