Author: Auckland Rose Society

The tail end of the year is always busy for us with our Annual Show, The Parnell Rose Festival, The National Show and the Sweet Pea Show all occurring through November and in to early December! It’s always a fantastic way to end the year! Congratilations to Doug and Jannene Alexander for winning the Queen of the Show with their small stem of Modern Miss. Congratulations also to all the winners and place-getters in the various classes – particularly to those that made the Champions Bench and our Novice winners and first time exhibitors! Thanks also to all those tireless members and volunteers to help over the series of weekends – we couldn’t have done it without you! We start 2019 in style with a Road Trip on the 13th of January and then our first meeting of the year on the 23rd of February! Come along and join us if you can!

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A week and a bit away we have Mike Roach from Roach’s Nurseries in the Waikato coming to talk to us about the roses he grows.

Roach’s Nurseries is the largest rose grower in northern Waikato and is a well-established family business owned by Mike Roach. Mike’s grandfather, Thomas Roach, started the business in 1924, and when he retired three of his six sons carried on with the nursery, growing over 100,000 roses and about 70,000 fruit trees. Mike Roach became the third generation to have owned the business when he took over from his father in the mid 1970s.

Roach’s Roses is now located at 150 Schollum Rd, Eureka which is halfway between Hamilton and Morrinsville.

We’re very excited to hear Mike talk and hope as many of you as possible can join us for the afternoon.

our Pruning demonstration at the Parnell Rose Gardens  and the many Kings Plant Barn branches around Auckland. A big welcome to all those who joined! We look forward to hopefully meeting you at one of our meetings throughout the year or at our Annual Show and Competition in November. We have some great benefits, including the ability to purchase Neutrog’s Sudden Impact for Roses exclusively through membership of the Society. Our next meeting is in August and our guest speaker is Mike Roach from Roaches Nursery in the Waikato. It should be a great afternoon. In the Growers Corner we are discussing Dieback causes and will have a Cuttings swap. Hope to see you there!

This weekend we have Kath Broad talking about Ergo-metrics, mobility and lifting in the garden. For those that are wanting to lift and move around their gardens safely this is a must. Likewise for those who may be suffering creaks and pains. Come along and find out how to avoid injuries and mishaps!

Next month is also of course our pruning demonstration at the Parnell Rose Gardens. Come along and learn from the experts how best to prune your roses! See you there!

Come along to our next meeting this Saturday and hear Margaret Matthews talk about what plants are great to plant alongside your roses! Find out what the benefits are of each. And in the Growers Corner we discuss taking cuttings and how best to get them to strike. It’s going to be a great meeting – see you there!

Congratulations to Waikato Rose Society for winning the shield for 2018. Thank you also for hosting us, Franklin and the Bay of Plenty for a fun friendly day of competition. Looking forward to next year already!

Looking forward to our friendly competition this weekend with the Waikato, Matamata, Franklin and Bay of Plenty Rose Societies. After the recent storms we’re hoping the roses get some good weather over the coming days to give us a chance to grab some quality blooms!

This is an article written by Hayden Foulds of the New Zealand Rose Society for the Grown Ups website which is recommended reading.

January columns are always the hardest to write with the spring flush of bloom and the associated events over with for another year and roses taking a back seat over the festive season. Certainly we can’t complain about the summer we are having although some moisture would be very welcome for our gardens.
Trying to come up with something topical is always hard for this time of the year so after wracking my brain and looking back through past columns, I’ve gone for a colour theme to kick the year off with a column about white roses. You probably already know about ‘Iceberg’ and that it seems to be the only rose grown across some suburbs but let me introduce you to some of the not so well known white roses that you can grow in your garden.
In the Hybrid Teas, look out for ‘Memoire’ or sometimes it is sold as ‘Ice Cream’. This one is good for picking with large well-formed blooms of creamy white. ‘St Pauls Cathedral’ is another good white with plenty of blooms and also has a good scent. Newly released is ‘Margaret Sherwood’ with large white blooms on long stems, another good picking rose too.
There are plenty of white floribundas besides ‘Iceberg’ and Margaret Merril’. One of my favourites is ‘The Wedding Rose’ which is a low growing variety with masses of old fashioned style white blooms. ‘Scott Base’ is a new variety with fragrant white blooms and ‘Jack Frost’, also new, is exceptionally healthy.
In the climbers, ‘Sir Edmund Hillary’ is a strong growing variety with fragrant blooms while ‘White Knight’ is another variety that deserves to more widely grown. Another favourite is the patio climber ‘Taffeta’ which has creamy white old fashioned blooms with a good scent.
For old fashioned varieties, ‘Little White Pet’ is a good rose for smaller gardens while ‘Banksia Alba’ is the white form of the well known pale yellow Banksia rose which is one of the first to flower each spring. The rugosa roses ‘Alba’ and Blanc Double de Coubert’ are also two great hardy varieties that will grow anywhere.
There are lots of choices in the groundcover/shrub category apart from White Flower Carpet. ‘Sparkler’ is a great alternative and while not fragrant, it does make a great show. Also look out for ‘Escimo’ a single white and ‘White Meidiland’ which is pure white and has an old fashioned look to it. I
In the miniature/patio roses, ‘Ice Angel’ is another favourite and is described as a miniature ‘Iceberg’ while ‘Whiteout’ has masses of blooms. A new variety that looks promising is ‘White Patio Wonder’which would look great on a short standard.
There is just a selection of some of the white roses around so next time you are looking for something in the white tones to add to your garden, have a look out for one of these varieties in a garden centre or specialist rose nursery near you.

In the Rose Garden for January:
• Water, water, water if the weather is hot and dry. One good application a week is better than a flick with the hose every second day. Keep the foliage dry if you can as this helps reduce disease.
• Keep weeds under control as they can soon get away with a bit of warmth and moisture.
• Continue to de-head your roses. Not only does it make the garden look tidier, it promotes the production of new flowers.
• If you have been away and come home to your roses looking less than desirable, don’t despair. You can do a summer trim where all growth is cut back to a good strong bud, fertilise them and keep them well watered so you get good strong growth coming away and a good display of blooms in March.
This column can be viewed via GrownUps.co.nz, NZ’s largest lifestyle and online social club for the active older market.

Hayden Foulds