Called Out about Old Garden Roses Are they worth growing

Hi, it's Jason from Fraser Valley Rose Farm. Well, I got called out and so this is a response to that The topic area was old garden roses like this one Lita Which I often do promote on this channel and he came out to say that that was a bad thing to do That old garden roses are terrible not worth growing They should all be buried and that I was doing something wrong by promoting them Now obviously, I'm not the only person ever to have talked about old garden roses Paul Barden has done it Aaron from floret especially with the Ramblers lots of people have talked about it But there was a turn of phrase that I used in this piece of content I called them a statement shrub and he said yeah a statement not to grow roses So basically he was saying that by doing the old garden rose content I was being irresponsible by promoting shrubs that you couldn't succeed with and Then he said something that kind of irritated me and that's why I'm responding He kind of said that I was doing so as a weird profiteering move that somehow I was selling these knowing that they weren't great roses to my viewers and Customers and that it was going to turn them off the hobby and that I was doing it all for money Now the fact is this is silly It's kind of the brain-dead thing to say here because I grow both old garden roses and modern roses And I sell them both. I don't care which one you buy 90% of what I sell here are modern roses just like he sells They're easier to grow. In fact, the easiest way to make money in this business is to sell the newest thing That's widely available on the market rather than trying to propagate old garden roses. So why do I do it? Let's talk about that So before I go on and explain what old garden roses even are let's have a look at this one here This is Lita in the landscape beautiful raspberry ripple Blooms is what I call them with those dark pink edges around the outside and the question of whether I use the or why I Use the term statement shrub. Well, I think this does make a statement I think if you haven't seen an old garden rose before I take tours over here all the time and we have a look at It has a mounding kind of a shape to the entire shrub. It's fairly large It has these blooms all held in close to the foliage The foliage looks different than the modern roses The point is that this actually looks a bit different and unusual compared to the modern roses And that's what I meant by statement What I was also trying to say at the time is that you don't have to build your entire garden out of old garden roses I'm not promoting that at all. They are sometimes a little bit awkward for the modern garden large once blooming They sometimes can be susceptible to diseases or have other problems that I've acknowledged before in my videos So when I say statement, I mean like this it's on the edge of my property far away from everything else It blooms out it does its job It's a great rose for me and it just makes a statement for a certain time of year and then it's done But in the way that I've suggested the use is an implicit Acknowledgement that the modern roses are definitely better for some things if you wanted a compact rose Something that fits well into the modern garden something that repeat bloom something that is has more breeding in it That is likely to make it healthier Something that has a wider range of colors and bloom forms Then the modern roses are an excellent pick and I'm not trashing them by saying that you could use One or two old garden roses in your garden where they fit where they do a job that the modern roses won't by the way This one is Ispahan, which can be absolutely massive and is a trouble-free shrub in my garden However, if I let it it's gonna jump up to 10 or 12 feet and that's the downside And that's the planning that you have to make for some of these old garden roses So let's ask what even are old garden roses because I think once you get a look at the entire group It's gonna be pretty hard to defend the proposition that they're good for nothing So the old garden roses include the two that I just showed you that was Leda and Ispahan Which are both damask roses classic old garden roses I will try to put some previews on the screen of the other ones that I mentioned here That's another one of the once-blooming old European roses the Gallicas the apothecary rose things like Tuscany superb would be in that group There would also be the centifolia and the moss roses Those ones are are a little bit later have more petals in them you would include in something like that Grosjeux de Hollande or the cabbage rose or again moss roses like Henri Martin by definition you would have to include the noisette roses These are the sort of southern US bred class of roses including narrow water, which I'll show you some pictures of here And of course the teen was that's after that the China roses and the Scots roses sort of once-blooming Primarily roses that were had their breeding fairly early on in the history of roses It also includes a hodgepodge of other things the once-blooming Ramblers and roses like this one here, which is called spectabilis, which is a near species type rambler rose That is not really closely related to anything else Although the