June 2006                                                                                                                                             © Janet Davis

 

Rose season is upon us, with all the joy and accompanying angst that these lovely flowers visit upon rose-crazed gardeners.

 

Joy we can understand.  After all, nothing could be lovelier than a dew-kissed rose, perfect in form, with a perfume sweeter than anything that comes from a bottle.   But angst?  Well, if you’ve tried growing roses and you’ve found yourself battling leafhoppers, thrips, Japanese beetles, aphids, black spot or powdery mildew, it’s understandable why many gardeners have rejected the rose experience.  However, there are excellent shrub roses that provide lots of gorgeous blossoms, are hardy and disease-resistant, and don’t require a lot of coddling or chemicals to keep them looking good.

 

Grow roses in rich, moisture-retentive soil in a site that gets at least 6 hours of sun.  Give them lots of water, up to 5 cm (2 inches) a week; but avoid wetting the leaves; run the hose deeply at the shrub’s base instead.

 

Here are five favourite shrub roses of mine that just happen to be yellow – and very mellow:

 

Father Hugo’s Rose:    In my semi-shaded backyard, I’ve distilled my rose habit to one indestructible shrub rose with a brief but lovely flowering at lilac time, making it among the earliest roses to bloom.  It’s called Father Hugo’s rose and was discovered in China in 1899 by missionary Father Hugh Scanlan.  Rosa hugonis (now believed to be a form of R. xanthina) is hardy to –40C (-40F) and grows about 2.5 metres (8 feet) tall, with long arching branches that are smothered in late May to early June with single, primrose-yellow blossoms with a light, lemon fragrance.  

 

‘Harison’s Yellow’ Rose:  Flowering slightly later in June is another spectacular and easy yellow shrub rose, ‘Harison’s Yellow’ (Rosa x harisonii).  Thought to be a hybrid between the Scotch Briar rose (R. spinosissima) and the Persian yellow rose (R. foetida), it was bred in 1830 in the New York City garden of lawyer and amateur rosarian George F. Harison.   It was transported by wagon train across the U.S. to the homestead gardens of 19th-century pioneers and is often called “the yellow rose of Texas”, though the song by that name evidently honours not the rose, but a woman whose heroism helped Texas in their battle of independence against Mexico.   ‘Harison’s Yellow’  is a suckering shrub that grows to 2 metres with a profusion of charming, semi-double, lemon-yellow blossoms.  Non-recurrent, it blooms only once in the season. 

 

 

‘Agnes’:  A third exceptional yellow shrub rose is also notable for being the first Canadian-bred rose ever.  A cross between the Japanese Rosa rugosa and the Persian yellow rose,  ‘Agnes’ was bred around 1900 by Dr. William Saunders on his farm near London, Ontario and named for his wife.  ‘Agnes’ grows to a rounded shrub about 2 metres (6 feet) tall and wide, with masses of pale amber buds that open to almost fully double apricot blooms that fade to creamy-yellow. It has a delicious, fruity perfume.  Its main flush of bloom is in June, but it sometimes produces new flowers in fall.

 

 

 

 

 

‘Golden Wings’:  A hybrid Pimpinellifolia bred in 1956 in Ohio, this award-winning shrub bears clusters of elegant, single, pale-yellow blossoms centred with bronze-red stamens.  It has few thorns and grows neatly to about 1.8 metres (5 feet); its lightly-scented flowers are produced from early June throughout summer. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

‘Golden Celebration’:   Though smaller, at 1.6 metres (4.5 feet), than the other shrubs here, this lovely rose developed by renowned British hybridizer David Austin, creator of the so-called “English roses”, is a great favourite of many gardeners because of its intense fragrance and large, double blossoms in a rich, golden-yellow.   

 

 

 

If you’re looking for more roses with sunny dispositions, there are several other yellow roses with charm to spare.  Among them are ‘Golden Showers’, a canary-yellow climber; ‘Graham Thomas’, apricot-flushed yellow and perhaps the most famous of the David Austin-bred English roses; ‘Eldorado’, a semi-double floribunda with primrose-yellow flowers; and ‘Molineux’, another David Austin with quartered, burnished gold blooms reminiscent of old roses.

 

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