A Selection of David Austin Rose Varieties for Organic Cut Rose Operations

the principal classes of modern roses are hybrid te's Flor bundas Grand Flores and the David Austin Roses more properly called English shrub roses although I often refer to them as the new old-fashioned roses uh they are a very successful attempt by Austin to breed some of the qualities of the old Garden roses the Heirloom Roses with some of the qualities of modern roses from the old roses they got a more full shrub like Bush at maturation uh some quite so um and uh all the marvelousness of the rich page of flower and its form uh and sense sense like nobody's business from Modern roses uh principally what was gained was the repeat uh bloom blooming characteristic old garden roses heirlooms usually bloom once a year for a few weeks maybe three or four in the spring early summer and that's it uh so Austin very successfully fused the two different classes like that and among the many attributes of Austin's roses is um that they're probably like old garden roses in the sense that they're at their best when the buds are about blooms are about half open uh in but they're okay and some are uh more than okay um but really have to even fully open they retain uh their form way better than modern roses my joke about modern roses hybd te's in this instances they are a promise a promise of tomorrow and a promise that is sadly largely unfilled and that is to say they are Exquisite when inbd to partly open and then when they open I give you one of my favorites just Joey they get all loose and drop their petals rather quickly and uh lose their uh color so best in bud but the Austin Roses have to fully open is where you want to be uh many not all of them make excellent cut flowers uh this one here in front of me is a one-year-old carting Mill uh again uh I'm fond of uh kind of uh warm oranges apricots salmon tones and this kind of fits the bill it's when I look at it I say apricot yeah but you can see there's a little tinge of yellow at the base of the petals some folks who obviously have a better eye for color than I so there's pink in there but thankfully I see none um so uh it's characteristic of the Austin Roses that they have heavy page as it were they have 45 60 95 pedals and Austin has been able to and other Rose breeders have always been jealous of this breed roses where there's a distance a space between the petals and what results from that is the sunlight can get in there and really brings up and enriches color so Austin's roses are known to be just just fantastically rich in their color whatever the color is and this carting Mill is right up there among the uh top of them it is U uh tends to be a pretty low slung bush like that but it features long and strong stems which make them excellent candidates for cutting scads and scads of flowers is extremely repeat blooming and when you talk about uh scent or fragrance or smell or it's sorry couldn't resist it's uh strong yet subtle uh it's got fruity tones yeah but it's got this kind of marvelous uh mirrorlike scent U and that probably equates to being Anis or licorice like and uh it's uh something else uh a comment on Austin and his roses to stand out in a bed of Austin Roses as it's getting at the end of a hot day as it's getting towards the crepuscular hour Sunset the time when both uh when biological activity is heightened and our kind of sensitivity to the environment is heightened to uh to stand out there then uh you can catch the waft of the volatile oils from the roses and it's just uh it's a lot like the first few notes of a John Cole train saxophone solo where the hair and the nap of your neck stands on end and every cell in your body knows you're alive it's transformative Transcend Dental all kinds of good stuff like that let's talk about roots that is the roots of the David Austin Roses um he began breeding in the 50s and in 1961 he released this constant spry it was the first of his roses he doesn't like it I love it he doesn't like it because one of the things he was going for what he was breeding for from the genes of modern roses was not just repeat but but really repeat blooming aspect to roses as distinct from one time blooming old roses so he didn't get it and yet it's still a preeminent Rose worthy of growing let me just say this is a an older shrub that we cut back literally to a stubble this winter because we were doing some construction here on the wall behind it so it's just getting going and so it's been growing actively for eight or 10 weeks 12 weeks and you can see by the rate of growth it's vigorous and again it's one of those tweener roses it could be a large shrub 6x6 it could be uh spreading uh climbing roses is tied to a trellis your choice um so let's look at the bloom here I have one in in hand here and it's a it's a pink definitely and pink indeed is a wide range of different shades it's a good good nice warm mid pink and one of the things about Austin's roses that he's been successfully able to breed into them is different lengths to the petals the outer pedals tend to be longer as you go more to the center they're shorter and additionally and importantly he has been able to breed some spacing between the pedals what does that do that allows these alleys of light to get in there sunlight gets into the core and it infuses his roses with this really warm glow whatever their color so this is a large shrub short climber uh it's got a it's pretty and pink yeah it's a good cutting Rose and it's got a scent that's kind of unique to the Austin