| | The Law's Rose Garden
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When Steve and Elaine retired 16 years ago they decided that tending
roses would keep them out of mischief. Their long range objective was
to have the most beautiful roses possible with as little work as
possible as they grew older and became unable to tend their rose
gardens. One of the most obvious ways to do this was to grow hardy
roses. Admittedly, hybrid tea roses are quite often the most beautiful
of the roses. The Laws have tried several different ways to winterize
the tender roses. They have boxed them, buried them, filled around the
bush with up to 15 inches of imported soil, deep planted them, dug them
up and potted them, then kept them over winter in a specially designed
cold storage facility. The latest and most successful was to winterize
them inside a huge plastic storage shed. A third way of having roses
that will challenge the Maine winters and come out ahead is to
hybridize hardy roses. They have registered their own roses,
"Miss Maine 1999", "Miss Maine 2000", "Sari Hou", but their favorite, “Little John”,
refuses to be duplicated. Little John is a most floriferous off spring
from John Davis through open pollination. Now that the Laws have
introduced you to their rose gardens, let’s have a little tour. Note:
If you would like to have the thumbnail sketch of the photograph
enlarged, click on it. Then when you want to go back to the garden,
click on "Back". |
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The plastic cover is put in place about October 1. The roses are pruned
quite severely about November 1. Plenty of mice seed is added before a
think layer of leaves are placed over the entire bed. In the spring,
the leaves are ground up before the mulch is added. |  | It
obviously works quite well. Here are the results midway through the
summer. The frame can be seen in the background. The frame is light
enough so that four puny people can pick it up and walk off with it. |  | Here
are the results of growing hardy roses. The little pink rose in the
foreground is Little John, next is John Cabot, next on the right side
of the fence is J. P. Connell and on the other side of the fence,
dominating the background is William Baffin. |  | To
the right is a close up of Little John. From the various stages of
bloom, from fully opened to just buds forming, it is obvious this is a
continuous blooming rose. It is about five years old but has never
grown any larger than it shows here. No cuttings from Little John have
ever been successfully grown. |  | Shown
here is the registered rose "Miss Maine 1999". From the fully opened
blooms to the buds just showing color, "Miss Maine" is in bloom most of
the time. It reproduces well from cuttings. |
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Shown here is Steve's registered rose "Sari Hou" in 2003.This rose has constant bloom with many small clusters.
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 | Steve and Elaine presented their workshop on Planting Roses in 2002 Maine Garden Day. |
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