My Favorite Roses for a Hot Climate: What does well in the hot, humid south!

Hey guys, I am Dani and welcome back to Summer Sky Gardens or welcome here if you are new and happy new year. It is 2023 and this is my first video of the year in January. I thought I would do a little series the next couple of videos and blog posts all about roses. I've had a lot of questions over the last couple of months about growing roses, what are some of my favorite varieties, how to prune. So I figured I would do a couple of videos and blog posts about some different aspects of growing roses in case that's something that you're wanting to get into this year. So throughout the video I'm going to be showing you some pictures and videos of my roses over here. This is all my own footage and pictures. I have my handy notes that I made going through my varieties. I'm growing 17 different varieties right now. I'm only going to cover 14 of them. The three that I'm not covering are in my front flower bed and they're more for like decorative landscaping. Two of them have really small blooms and they're more just for landscaping. I don't cut them or do much with them. The other one is a decent flower but I cannot remember the variety it is and I've had some issues with it so I figured it's not really worth covering. So I'm going to go through the other 14 varieties. One is a climbing rose and the other ones are all shrub roses. Now just in general when you're thinking about getting roses there are so many different types that you're going to read about and hear about. Like this is a hybrid tea rose. This is a floribunda or grandiflora rose. I find a lot of that confusing and I mean I've been doing this for several years. So I like to think of roses and explain things in a matter of putting them into three different groups. So the first group is like you're climbing rambling roses and these are ones that you're going to see on a trellis, on an arbor or gazebo, along a wall, along a fence. And like I said I have one that I'm growing. The second group is like your traditional shrub roses. So those are the ones that you see that people are cutting from that come in all the different colors that you're using in bouquets. And then the other category is like your low-lying drift roses, ground cover roses that you're not cutting from. They have small blooms and you're using those more as like a landscaping. So another thing to think about just in general with picking roses for yourself is, you know, think about your climate. Most of the time you can look up a particular rose online and it'll tell you a little bit about the climate it prefers. Does it do okay in humidity or not? How cold can it get? How hot can it get? How big does it get? You know, what is it used for? And, you know, after I kind of look at that then the next thing I look at is just what does the rose look like? I mean I'm growing these for my own personal enjoyment. I'm growing them to look pretty in my yard to, you know, cut and bring inside for bouquets for myself. So what are some ones I want to grow? So I like to look at the color, the shape of the bloom, how big does it get? Does it have a particular fragrance? You would be shocked at the difference in fragrance in a lot of types of roses. So if you're somebody that's very sensitive to smell, you want to get ones that are like very, very mild. And I'm going to go through the ones I have. Some of them are so mild they almost don't even smell and some of them are so strong I can put one bloom in my kitchen and the smell just permeates and it can almost become a little overwhelming, especially if you're more sensitive. So pretty much all of that information you can find online and then look at your local nurseries. If there's anywhere that has particularly good selections of roses, it's great to go out and see them in person. See the rose in person and be able to smell it and see what you like. In the greater Houston area, which is where I live, a couple of really good places you can go are the Antique Rose Emporium and the Arbor Gate, which has a big selection of roses. I have bought almost all my roses. I bought a couple from like Lowe's or Home Depot. I was gifted a couple and then the rest I bought online from Heirloom Roses. So they're a U.S. based company that grows its own root roses and I've been very, very happy with their quality. I feel like the price is probably a little on the higher end, but you really get your money's worth buying from them and they have a good selection and they ship quickly. So I will link them as well as a couple of other resources below. I'm also going to link a few people that I like to follow on social media for rose information or inspiration, so I will share those people below as well. All right, so let's get into the first rose I'm going to cover and that's my climbing rose, which is the Peggy Martin. Here's a quick picture of it. So the Peggy Martin rose sounds like a funny name. It actually was from a lady, Peggy Martin, who lived in New Orleans and she had some cuttings of some roses that she was growing. She was a big-time rose gardener and Hurricane Katrina hit and if you guys remember, New Orleans was devastated. They were flooded so, so badly. This rose was under salt water for two weeks and survived. So it is super hardy and so, you know, once everything kind of settled down, started propagating it, growing it, called it the Peggy Martin rose after her and it is hugely popular here in the south. Like I said, it's very hardy. It's very easy to grow. There's not really a whole lot you can do for it and it grows really rapidly. I mean, I've had mine for a year and I mean, it's really starting to take off on the fence. I think it grows up to about like 20 feet, so you want to have a space, you know, that it can really spread out. It has these really pretty small