Why Plant Once-Blooming Roses?

What kind of plant is undesirable because it blooms for only a few weeks or a month every year?

1. Rose
   
2. Spirea
   
3. Lilac
   
4. Forsythia
   
5. Golden currant
   

All of the above plants, except for most modern roses, have a short bloom period. Yet once-blooming roses are singled out for rejection. True, many roses bloom all summer. So why choose a once-blooming rose?

Once-blooming roses are much different from the hybrid tea roses most people are used to. Hybrid teas have florist-style blooms on, in most cases, smaller, upright, tender plants. They are bred to be beautiful cut flowers, like gerber daisies or carnations. The once bloomers, on the other hand, make better garden shrubs. They tend to have a vase-shaped or rounded shrub form; they look more like the other shrubs in the garden than they do hybrid teas. Most are bone hardy. Consider that gardeners were growing them long before there were chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and that the pioneers brought them West. In early summer, hundreds of blooms cover each bush. Some blooms are single like an apple blossom, others are fully double like roses in a Redouté painting, and still others look like an anemone. Most are fragrant. On some plants, the blooms give way to hips (fruit) that stay on the bush all winter, providing color and nourishment for birds.

I wouldn’t trade the once-blooming roses in my yard for everblooming or repeat-blooming ones. Even most shrub roses can’t take their place. One of my favorites is ‘Alba semi-plena’, an ancient rose used to make rose oil. It’s unaffected by the weather and grows in a spot in my yard where nothing else would grow. Add fragrant white flowers, red hips, and evergreen stems to its list of attributes, and it’s hard to think of a plant that could take its place.