Being the most popular flower in the United States I thought that Dawn Gardens should have a rose garden. I had my daughter, Corrie, lay out the paths with flags and then my crew came up from the Bay Area and installed the steel edging and the DG (decomposed granite) paths.

Here are some of the 150 roses at Dawn Gardens:

Miniature Roses

Miniature roses have small flowers but the plant can be as large as other roses – 1-6’.

Cal Poly photo taken in May

Cal Poly photo was taken on December 18.

Incognito

Old Country Charm

Minnie Pearl

My Sunshine

Irresistible

Bee’s Knees

Cupcake

Bambino

Climbers

Climbers need to be tied to a trellis, fence or cable.

Buff Beauty

Kathleen

Newport Fairy

Purple Splash

Eden

The Impressionist

Altissimo

New Dawn

Jeanne Lajoie

Sparrieshoop

Yellow Lady Banks Rose(Rosa banksiae banksiae over 100 years old growing on a Sycamore tree in Auburn, CA.

White Lady Banks Rose (Rosa banksae lutea) This one is very fragrant.

Dancing in the Wind

Albertine

Bukavu

Climbing Roses should be pruned in January and the branches trained horizontally along the fence or trellis.

Groundcovers

The Snake – very fragrant

English Roses

Tea Clipper

Pride of England

Charles Austin

Lawrence of Arabia

Jude the Obscure

Brother Cadfael

Happy Child

Geoff Hamilton

Graham Thomas

Modern Hybrids

Nice Day

Lazy Susan

Easy Does It

Nicole

Shockwave

Double Delight

Dark Night

Fired Up

Joseph’s Coat

Ketchup and Mustard

Sally Holmes

Katerina

Tournament of Roses

Chicago Peace

Fragrant Hour

Hot Cocoa

The fruit of the rose are called hips and they are high in vitamin C and make good tea. Rose petals are edible and used in salads.

The rose garden in the fall

ROSE PRUNING

Roses are usually pruned in January when they are dormant. All of the leaves should be removed and the plant cut back to half its height. All the dead wood should be removed as well as crossing branches and small twigs. The Rose should look like this:

The pruned rose garden looks like this in January:

The rose garden in March has many spring blooming bulbs such as Narcissus and Grape Hyacinth.

After pruning, all of the roses are sprayed with a dormant oil and copper spray to kill the fungus spores and insect eggs

ROSE PROBLEMS

Black Spot – This is a fungus disease that is common on roses on the spring. The fungus spores are spread by splashing rain. As long as it is raining it is a difficult disease to control unless you spray a fungicide on the foliage often.

The leaves will turn yellow and drop off. They should be raked up and disposed of in the garbage so they are not around to spread the disease. The disease automatically goes away in the summer when the rain stops unless you spray irrigate. In that case be sure to irrigate in the morning so the foliage is not wet at nights because it takes several hours of standing water on the foliage for the spores to germinate.

Rose Slug – larvae of a fly that skeletonizes rose leaves. Control by chemical means or hope that the birds get them.