After the rain, the setting sun gave the sky a warm (or maybe just weird) buttery glow. Great for photography?  You decide.


The Rose Pergola is canopied by (duh) a rose—Eddie's Jewel. Dunno who Eddie is, but I hope he/she is proud regardless, because Eddie's Jewel itself is proud. Obstreperously, poke-you-in-the-ribs, ef-you-if-you-can't-take-it proud. Pink beyond delicate or babylike, clear to vibrating boing-your-eyes intensity.
Proud indeed.


Cleaving to pink doesn't come naturally for me, and yet here it is, on the crossroads of the entire property no less. It was an accident. Eddie starts out red, cherry red but still red, and that's how the nursery (Heronswood) describes it, "brilliant single red flowers" they rightfully rave.
And they have the picture to prove it.I've been to Heronswood when it was out near Seattle, seen Eddie in bloom, and brilliant single (cherry) red is the truth.
But with East Coast heat, cherry red was so Yesterday. Today? Easter Peeps Pink. The only choice is to celebrate the fabulousness, be it bad taste or good. Pink & Proud.



Here's the pergola from the other direction, looking back to the house.
Proud.


From farther West:
Still proud.


From still farther West:

Prouder still.


And so Eddie's Jewel is, by accident, and even better choice to say "Here's the important spot!" because she uses both intensity and a questionable color—and a whole lot of it—for the announcement. If Eddie were merely cherry red and profuse and proud, he/she wouldn't be nearly as effective, as exciting. And, I say, enough with this he/she stuff; I'm declaring that Eddie's a girl, a big-bosomed but genial Amazon mama. Or perhaps even more likely, a very tall drag. In either case, Eddie's a "she", a "her", from now on.
If you need to cover a structure with a rose, Eddie's got much to recommend her. Very quick growing—I've had canes get to twelve feet in a season—and yet still with some sense of boundary and restraint. If Eddie gets to sixteen or eighteen feet, that will be all I could ever want or need from her. Other cover-your-garage roses don't know when to call it a day, and can get to twenty, thirty feet and more. That's your garage and your neighbor's.


Here was Eddie's canopy coverage the Summer before last: Only a few of the canes were well placed enough to be tied to the frame.
Another year and I expect that Eddie will have covered completely The Rose Pergola will be, for a few weeks at least, the biggest pinkest picture hat in New England.

My Goldfinch rose the real star of Dirt's profile shot.
How have I not posted on this marvelous rose until now? My apologies to Goldfinches everywhere.


Goldfinch is an easy and enthusiastic rambler, with a once-a-year performance so happy, so glad-to-greet-the-world.


All it wants is plenty of sun and any decent well-drained soil. The canes are almost thorn-free—flexible too—so it's just as easy to swerve them back and forth between the top teeth of a picket fence as it would be to fan them out onto a South or West-facing wall.
The flowers are small but plentiful; I just love how the buttery color intensifies at the base of the petals.
But for reasons of their own they are not satisfied with this performance. When you're a Goldfinch, you have higher standards. By the next day the petals have become pure white...

...with only a faint reminder of yesterday's yellow at the base.


Because the flowers continue to open for several weeks, you can enjoy flowers in all stages of the transition at the same time.  Goldfinch is a happy-to-share rose indeed. And did I say easy too? Right after the bloom is, literally, of the rose, cut back any canes, all or in part, that are somehow not what you want where you want. Cut out a couple of the oldest canes too, right to the bottom. This makes it easier to encourage and control the new canes that you'll find are now springing up right from the base. As with all ramblers, these new kids-on-the-bush are the most glad-to-see-you. Do right by them the first season, and they'll return the favor by blooming like hell the next.

Single-flowered roses set my toes tapping. They are just as colorful as roses with double flowers—but those doubles don't provide the added appeal of the "boss" (as it's called) of pistols and stamens at the center. With double-flowered roses, more is less.
Here's a famous single-flowered that should be welcome in any garden that's celebrating red. It's Rosa moyesii 'Geranium'. 'Tomato' would be more accurate, but since this rose originated in England way back in the 1930's, when tomatoes—which have to be grown in greenhouses there, and who, in the Depression, could have afforded it?—were probably paler and blander than what we can grow in North America. So 'Geranium' is it.



I have a pair of Geraniums, to anchor a pair of beds in the South Red Garden. (Oh yes, there's another pair of beds in the North Red Garden. It happens.) Young plants, this is their first season of bloom ever. There's a lot of open space in each bed to allow for their mature size, which can be 6 - 8 feet tall and wide. Although the bush is once-blooming, that's not the end of the red by any means: The hips, like little flasks, are red too. (Thank you, www.About-Garden.com, for the glorious picture.)


'Geranium' roses are hard to find, oddly, so thank you North Creek Farm.

Rosa roxburghii is on my must-grow list time after time.
The single flowers (hooray!), large and in pale pink (ugh), are the least of the appeal for me.
But by blooming, the bush shows that it's happy, which is its own satisfaction regardless of the aesthetics. For my money, this rose is essential for overall form.
It's a monster of a bush—even here at the Zone-6 bottom of its range—getting ten feet tall and fifteen wide. But the real value of that size is that it's achieved via canes that get as thick as saplings. And so the rose can be trained up into a small tree, as I've done here.

So-called "tree" roses aren't generally hardy this far North: the trunk is grafted onto the rootstock, and the bushy and blooming top portion is grafted onto the trunk. One portion or another always fails in a New England Winter.

A tree-rose form of Rosa roxburghii, though, is the same individual top to bottom, bloom to root. And the trunk gets thick enough (at least over time), that the tree can be truly self-supporting too. It's a unique talent in hardy roses.


The ferny leaves are a classy texture when the blooms are done.
The bush is once-blooming only—a plus for me but a disappointment for those of you who actually like pink.

I cut back any branches that grow too far outside the general globe, and I adjust the stake so that the entire structure doesn't topple in some now-that-global-warming-is-really-here freak blizzard or ice-storm. But in time, this tree-rose will be stake-free and on its own, proud and pretty.

I've planted mine in one of my street-side beds, which would never happen if the plant in question weren't a year-round asset. Look for it if you visit Rhode Island: Mine is the only Rosa roxburghii tree in the state.