little like hot pink blooms. I don't get much of a smell from them, but this past year being the first year, I had kind of some sporadic blooms. I'm interested to see this spring. It should really pop open if there is a ton of fragrance with it. Now just a tip on most of the climbing or rambling roses in general. So you have to understand that they have no way of attaching to the fence or the arbor or wherever you're wanting it to grow on versus other vines that will have little tendrils or suckers that will adhere to a surface. Roses do not. So you need to have some kind of like twining, wiring, or in my case, I have mine growing along my fence which has a vertical post and then I use plant velcro strategically to hold up some of the canes and I kind of weave it in and out of my fence and that's worked really good. So if you want it going along your house, I've seen people put up like cross wiring or if you want it on a gazebo, trying to kind of find a way to attach it will help it, you So most of them are going to be repeat blooming, meaning you'll get a good flush in the spring, maybe sporadically through the summer and then a good flush in the fall. There's a few that are single blooming and that's something that you want to look up with any rose if it's single blooming which are a lot of the older varieties or if it's repeat blooming. But most of them are and for that case, for these climbing or rambling roses, you want to prune them in the late winter, early spring when you prune all your other roses and then give them some fertilizer in the early spring and then in the early fall and that's it. That's really all you have to do. So they're very easy to take care of, very easy to manage, unlike most of the shrub roses which need a little bit more care. These tend to be a lot easier to grow and make excellent choices for more of a novice rose gardener. So this next rose I have growing in my front flower bed and it was an impulse buy when I was at Lowe's one day. I saw the blooms, I saw the color and I was like, oh I'm going to get that and then I found a place to put it. It's called Fun in the Sun and I was really impressed this first year. It didn't put out a ton of blooms or a ton of growth but the ones it did were huge. Super big, roughly kind of this creamy golden color. The ones it put out, there was a couple of blooms per stem as you can see here. Smelled superb. It lasted an incredibly long time as a cut flower. So I really like this rose. I think it is a great choice for cutting. So I would say if you can get your hands on it, try it out. It does seem to be more of a slow grower compared to some of the other ones but I'm excited to see what it's going to do this year. The next rose I'm going to talk about is called At Last and I bought this one from I believe Home Depot. It was a tree rose so it was grafted onto like a branch and I just thought it was super cool looking. It would make a super cool addition to my front landscaping which is where I have it. It has done very, very well. It has put out a ton of blooms. This was my first rose that I got. It is a couple of years old. The blooms itself are like a very vibrant orangey salmon color and the color can kind of lighten up or deepen depending on the weather. I found that when it was hotter outside the color was a little bit lighter and when it was cooler it darkened up a little bit. The bees absolutely love it so it's great for pollinators but because of it being grafted as a tree rose it does not make a good cut flower for me. Now I think if you can find it as just a general shrub then it could possibly be. I will say when I've cut a couple of the blooms when they were more closed which is when you're supposed to cut roses and brought them inside even though the stems weren't very long, you know the rose should be fine, they didn't last very long maybe like a couple of days. So for me I like this rose in the landscaping especially in the spring. There's a ton of flowers. It's very eye-catching from the sidewalk or the road so it's great for your landscaping, great for your pollinators. I would say not great for cutting. The fourth rose I'm going to talk about is Earth Angel and it's one of my favorites. So I love love love the color. I actually have two of them. One I bought and one was a gift but the color is this gorgeous white creamy light pink and usually you'll see the pink more on the inside of the rose and the white cream on the outside. It's super roughly I don't know how many petals are in these blooms. It makes a great cut flower. You do want to catch it when it's more closed right and let it kind of unfurl. It lasts a good amount of time in the vase so I've been very happy with you know it as a cutting rose. Both of my bushes put on a lot of growth and put out a lot of bloom so it was a good producer this past year. The only negative is thrips damage was really bad. If you don't know thrips are teeny little bugs that will attack roses and other plants and you'll see your buds will start to look like chewed. They'll have big holes in them once they open up the petals will be all chewed up and maybe brownish looking. They really love lighter colored roses and unfortunately those are the ones that you can see the damage the most on so I was able to control it fairly well with spraying every couple of weeks but you know that did take a little bit more effort so I would say that these are a little more high maintenance but definitely worth your while if you want something more of that creamy romantic look. I found the scent to be kind of like a mild medium just general kind of perfumey fragrance but definitely good cut rose. The next flower I'm going to mention is Celestial Dream and this is a really deep like pinkish purple color. It kind of changed throughout the year a little bit very dark very striking. I found this one to