What would our lives be like without Roses?  

Roses have permeated our society like no other plant or flower.  We use them to express love, to decorate for festive occasions, for anniversary and congratulatory gifts, and for so many other gift-giving and appreciation occasions that it is hard to list them all.   

Roses have a reputation as being finicky and disease-prone plants in the garden, but nothing could be farther from the truth.  In my own experience, I resisted planting roses for years, thinking I was going to have to spray them and fuss over them constantly.  Then I got a couple of white climbers (White Dawn to be exact), and I am now a true rose convert.  

I bought the bare-stemmed plants three years ago and stuck them in the ground on either side of an archway, and today they completely cover that archway to the point that it is groaning under their weight.  In spring and early summer the arch is absolutely covered with fragrant white roses, and today (mid-September) they are covered with orange rose hips that from a distance look like small flowers.  They are fantastic plants.  I also now have several other kinds of roses in my garden that have been totally trouble-free.  I will personally never shy away from growing roses again.

There are literally thousands of rose varieties, but these can be broken down into manageable categories so that the home gardener inexperienced with roses can make knowledgeable choices as to which plants will do best in the landscape.  Sorting it all out and finding just the right place to plant the selected rose is the object of this page.  A rose planted correctly will provide trouble-free beauty for years to come with minimal effort.

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