Rose Cuttings – October, 2007

Christmas in the rose garden gives Santa pause, as he may alter his salutation from “Ho, Ho, Ho!” to “Hip, Hip, Hooray!” The beauty of many old garden roses during winter is that they are effective landscape plants, even when not in flower. Colorful fall and winter foliage, diverse shapes and forms, and, most of all beautiful, brightly colored hips, the fruit of the rose, add dimension to the winter garden.

You can always count on ‘Carefree Beauty,’ ‘Bayse’s Blueberry,’ ‘Dortmand,’ ‘Penelope,’ and the new Pioneer rose, ‘Hip-Happy’ to provide you with marble-size orange and red hips from Thanksgiving through the end of the year. Not only are they showy in the garden, but they’re perfect for embellishing centerpieces, wreaths and candles in the home. Birds and squirrels can be watched as they forage and nibble on the vitamin-rich hips. Hips from R. canina, the “dog rose,” a common rose found in Europe, are actually harvested to make teas and soups because of the healthy benefits from their high vitamin C content.

I like the smaller hips that are produced in profusion from ‘Jeanne d’Arc’ and ‘Belinda,’ mimicking in glory some of our deciduous holly and pyracantha. So next time you chose a rose, you might want to “shoot for the hip.”

About the author: Mike Shoup is the owner of the Antique Rose Emporium. Visit their Brenham and San Antonio display gardens for endless ideas on landscaping with roses, and to order roses online, visit their Web site: www.weAREroses.com.

Meet Mike in person! Mike Shoup will be a featured lecturer in our EarthKind™ Rose Symposium on February 4 (details this issue). He will also speak in our Lecture Series in our All Texas All Garden Show the last weekend of February at the Arlington Convention Center.