Roses, love them or hate them.

Roses, love them or hate them. My tea and grandiflora roses may be DEAD! I neglected to throw some extra soil up against the canes last fall after the ground froze. They look dead now. There appears to be a little green near the base so I'll wait for a while and see if the growth is above the graft or below the graft. Thankfully, I only have three!

I'm glad I planted shrub roses last year. They are hardy souls and are already flushing out. I added two to a plant bed. They took off like rockets and grew from a 2 gallon pot size to about 18 inches tall by 20-24 inches wide in one season.

We fight Japanese Beetles in the summer and they love the leaves on roses, but shrub roses thrive in spite of the pesky beetles.

Shrub roses produce abundant and continuous blooms all summer until frost. These low maintenance beauties are hardy, disease resistant, and fragrant. A light shearing removes spent blossoms when you see lots of them. You don't have to shear them because they will continue to produce new growth and bloom over the spent blooms.

Last week, I used my hedge pruners and cut them back to about half their size and shaped them a little. Yesterday, I dug some rose food into the soil and now I'll stand back and watch while they deliver weeks of breath taking beauty.

So put a couple in your garden space, sit back and enjoy the show.