be a decent grower put out a handful of blooms not a ton but the good thing is it was resistant to thrips. I didn't see any black spot issues so very very hardy, disease resistant, easy going. The ones that I did cut lasted okay a few days in a vase but I think this is a great option if you're looking for one of you know one or more of these darker colors I think this would be a really good choice and the scent I will say if you're someone that's more sensitive to fragrance this one in my opinion had almost no scent or if it did it was like very very mild so some of the other ones I'm going to mention are really strong this one not at all so if that's something you're looking for then I think this would be a good choice. The next rose I'm going to talk about is Liv Tyler and yes this was named after the actress Liv Tyler. I really like this rose I bought it because really of the color and it said that it did well in like the hotter climates so it looks definitely more like a traditional kind of vase like rose it was a hot pink color and I felt like it grew very well it put out a good amount of blooms it is incredibly thorny so you need to be careful when you're harvesting it wearing thick gloves I did get a thorn stripper so when I would cut it I would strip all the thorns off but it did really well as a cut flower it has like a medium kind of fruity scent to it it had a little bit of thrip damage not a ton I was able to control it fine with spraying but otherwise it did really well for me in my hot human climate so if you're looking for something that's more of that like hot barbie pink then this would be a good choice. All right the next rose is Grace and this is a David Austin rose and I actually have two of these I ordered one for my backyard rose garden and then I actually found one locally that I put in the front and it's interesting to see the difference in the growth the one that I have in the back hasn't grown very well and I'm not really sure why because it's getting the same treatment as all the other roses and my one in the front has done better so I don't know if I just got a little bit of a dud in the back but it just it just hasn't gotten like super big hasn't put out that many blooms but I will say my one in the front that has grown really well the blooms it has put out are so so pretty they have this wonderful ombre effect where the middle is more of like a salmon peachy color and then it kind of darkens to like a pink darker pink on the edge of the petals that color is brighter and more saturated when it first opens up and then the longer it's sitting like if you cut it bring it inside then it does fade but the ombre effect is just beautiful it has a medium fruity scent for me put out a few blooms not a ton very minimal growth but almost no disease damage so I'm definitely excited to see if it now that they're in their second year if they're going to grow a lot more this year because the flowers themselves were one of my favorites all right moving along so number eight was one of my favorites this past year and this is scepter dial which is another david austin rose these rose blooms are super unique with how they are cupped I mean it looks like a little like like cup you would drink out of like a little ball when it's closed and then opens up it's like a really like barbie bubblegum pink color which is super pretty and has these very vibrant yellow um you know stamen and stigma in the middle so very striking between the pink and the yellow when it opens up my blooms were on the smaller side so I'm interested to see because it was its first year typically after that the blooms will start to get bigger but I love that each stem it put out had multiple blooms on it um the canes got super long it almost looked like it was trying to vine so I actually had to wrap it into my fence a little bit but it put out a ton of blooms it grew a ton um the scent was um very like spicy uh very strong so this is one of those that you know if you're sensitive with fragrance you may not want to get this one but not super perfumey or fruity like very hard to describe like spicy I think most places would call it more of like a scent but these were gorgeous they did great in a vase I loved picking them I'm very excited to get a lot more blooms this year so this next one was a bit of a letdown this year but like I said it was the first year so I'm willing to try it again but this is Charles Darwin and I picked this one because it's supposed to be like a creamy yellow which is one of my favorite colored roses it didn't put on a ton of growth and I only got a couple of blooms now I will say the ones that I got had a very strong like lemon spicy fragrance which was I thought very enjoyable um you know the the blooms that I got were okay um you know decent vase life weren't incredibly huge so like I said I'm willing to give it another try it did have a lot of black spot so that's I'm going to keep my eye on this next year and have to spray for and we'll see what happens all right after Charles Darwin is number 10 another David Austin Rose Lady of Shallot this was also another favorite number one I just think that the the blooms themselves are super pretty they're a very soft romantic peachy color and it's cool because the petals are almost like pointed so you know when it's closed you can see the points and when it opens up it looks like a star and it was so so pretty um these had a really strong perfume scent like that classic rose smell so you know very strong smell it was an excellent cut flower um these lasted like almost a week in the vase which I thought was phenomenal for a rose low disease I didn't really have much issues with it maybe a teeny bit of thrips damage but not as much as like my earth angel and um really no black spot so it put on some good growth put out a handful of blooms so I thought