Roses it has a scent and that may sound a little strange distant uh both geographically and historically but basically sort of like a a sweet Anis smell and yet there's hints of citrus in there um it is unique as are many of the different scents in David Austin's roses well if it looks like I'm down in a ditch the reality is I am uh purposely so I'm flanked by a bed raised bed behind me here and I'm flanked uh by two different uh versions of the same thing David Austin Rose called Golden celebration the one on my right is a 2-year-old shrub the one on my left is a three-year-old shrub th more vegetative establishment but let's look at the Young here this is golden celebration a preeminent rose again it will give you a nice round mounded shrub anywhere from 5 to 6 7 ft by 5 to 67 ft it can be trained up at trellis if that's your uh desire um what I like about it is well I like a lot of things about it but the blooms are totally Exquisite it is not dissimilar from another yellow David Austin Rose Graham Stewart Thomas which is say it's similar but its main difference is in the richness of the bloom when it's fully open so let's look at a few uh blooms at a few different stages here and characterize them here we have a few in Bud what I really like about this Rose is that kind of red Sherice coloring to the buds which pretty much disappears when they fully open and when fully open as you can see here there's a just a rich I dare I say like a warm mustardy color to the yellow in the center yeah I dare to say that um and in the scent is moderate plus little uh overtones of citrus like that makes an excellent Cut Flower um can be cut tight in bud for distribution or if you're just going to put it on your kitchen table can be cut a little more open and again let me say that one and that's just one of the many positive aspects of the David Austin uh roses is that they're at their best when they're more fully open than modern hybrid te's grandal flors and floral bunders so golden celebration indeed it's worthy of its name I stand here holding a stem of a halfway open really beautiful full counterpart to the golden celebration David Austin Rose this is Graham Stewart Thomas very similar in many of its respects I would say that go uh go golden celebration is a little richer in its yellowness and yet this is well not half bad and again this is the nature of the shrub uh and it's just that a full shrub again you could get it to climb by providing a trellis or you could keep it in a round mounded form like this um its features are these really Lush cup-shaped mini petal flowers with a moderate scent not real strong but it's there and uh an excellent uh flower certainly in the garden but also in a cut flower regime uh and again I think the David Austin Roses presents a little better in terms of their extreme loveliness by being half open before you cutting not so much in the tight High centered Bud as you would do for the hybrid te's so Graham Stewart Thomas I might add gram Stewart Thomas uh gets a nod certainly from David Austin an Englishman fellow Brit uh gr Stewart Thomas he was Britain's foremost garden riter and rosarian for the 20th century um and uh if you're interested in that type of thing he writes knowledgeably about perennial plants and Roses I'm here looking at in fact marveling at one of the quintessential David Austin Roses again the new shrub roses or the new old fashion roses um this is the variety Gertrude jle and it's known for a number of things but probably most importantly for being arguably but you wouldn't get an argument for me one of the most scented roses in the world in fact uh in Spain in France there are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of Acres of this Rose being grown on a field scale for oils and other fra fra perfumes and other fragrance uses and it's supplanted a lot of the older damasque type roses which were formerly considered to be the most oil essential fragrant roses geru jico it's a pink it's definitely pink and some people have troubl with this I know a lot of floral designers and they just like coil how am I going to mix that with what other colors are in my palette and that may be a problem but in and of itself it's a lovely rose and it tends to be initially this is about a 2 and 1 half threey old shrub erect and then at maturation it spread so you get a nice full four five 6 foot by four five 6ot round mounded shrub gertude J so what I've got here my hand in one two three not so representative examples of of our another David Austin Rose called Grace and indeed it is graceful uh generally a taller shrub about like this uh top of these warm orange peachy apricot blooms uh that are mildly scented and just really great in the r on the bush or in Arrangements but yet we have these three little substandard bushes what's the deal well during the pandemic we got invaded by bunnies and it turns out bunnies will actually take a cane a cane is Rose talk for a branch pull it down and strip it of leaves and so that happened repeatedly with these three shrubs uh and they are just in the beginning stages of recovering I was going to yank them but I decided to uh offer a grace period as it were to Grace and we're trying to growing them and I'm hopeful that very soon we'll just cut the blooms off come in and fertilize and by mid late summer we can double the size of these blooms we have I might add put the bunnies at Bay I won't go into details on that one okay let's look at a couple David Austin Roses certainly shrub roses that are abundantly fific