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Updated: August 3, 2009, 1:49 pm	Share    Print    Email

The Southampton Rose Society's garden. Photos by Anne Halpin

Southampton - It's rose season here in the Hamptons. Roses are in full, glorious bloom from beaches to backyards all across the East End. If you'd like to add some roses to your garden, here are some tips to get you started.

Climbing roses cover an arbor with blossoms.

You may have heard that roses are finicky, demanding and difficult to grow. Don't believe it. The universe of roses is a big one, and ever expanding. And many of them are quite easy to care for. When you set out to choose the right kind of rose for your garden, think about why you want to grow roses, and what kind of location you've got for them.

If you want roses to use as cut flowers, hybrid tea roses might be your choice. Hybrid teas have the classic rose form and hold up well in the vase. They come in a broad range of warm colors from pastel pinks and apricots to brilliant tropical oranges and scarlets, plus whites and ivories. Many - though not all - are bewitchingly fragrant, with scents ranging from sweet to spicy to fruity. The plants, though, do require regular care in order to thrive. The bushes need to be pruned in early spring, and they're susceptible to mildew and black spot disease. If you decide hybrid tea roses are for you, leave enough space between the plants to allow for good air circulation among them. Planting nepeta or lamb's ears or another low perennial around your hybrid tea roses will help hide the less-than-graceful stems when the plants finish blooming.

The loveliest of flowers.

If you're looking to cover an arbor or fence, climbing roses are what you need. They, too, need annual pruning, and the long canes need to be fastened to their supporting structure. But for pure romance they're hard to beat. Here's a tip for success with climbers: training the stems horizontally will encourage the plant to produce more of the short lateral stems that bear the flowers - you'll get better bloom.

If you want to grow roses near the beach, look for rugosas. You can see rugosa roses blooming up and down Dune Road in Southampton. They flower through most of the summer, with enchantingly fragrant blossoms of pink, magenta and white (there are yellow varieties, too, but they're not as vigorous). In fall the flowers are followed by big scarlet berries (called rose hips) that are magnets for birds and are also rich in vitamin C (a cup of rose hip tea, anyone?). The plants will grow in poor soils - practically in pure sand. The stems are very thorny (don't plan on weeding near them without protective gear!) and, inexplicably enough, deer love them. I've seen those prickly stems chewed nearly to the ground by hungry deer. So be warned.

A rose by any other name. . .

For those of us whose schedules or inclinations don't allow much time for pampering roses, low-maintenance shrub roses are the way to go. The gorgeous, old-fashioned damasks, bourbons, noisettes, centifolias and their like are shrub roses. Their big, full, richly fragrant blossoms are heavenly, but the plants can be susceptible to disease, especially in a humid climate like ours. If you crave a classic, old-fashioned rose, try a David Austin hybrid. These roses combine the allure of heritage roses with the disease resistance and hardiness of modern shrub roses. Many nurseries carry them, as do mail-order rose suppliers like Jackson and Perkins. Or you can go to davidaustinroses.com to request a catalog or order directly.

Another venerable disease-resistant tribe is the polyanthas, the best known of which is The Fairy, whose small, light pink blossoms are abundant on the East End. The plants grow like wildfire and need serious cutting back each spring if you hope to keep them reasonably in bounds. But they're tough as nails and bloom happily through much of the summer.

For the lowest maintenance of all, count on Knock Out and Flower Carpet landscape roses. Both groups stay fairly low, topping out at three to four feet. They're ideal for massing together to fill an area. The plants are tough, disease resistant and self-cleaning (meaning you don't have to deadhead them). And, miracle of miracles, they bloom all summer long and well into fall. You'll have to give up fragrance with them - some have a light scent, but nothing remotely approaching a rugosa or damask. The color range is, for now, limited, but expanding seemingly every year.

Tree-form roses, trained as elegant standards.

The original Knock Out rose is a cherry red single, but there are now also double and single pinks, a double cherry red variety, a pink with yellow center, and a clear yellow variety whose flowers fade to cream after they open. Flower carpet roses come in soft pink, coral pink, bright iridescent pink, soft yellow and soft orange fading to peachy pink, in single, semidouble and double-petaled flowers.

If growing roses isn't your thing, at least get out and look at them - they're everywhere right now.

Two Places To See Roses

 • The Southampton Rose Society maintains a lovely little rose garden behind the Rogers mansion, next door to the Rogers Memorial Library on Windmill Lane in Southampton. It's their gift to the people of Southampton.

 • Bridge Gardens on Mitchell Lane in Bridgehampton has 800 varieties of antique and modern roses. This marvel of a garden, created by Jim Kilpatric and Harry Neyens, is a stewardship project of the Peconic Land Trust. It's open to the public, through Sept. 7, Wednesday and Thursday from 12 noon to 5 p.m., Friday from 12 noon till dusk, Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday from 12 noon to 4 p.m.

For more information go to peconiclandtrust.org and click on the Bridge Gardens button.

• Anne Halpin is a writer, editor and professional gardener, and the author of 17 garden, home and nature books. She lives in Hampton Bays.