A Valentine’s Rose Garden

There are many joys of being married the second time, and one of the biggest for me is having a partner who is a closer fit with some of the things that matter so much in my life. Obviously, a big thing in my life is gardening. Especially flower gardening. Santia and I knew each other as young adults 24 years ago, and who would have known that we’d both end up being garden nuts now? Neither of us had that interest back then, although it was surely lurking just under the surface with the experiences I had with my mother and she had with her grandmother.

That’s a long lead-in to say that I find great joy in being able to give my Sweetheart a “bouquet” of 10 bare-root rose shrubs for the front yard at our California house. She was really quite taken with the idea, and that makes me so happy.

OK, so, here are pictures of the roses and the happy couple. :)

I was doing my old “midnight gardener” routine again on Valentine’s night — I was out in the rain, removing all of these roses from their plastic wrapping and soaking the roots in a bucket overnight. Bare-root roses do best if you can soak the roots in water for a day or so before planting. It gives them a good, solid re-hydration. The next morning was still somewhat rainy, but we went ahead and planted them before I had to get on a plane and head back to Utah. We put a tablespoon (just eyeballed) of Miracle Gro Shake-n-Feed for roses in each planting hole with them. We were also careful to not over-compact the soil, since it was wet from rain. Here are the varieties we planted:

Grandifloras:

  • Wild Blue Yonder (x2)
  • Cherry Parfait
  • Gold Medal

Floribundas:

  • Cherish (x2)
  • Pinata (x2)
  • Rainbow Sorbet
  • Betty Boop

I prefer floribundas for their longer summer bloom season, but our choices were limited at Home Depot, so we got what we got. I still need to look up these varieties and see how well they should perform.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

4 thoughts on “A Valentine’s Rose Garden

  1. Hi Anna,

    Yes! It is a good time to plant now. Mothers’ Day is always the traditional time that it’s considered safe around here to plant summer veggies. I thought it was going to be iffy this year, because April was so cold, but the forecast looks great now, and it is safe to plant. Besides, almost all of what you listed are cold-weather plants, so they actually could have been planted last month even while it was freezing at night. At least the spinach, lettuce, onions, and chard are cold-tolerant. Not entirely sure about the others. Happy gardening!

  2. I came across your blog while searching for some tips on when is an okay time to plant in utah. I live in Davis county. I’ve heard mothers day is a good time. Well that is on Sunday, so is it okay to plant now? I have tomatoes already planted with walls of water around them, but I have spinach, romaine lettuce, cilantro, basil, garlic, onions, swiss chard and parsley that I water and keep in the sun during the day and garage at night. I’m really wanting to plant them but don’t want to ruin them. HELP please! =)

  3. Did a little searching online and it looks like Pinata is generally considered a climbing rose, even though this was labeled as a floribunda. We’ll have to see if it wants to get too tall. Anyone out there have experience with it? Are there two varieties — one climbing and one not?

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