let me just pause and say not really wild about either of these two roses in terms of their color schemes but then that's just me you grow what you like and what appeals to you if you're a flower AR Ranger you grow what your customers like um and I use this Rose here uh it's called Distant Drums as an example to me kind of looks like you know dirty dishwater brown or venturing in the direction of a paper lunch sack and yet florists floral Rangers are wild about it you get a nice neutral kind of cinnamony tone top I believe uh t a u p e uh that's easy a neutral color that's easy to arrange with so if this suits your fancy grow it uh okay the aforementioned David Austin shrubs uh in front of me here we have uh a shrub called the Huntington odd name you might say um it's uh named after hunting Gardens down in Southern California in the Pasadena area an amazing Horticultural display at which they have right from the GetGo in the 70s featured David Austin Roses uh so he was so uh favorably impressed by their uh showcasing his roses he named one after him um and then behind me is a shrub that's very similar in its color in its habit and it's color range and it is called Princess Alexandria of don't know who she was but apparently her family paid a lot of money to David Austin to name her Rose after her that's the way it goes with naming rights um let me just stress here I am not a fan of royalty period man of people democracy and all that um so uh these colors ah they don't do a lot for me some have called them a Vivid Pink go ahead um and yet they are easy to use in arranging with other colors so we have the huntings in here and you can see it's just on its way up a few blooms in clusters very large blooms at that um and just about to pop another 15 20 clusters of Bloom another five six days this would be a wash with a lovely color that I'm not totally fond of typical of Austin bushes is there sometimes referred to as the the new English shrub roses so they give you much more of a full round mounded Bush effect than the more gawy R upright um modern roses particularly hybrid trees and Granda floras here we are with the afor mentions princess Alexandria of Kent couple blooms in hand Bunch on the shrub not dis similar to the hunting thing little more pinky a little less dark pink on this and that but they're really six of one half dozen of another in terms of their habit of growth their fific and the range of color I'm standing here with Jane Austin no not that Jane Austin not the author but David Austin's sister j a y NE a u s t i n a preeminent true shrub rose authored by Austin uh you can see uh here we're at the 5 to 7 foot range you can grow this about this size or you can let it go up to 8 10 ft and it features a spectacular we're just on the verge mind you spring Bloom just loaded with blooms we'll talk about the blooms this in a minute here um and it has moderate repeat Bloom capability through the midsummer and then a strong re bloom in the fall um so let's look at some of the blooms here uh nice full page uh and what I like the best is the nice rich apricot Center to the Rose when it's about halfway or more open now you can use it in Bud like you see here but I think it shows off a little better when it's more fully open and as far as scent goes yep it's got it again it's that combo between a little of the dry and it's licorice myror like scent and sweet Citrus tones a very good vigorous Rose not too vigorous uh it can be the backdrop to some Rose setting or flower border Jane Austin I'm standing here with another David Austin author Rose uh Susan Ellis Williams uh but before I talk about it let me just kind of back up a little bit of the backstory of where we're at with roses here this spring mid late May 2023 Allen Chadwick Garden 800t elevation 23 mies in from the Pacific Ocean Central Coast of California was a hard cold winter we got 65 Ines of rain it was cold and cold and colder still that is cold for Central Coast of California um and didn't it rain yeah sure did 65 Ines again um so uh our pruning was delayed we usually do our dormant pruning in January and um then we get results growth let me just say this about pruning once you prune roses be ready because it's going to stimulate growth so you need to be there with some requisite compost fertilizer and irrigation as is necessary truth of the matter is May the 20th I still haven't irrigated these roses this year because we we got that much rain we're good for a while um but U the harder you prune a Rose the longer and stronger the result in growth that spring into summer and thus the somewhat delayed bloom so if you prune a Rose lightly you'll get many smaller flowers with shorter stems and it has a and it'll they'll come on earlier in the spring and it'll be a nice landscape effect if you prune hard it's as I said a lot of growth a lot of vigor delayed Bloom and the result is long strong stems and big buds and that may suit your needs something intermediate is more my preference where you take about half a third to half of the previous season's growth pack in pruning that gives you a good vigorous growth topped with a goodly number of good siiz flowers with long strong stem so you have these three options light pruning a landscape effect early in the season Heavy pruning more growth fewer flowers bigger flowers and all that and the more Intermediate Middle path of the Best of Both Worlds uh but let's look at this Rose here again Susan Ellis Williams and it is a white rose and let me just say a good white rose and by that I