this was a good choice and I would highly recommend it the next one number 11 is Jude the Obscure which is another David Austin uh this was another favorite just because of how the blooms looked and how strongly it smelled this was my most fragrant rose I mean like I said I would cut one or two blooms put it in a little vase by my sink and you could smell it throughout the whole kitchen it was so so strong the blooms were more cupped kind of like the sceptered aisle um they were like a peachy color so similar to um the lady of shallots but the petals were more kind of ruffly this was also a really good cut flower it did fade as it stayed in the vase so at first it would be more peachy and then it would kind of fade to like a a creamy color and lose a little bit of its vibrancy but it looked beautiful it smelled great it had really good growth really good disease resistance so this was another one that I really really loved this past year all right after Jude the Obscure is Coco Loco now I'll be honest I bought Coco Loco because of how everyone raves about it and I was like I need to get one of these and see how this is gonna go like what is the fuzz I have been very underwhelmed and I don't know if it's just been my experience but the Coco Loco I have has not grown hardly at all I mean it is still teeny it actually put out a good amount of blooms for how little it is I was not able to cut that many of them because it was so small and so short there was almost like no stem for the bloom the blooms did look true in that they were kind of this like mauve-y violet color um but they were small I didn't see them last incredibly long they had a pretty short I would say base life of like two to three days so and I I'm leaving it where it is I'm gonna see how it's gonna grow after I prune it this year but if it doesn't put on a lot more growth this year and perform a lot better then I'm probably gonna yank it which is I feel like weird to say because everybody just like loves it but I don't know maybe it's supposed to do okay in warmer climates but maybe it's just not gonna perform where where I uh well where I am and that's okay I mean this is all learning experiences you're not gonna have success with everything so um and I and I will say personally I'm just not super in love with the color so far but like I said I'm gonna give it another year and see what happens all right the next one I got is Queen of Sweden it's a David Austin rose and I bought this one because I mean it's supposed to do good where I am and it has a really like light pink color which I thought was really really pretty um it had decent growth it put out a few blooms I will say that it was pretty susceptible to thrips damage not as bad as my earth angel that was the worst and that's because it's more of a whitish color but because this was a light pink I think the thrips liked it too so I did have to stay on top of spraying it it was a decent cut flower kind of like a medium scent but overall I expected a little bit more from this one but the blooms that I did get were beautiful um so I I'm interested to see how it's going to perform this next year and um give it a little bit more time all right the last one I'm going to talk about is Golden Celebration and this was another favorite of mine and for two reasons number one it grew a ton so it was one of the ones I had that just exploded I think it really likes the hot climate down here and it put out so many flowers I think it was my I think probably after my earth angels or between my earth angels and this one it put out the most blooms of any rose I had they're very like kind of vibrant yellow color tons of petals very ruffly excellent cut flower I mean it would last between five to seven days kind of had a very like strong fruity fragrance um and I just I can't say enough good things I was very impressed with this rose had very good disease resistance got really huge lots of flowers so if you're somebody that's in a more hot southern climate I think and you like yellow I think this is an excellent choice for you all right guys that's it so I've gone through all the roses that I've been growing I have a couple more that I will be planting this spring once they're available and I'll let you know about them once I get them in but if this is the year that you want to try out some roses I hope maybe you'll consider a couple of the ones that I've been growing but like I said go online I mean there's so many different types so I would just kind of narrow it down by your climate and what type of rose you want as far as like a shrub or a climbing rose and then just what kind of like color are you interested in I mean roses I think are one of the most diverse flower with the smell and the look and the you know the color variations the way the different types of roses look so have fun try some roses out stay tuned I'll be putting out a blog post about my top tips for growing roses and then I'll also be putting out another YouTube video on how to prune shrub roses which I think a lot of people get really intimidated by and you don't need to be it's very very simple I will show you how to do it I will take you through pruning all of my roses the time to do this is usually by Valentine's Day and I've done it mid-February to end of January so I'm gonna see kind of when it's gonna fall in for me when I have a good chunk of time when the weather's good because it tends to be a little rainy this time of year so stay tuned because I think that video will really really help you but if you made it this far thanks for watching thanks for being here I'm excited for this year and everything that's going to happen and I hope to share a lot more blog posts and videos and be a lot more consistent and I hope that you will stay along for the journey so I will see you guys in my next video and happy gardening