End of Summer Blooms

End of summer in the Southern California garden doesn’t mean everything is brown and tired. Some flowering plants continue to bloom. Roses are one of them. If roses are  deadheaded properly and watered enough they will continue to give out blooms although not as big as blooms in the spring.

I pruned my Bonica rose middle of summer and it is full of blooms although not as many and big as the blooms in the spring. The number of petals are also not as many as the spring bloom.

The Mexican sage is also in full bloom a few weeks after I cut it down in early summer. I cut it back to at least a foot and it came back beautifully.

End of summer is also the time to plant mums, asters pansy and petunia. I bought these flowering annuals at the local big box home center as they are all discounted. This is the best time to buy bargain perennials. They may not be looking at their best but that's because they are getting ready for fall and winter. They would come back beautifully in spring.

Gertrude Jekyll Rose

Gertrude Jekyll rose is an English rose by David Austin. It is a deep pink English rose with a very fragrant sweet old English rose scent. Like atypical English rose, the flower is very double with lots of petals. The scent of the blooms are so strong a vase of of it's flowers will perfume an entire room. 

In Southern California, the  rose will continue to bloom from early spring until late summer. The bush is tall and strong, the foliage are healthy and I never have any problem.

 
This rose is named after Gertrude Jekyll, a famous English gardener and writer. She is remembered for her subtle approach to the arrangement of plants in the gardens she created.She arranged the plants by colors that look like Impressionistic paintings. She arranged plants for color effect.Some suggested that she arranges plants according to color because of her deteriorating eyesight. In a border, lighter colored plants are planted in front and darker colored plants are planted at the back.

I have planted three of this roses and I have not pruned one of them last spring. I was surprised that it had lateral shoots although the blooms from the lateral shoots are not as big. Gertrude Jekyll is a perfect climbing  rose for small gardens.

Roses

Garden roses are the most popular and widely planted flowering plants especially in mild and temperate climates like Southern California.

It is believed that roses have been cultivated since 5,000 years ago. Records exist of roses being grown in ancient Chinese and Greek gardens, including gardens in ancient Babylon. Paintings of roses have also been discovered in Egyptian pyramids.

The modern rose as we know it today was bred from wild roses hybridized with cultivars of the China rose. Hybridizing started in Europe with Empress Josephine of France patronizing the development of rose breeding in her Malmaison garden.

There are three main group classifications of roses namely wild rose, old garden and modern garden. Wild roses also known as species roses are low maintenance and have one flush of bloom per year. Old garden roses are roses that existed before the introduction of modern roses; they are also known as heritage roses. Modern roses are hybrids of wild and old garden roses.

Modern roses are further classified into hybrid tea, grandiflora, floribunda, polyantha, miniature, climbers, pillars, English, shrub and rugosas.

Hybrid Teas are the most popular class with their characteristic high centered blooms. Most Hybrid Teas produce large high centered blooms on long stems. Many are fragrant and are disease resistant. Although most Hybrid Teas sold at nurseries are no longer fragrant. They need hard pruning every spring in order to produce large and healthy blooms. In Southern California, hard pruning can be done almost any time of the year. 

Another popular modern rose are the Floribunda roses. They produce clusters of blooms that are smaller than Hybrid Tea blooms. In Southern California they tend to bloom continuously. They are shorter and are great when planted in groups. The Iceberg rose is a  Floribunda.

English rose is a hybrid of Hybrid Tea and Old Rose. English roses are very fragrant and hundreds of petals. This type of rose is hybridized by David Austen.