mean good in being truly purely white is hard to find there's only a handful that I can think of offand uh one being the hybrid tea Pope John Paul II uh and another one an old hybrid tea that's hard to get but you probably can Source it called honor but this is a nice midsize shrub with a prolific number of stems and again a strong repeat blooming and in Bud it looks not unlike a hybrid te at high centered ooid butd when fully open the pedals are recurved and give you this effect here its scent is moderate moderate plus and it is hard to get a good sweetly scented white rose the uh aforementioned Pope John Paul probably wins the race in that regard it's just well it's sinfully scented here we have a young uh just planted out a five gallon container about 3 four weeks ago David Austin Rose uh named after his granddaughter uh Olivia Rose Austin and let me just say if you're breeding roses or anything else you get naming rights can name it after anything you want and a lot of breeders name them after friends and relatives I will note also that uh uh David Austin being a bit of a man of letters named some of his early uh roses after characters in choser and also many after characters in Shakespeare but his granddaughter Olivia Rose Austin uh again you can see the the quick establishment and the number of stems and flowers here it's a grower it's a bloomer a nice soft mid pink easy to look at yeah won't hurt the eyes and easy to arrange CH with and of moderate scent and again relatively disease resistant and a repeat Bloomer Big Time Olivia Rose Austin talk about a sweet melody let's this is the David Austin Rose James gallway named after the preeminent Irish flautist rest of us just say flute players but flst James gway and I'm going to use it as an example of the response of a rose to heavy pruning this Rose was literally pruned down to about 20 in this last February has subsequently grown and grown and grown and it's going to still grow and it's just on the tip of blooming this is an excellent flower can be used as a cut flower yeah nice soft pink uh Rich highly scented and as you can see by the bloom potential here quite productive uh so James gallway uh another thing about hard pruning of roses in general my approach to pruning winter dormant pruning of roses is I'll prune them moderately for 2 three four years and then I'll give them a hard prune um and some of the idea behind a hard prune is it removes so much of the disease material uh from the plant that you kind of get a a restart in terms of a a low number of fungal spores so something you might do from time to time more David Austin Delights standing here in front of a young one first year set of uh mad wood Austin Roses um issues yeah sure it's not a strong grower and you can see even at the outset here it's less vigorous than others and maybe at maturation it will be about like that and then for reasons I don't understand certainly not of beauty uh Austin has discontinued this Rose no longer offering it I'm glad I got it I'm planning to take cuting of it uh so it's small in stat just know that going in but it's big in terms of the size of the blooms the intensity of velvety crimsyn sugar sweet scent um and is it a aminate free aminate Cut Flower yes no um it's a little short stemmed and that goes to its short stature but if you can get uh a stem left that's good enough it's really nice to work with uh monad wood there you go okay the Roses I'm showing you today the profiles U are of young bushes one-year-old bushes uh in front of me here is uh Port Sunlight um at maturation it'll probably reach about 3 and 1/2 4 by 3 and 1/2 four but you can see where we're headed even in this young point of the Bush's growth so Port Sunlight another David Austin Rose um and it's like many many many petal the form of this flower in the Rose world is called a rosette form uh and Petals of varying uh sizes or lengths from small in the center to Big on the outside just makes a nice presentation let me actually grab another one right here which is maybe a little more Prime and again the color apricot warm orange there's a little bit of pink in there um and just really uh a pleasing one to my eye here the scent again it's pretty good uh it's not one of the more scented roses but it is one of the better in terms of a profusion of flowers repeatedly over the course of Summer and into the fall and makes an excellent candidate as a Cut Flower and is easy to arrange with and it's not that dissimilar in the flower form and coloration to the shrub to my right here which is not quite In Bloom this is another Austin called lady Emma Hamilton and what's cool about this when the apricotty blooms open they're really nicely contrasted against the kind of dark almost red foliage next week we can show you blooms on this lady Emma Hamilton another Rose authored by Austin Des Demona uh truthfully not the strongest of Growers a little bit timid weak and yet highly productive in terms of flowers long and strong stems um the scent is not half bad light and sweet but not overpowering among the Austin is not one of the more scented ones and the flowers uh end up being just a really pristine white but they start off a little peachy with even a touch of apricot as they open then they turn white uh and I I don't it it is in truth hard to get a good white rose and this for me fits the Bell

Channel: UC Santa Cruz Center for Agroecology

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Length: 28min 49sec (1729 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 24 2024