The Shady Rose Garden

Roy Hennessey

Third edition 1954
© Copyright 1942 Roy Hennessey
Published by Roy Hennessey
Printed by Mist Publishing Company
St. Helens, Oregon

The Shady Rose Garden

Roy Hennessey

     A general idea prevails that there can be no such thing as a shady rose garden, and most rose books stress the idea of full sun for roses. It is true that roses on the average small bush grow very slowly in shade, and if the shade is dense they also tend to bloom poorly. But innumerable people refrain, from having a rose garden because the available location would be in partial shade, that is, shade from houses or trees for a portion of the day. And that is too bad.

     Most of the rose writings originated in England, where there is in most portions a decided dearth of sunshine, and where full sun is not too "full" at that. Also, English rose bushes tend to be very small and spindling indeed, and these two factors coupled makes the advice rather widely applicable to that particular country.
      However, in the United States we have a vast country with nearly every conceivable extreme of climate, so the advice certainly could not apply to us in toto.

     Further, with the advent of the modern hybrid Tea rose with its large number of strains, and due to factors in the background of both foetida and Tea, which factors affect most modern roses, too much light plus heat may to a large extent so affect the colors that they obviate the true beauty and worth of many lovely roses. A huge proportion of modern hybrid Teas not only profit from partial shade, that is, shade during part of the day, or dappled shade for much of the day, but they demand it for greatest vividness of color.

     In addition to the effects of heat and light in changing and fading rose colors, a rose garden in full sun in the warmer portions will suffer such a great amount of transpiration of moisture on hot days that even copious water at the roots cannot correct this, and growth and bloom may almost stop. Thus every rose lover should give serious thought to the availability for rose plantings of the half shady and shady portions of his garden. Strong rose plants with a good root system will grow in nearly complete shade, if they contain a strong dominancy of the subtropical strains such as Gigantea and its allied species, which covers a large part of modern roses; while growth of the vast majority of roses will in no way be interfered with by dappled shade or by shade for part of the day. In fact, they may grow far better due to the checking effect of heat as mentioned above.

     Excessive transpiration will so pull the red out of many roses that it is almost impossible to get anything but cerise out of many fine normally dark red roses in hot gardens. And people with unshaded rose gardens in hot dry climates simply cannot have what they describe as "good" orange roses, for the reason that orange is a mixture of red and yellow, and the excessive transpiration pulls the red out of their orange roses, leaving nothing but the yellow. So let them ponder on how shade may be provided.

     When you have a shady rose garden, your shade has to come from somewhere, and the somewhere will in most cases be from your house or adjoining houses, and from trees. These objects which provide shade at the same time raise tremendously the "horizon" of your rose garden, which is the amount of open sky overhead. To explain: on the smooth ocean you have a full horizon, cut off only by the curve of the world. There is nothing to prevent you from seeing all the sky there is. The same is true on an absolutely flat desert stretching for innumerable miles. But let a swell or rise occur on the desert, and part of the whole sky is cut off from your vision.

     Hills cut off part of the whole sky from your vision, cutting down the visible horizon. Coming down to your own garden, houses close around you narrow down your vision more and more, and houses and trees close enough to shade your rose garden may give you a tremendously risen horizon from the "ideal horizon" you have on the smooth ocean. To determine what horizon your rose bushes have, that is to say, how much of the sky they can see, bend down to their approximate height and look around you. The higher and narrower their horizon, the taller they will grow.

     So rose bushes in shady gardens, without growing at all "rankly," will grow much taller than those in gardens with a flat open horizon. Keep this in mind when selecting varieties for your shady garden, and avoid the tall growers unless your garden picture will permit them to grow even taller than normal, and still remain as you wished it. Don't take the tallest growers because you like the blooms, and whack them down as they grow, for that way you will get very few blooms indeed. The observation of roses in your open garden will give you a clue to the varieties to put in your shady garden. Obviously the roses that faded worst in the sunshine ought to he tried in the shady garden, as should those which were infinitely better in spring and again in fall than in summer. On the other hand, you may have in your garden roses that misbehaved in all sorts of manner in spring and again in fall, being pale and discouraged of color, having a tendency to refuse to open, etc., and were glorious when hot weather came. Certainly you would not put these in your shady garden.

     With a very few exceptions, modern multicolored roses are far finer and more satisfactory when given the benefit of shade for a portion of the day. The ideal arrangement would be to have about three hours of the midday sun cut off, but don't refuse to consider a shady rose garden because the shade comes at other times. The ideal is hard to reach.

     The greatest problem in the shady rose garden, and one that has given rise to many of the rumors that shaded rose gardens are just not successful, is that if the shade is provided by large shrubs and trees, their roots may steal most of the water from your roses. In such a condition, you will have to take especial pains with your watering, and check after watering to see how much deep penetration you got. In fact, if roses are to he planted close to large shrubs or trees, the safest thing to do is to sink a piece of corrugated iron from an old roof down about three and one half or four feet in the ground, on edge of course, between the large roots and your rose bed, to prevent this robbing of moisture. It is needless to say that the edge of the iron can be sunk just beneath the level of the ground to prevent any unsightly appearance.

     If you ever let a rose bed close to large trees and shrubs dry out thoroughly, you will have some thorough flooding to do before you have things in condition again. To water the rose bed itself thoroughly will not be sufficient, for by so doing you will not have watered the thirsty trees and shrubs sufficiently, and they will steal the water from your roses, leaving you gazing at rose bushes refusing to thrive, the while you declare to high heaven that lack of water can't be the matter--you soaked those roses thoroughly.

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