edges may be somewhat fuzzy you almost have to define the old garden roses by what they are Not they're not the modern roses Which would include the hybrid teas the floribundas the modern minis the modern climbers Basically the modern repeat blooming roses that have been bled bred in the past say 50 or 100 years That being said there are roses like this that push that boundary This is a polyanthro rose called little white pet the breeding on these goes back to 1880 or so So it's a long time ago the hybrid musks also early 20th century Whether those would be included in old garden roses or modern roses, that's anybody's guess But here's the thing if you want to bash the rambling roses You probably have to include in that group this one Guilaine de Felagon, which is fabulously floriferous blooms all the time is Very healthy very easy to grow grows in all sorts of different conditions Just a super useful healthy shrub and you would definitely have to include this one here Baltimore Bell Which is doing exactly what I want in the garden It's taking this ugly guide wire and turned it into something pretty it is Although it looks delicate. It is super hardy. I think down to zone 5. So why would you throw this one in the trash? This wonderful rambler blushing Lucy has absolutely swallowed the support that I set up for and it did it in record time It's doing exactly what I want it to do and takes very little attention aside from a bit of a pruning after the bloom period I hope you don't include the Scots roses in the ones that you would throw away because they are excellent special-purpose shrubs This one is Stanwell perpetual with these large pink blooms it's a repeat bloomer with a Wonderful fragrance and that's something that the old garden roses do tend to excel at this one We'll take some partial shade or dry places places things that the modern roses don't excel at Why would you take that tool out of your toolkit? And when the Scots roses are done with their bloom period many of them will put out these Attractive brown through black hips and carry this very fine ferny foliage throughout the season This is the rose blush and was that and I hope you can see just how many blooms are coming on this on an otherwise Very healthy shrub What I'm told from southern gardeners is that the noisettes and the teen was that's and their relatives are actually excellent for warmer climates they thrive in a way that other ramblers and other modern roses just don't I Can give you many examples of times where I've used old garden roses like something like souvenir to dr Germaine which I have under shade in the back of my garden and it blooms those dark velvety blooms Beautifully in that position in that location Experiment with the old garden roses and they can sometimes give you something that the modern roses can't It's no wonder that the that some of the breeders have gone back to the old garden roses multiple times looking for those features David Austin looking for that romantic bloom form in the fragrance or Ralph Moore looking for the mossy covering on some of the roses I just think it's good to have them around and good to have their history and their Romance in people's gardens and honestly, sometimes they fit the bill for what you want a low-maintenance Look at them one time a year shrub that you have on the edge of the property as a specimen I'm sorry if that triggers you but it is the truth that they are actually a very useful addition to the garden if you have the space and if you know What you're getting into I don't think that we should Simplify by saying modern roses great old garden roses bad or the reverse. I sell a lot of modern roses I love Julia child the one behind me here The modern roses are great I think you can make mistakes in both ways One of the mistakes that you could make is by introducing a line of modern roses from bare root that you haven't tested in your climate before and that the you have No way at that point of evaluating whether in year one year two year three That whether there can be any good because you just don't know a lot of the modern roses Until they're tested in the garden You have no idea how they're gonna do three years down the road People make that mistake all the time at least with the old garden roses You have a hundred years of history and you're gonna know Yeah This one's susceptible to black spot or this one suckers a little bit or whatever they do But at least those are known things about the old garden roses Oftentimes with the modern roses in a brand new line of roses. All you have is the pictures and marketing material So for that reason, I think it's a crapshoot either way I do remove roses from my rose field here frequently for poor performance and I have to say it's split I remove old garden roses because they just can't keep up. I remove modern roses because they're just riddled with black spot So it's not a it's not a reliable thing to say modern roses are better Anyway, I don't think we should be taking one guy's opinion on that. So if you have any questions, please drop those down into the Comments love to hear what you think of old garden roses modern roses your favorites. You're not so favorites That's why we have social media like this and a forum like this to discuss. Thank you