Shrub roses, including the English roses and groundcover roses didn’t really start to make a mark until about 20 years ago. In an industry that has not changed much over the past 70 years the hybrid tea has been synonymous with the word “rose.” Well, things are now changing. In the next twenty years the hybrid tea will not disappear, although today’s hybrid teas will become the antique roses of the next century.

Shrub roses will expand and come in all forms from the smallest groundcover rose to large shrubs of six to eight feet tall and every size in between. The flower form will range from the delicately beautiful five-petaled single blooms to those with 100 petals or more. Both fragrance and disease-resistance will be the foundation of the new roses. Roses that do not provide beauty, fragrance and good health will not make a mark or last for long. Our seedling fields are never sprayed so that we may select only the healthiest of roses for introduction.

The vast majority of new roses are being bred in Europe. I have it on good authority from an English rose breeder that a new rose with a color very close to blue (not the lavender colors that are common today) will make its way into the American market in the next five years and Heirloom will be one of the nurseries to carry it.

The public is looking for more exotic and beautiful colors in their roses and they are on the way. I am not speaking of the garish colors of the 70’s and 80’s but the softer more gentle colors. Some examples in this catalog’s Unusual Color section: we offer .the wine-purple ‘News’ and the parchment tan ‘Julia’s Rose’ I feel groundcover and shrub roses will find a wide opening in the landscape at home, in parks, office landscaping and along roadways.

To me the ideal groundcover would have five to ten petals, as I feel a rose bush has the energy to produce only so many petals, thus one hundred petals divided amongst five petaled blooms would produce 20 times more color on a bush than a 100 petaled rose. The ideal groundcover would not grow over 15 inches tall and would spread five to eight feet, would come in a wide range of colors and drop the spent petals cleanly. It would have disease-resistance foliage that doesn’t need to be sprayed. It would be drought tolerant, winter hardy and weeds would not be able to penetrate though the growth. and if a few did make their way up, the lack of prickles would make weeding it much easier. The foregoing description would be ideal. We will never achieve perfection. As long as rose breeders try, roses can’t help but improve.

Repeat flowering rambler roses are just arriving on the scene. ‘Super Dorothy’, ‘Super Excelsa’ and many more to come will add increased options for the gardener. I have noticed, in just the last year, a ground swell of interest in species roses. A major garden magazine will have an article on them in December of 1999. When we had our Rosefest ‘99 we gaye various tours of all of our gardens.. We provided an evaluation form for participants to retum and to my surprise the most popular tour was of our species walk with fifty varieties of species roses and to further add to my surprise, it was August and there were no blooms!

I certainly see an interest in species roses from the ecological point of view: to promote and preserve an important part of nature. After all the roses of today are descendants of the species or wild roses”. They can be planted in our gardens as well as in fields and woodland plantings or several can be planted for background if you have a larger garden. Some will help in erosion control and provide habitat, food and protection for birds and small animals. Species vary, dependent on their native locale. Most are very disease-resistant, more so than most other roses. Most are drought tolerant and winter hardy or they would never have survived until today.
As you can see in the species section of this catalog it is our intention to import, preserve, study and offer to our customers a large variety of the varied species rose of the world. Their simple, delicate beauty of bloom and graceful, stately plants are worthy of all the effort. Some of the species are most difficult to propagate on their own roots so we do this at no profit to ourselves, but as a service to the lovers of all roses.

This summer here in Oregon, on a foray with Peter Beales, we discovered a large group of Rosa woodsii in which one plant stood out from all the others for the beauty of its hips. Peter authenticated it to be a distinct variation of the species. We will be offering it in the future as Rosa woodsii clementsii.

It seems most fascinating to me that while we are always anxious for the newest thing on the market, in tum we are looking at the origins of roses with increased interest. I welcome this balance of perspective for it will keep us realistic and appreciative of the diversity of roses we have to enjoy.