Queen Elizabeth, Grandiflora Rose

Hi, I'm Judy Penner and I'm in the Laura Conyer Smith Municipal Rose Garden. I've been in this garden for 33 years now and I'm standing in the Queen Elizabeth bed. This was a rose that was introduced in 1954. This rose is now in our southwest quad but for years it was in the west garden where we had it prominently displayed in the middle of the west garden beds. This rose I'm standing in today is one that I wanted to talk about because when I was pruning roses this year I was shorthanded for people and so I did not get to this rose as soon as I did the other roses. So when I pruned this I had to prune this at a higher level. It was like three feet high as opposed to just two feet high. So this rose if you look is much taller almost as tall as me and I'm five four compared to all the other roses. So my point is if you want your roses to be tall and you have a great winter where you have green canes you can leave your canes a little higher and your roses will be higher. I would caution though that doing that will make your roses be what I call ladder roses. One year we didn't prune at all and the were so high we had to get on ladders to actually prune them. So sometimes it's better to get in there and do like a two and a half to three foot prune and don't leave them up quite so high so that you can look at the roses and smell the roses as well. So that's that's what I have for you today. Thank you.