June is inevitably a month of roses even if you don't fixate on them by having a Rose Garden. Which I don't: I've never ever seen a Rose Garden that wasn't a cacophony of color, a juvenile confetti of Me-Me-Me flowers jangling together by the thousands. Impressive but unattractive.
Better to grow roses as part of more diverse plantings. The Rule Of Thumb?

                             Never (well, almost) Plant One Rose Anywhere Near Another.
Then each rose has the proper respect, the big-enough and bland-enough retinue around and behind it, so it can be the star it was born to me. (And truly, what plant than a rose has higher expectations of being a star when in full-bloom? OK, rhododendrons, azaleas, peonies, iris. The Rule Of Thumb applies for them too.)


Here then, is one of my favorite star-quality roses, Dortmund. Countless single-red flowers on canes that, for me, can get ten feet tall and beyond. I've grown it up a ten-foot section of rebar (the reinforcing rod that is normally used to make reinforced-concrete frames) that I pounded into the ground a couple of feet. (A good mallet is a marvelous thing.)


And each Dortmund flower has a large white center, a distinctive as well as delightful touch.
The biggest show is in June, but there are sporadic follow-ups in August too.


Dortmund is a climber, not a rambler, so each cane can live for many years, getting thicker and trunkier and more floriferous all the while. So unlike ramblers (where the new canes that spring up from the base are essential to replace the older canes that begin to poop out after a couple of years), you only need to keep new Dortmund canes if you need a bulkier bush.
Otherwise just snip them right off.  Dortmund is defiantly thorny, so wear gloves if you don't want to bleed a lot.

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.