With the world moving toward no spray trialing of roses, I wonder when the AOE trials will follow suit??? Do you think we are ready? Should we push for it?
I wonder if the ARS would support rose shows, or sections of rose shows, where no fungicidal sprays were used?? It might be a good move. If the shows are “educational”, ARS ought to be showing people what will grow well for everyone.
Thoughts on this anyone???
Jim Sproul
I think this is a great point Jim and great idea for ARS shows. I think without going no spray AOE will continue to decline in relevance. With SOOOO many of the small mini rose nurseries out of business and NorEast no longer doing retail, the accessibility of AOE winners has dramatically declined. AOE is something we as ARS members and rose lovers value, but the general public sees less and less of what AOE is.
THe public increasingly wants disease resistant roses. Those that are not have minimal markets. AARS has recently switched to completely no spray trials for all rose types. ADR has been that way for a long time. Unless AOE can warrent having its existance as a service for rose exhibitors that are willing to grow chemically dependant roses, it is not sustainable in its current form.
Perhaps since AOE is not sponsored by the industry and is ARS sponsored from my understanding, it can continue on without a strong link to the overall financial market justifying its impact and relevance to the market and consumer. I see the advantage for large nurseries like Weeks, J&P, and NorEast to add the AOE symbol to their winning roses to add a little extra marketing push and that value came to them with minimal trialing costs and commitment (relative to AARS, I have entered two roses in AOE over the years).
If our goal as ARS members is to sponsor a trialing program that promotes roses that the average gardener will be successful with in today’s climate of minimal or no pesticide use, AOE will need to significantly elevate disease resistance in priority. ARS can restructure the AOE program into a world leading program in identifying and promoting mini roses the average gardener under average garden conditions can be successful with in order to promote general rose growing, education about roses, ARS membership, etc.- all the great things ARS values. Having AOE continue on in its old form will continue to lead to less relevance of the program and potentially to its extinction.
I believe it should be pushed as soon as realistically possible. I am always disappointed in the miniatures @ Washington Park because 95% of them are always defoliated. I have never in nearly 2 decades seen anyone actually look at the AOE test area like they do the rest. Also, the relevance of miniatures on the non-annual ornamental trade scale is diminishing by the year. If the general public began to see miniatures as viable garden plants then they would more likely use them over annual ornamentals. Mildew, blackspot, winter tenderness, plant architecture and self-cleanliness are all huge issues with this class of roses when it comes to garden capability. All of these things are completely doable and in the best interest of furthering the interest of miniature roses into the modern landscape.
Jim, and David
Believe it or not, our local society lectures its members on a regular basis to grow “bulletproof” or “sustainable” roses which require little to no spray. Our annual rose show has a class entirely devoted to roses which have not received any pesticides. We call the class “Au Naturale.” Winners of the class have included ‘Super Hero,’ ‘Love and Peace,’ ‘Rainbow Sorbet,’ ‘Playboy,’ and ‘Day Breaker.’ The class is quite popular, and has many of our members have gardens which never get sprayed. We also maintain the Roger Williams Park Victorian Rose Garden in Providence (about 500 roses), which hasn’t been sprayed in years.
Andy
Link: rirs.org/roseshow.htm
Many of us preached this for decades and finally gave up on ARS. It’s nice to know things are finally changing. I’m happy to try to breed healthier roses and watch from afar.
Well, with regards to relevance, I will confess that until Jadae said “miniature” I was drawing a brief blank as to what AoE was.
(Duh.)
Clearly not something that has any meaning for my purposes, and it’s unfortunate.
Is the lion’s share of the miniature rose market not for the florist’s potted miniature, which is marketed similarly to a disposable arrangement? It seems to be a market driven by quantity consumption and not enduring garden usage from what I usually see, and that’s very unfortunate.
An extreme analogy would almost be like asking poinsettia breeders to breed something a little hardier for garden use.
Hi Phillip,
A hardy poinsettia is called Euphorbia 
PErsonally, from a landscape standpoint, a good garden miniature would be something with grace like Cecile Brunner, the health of some of the wichurana shrublet types and the uniquie miniature stature of a miniature. But I think a lot of possible variations could be created. One of the strongest attributes of miniatures is their range of color (which I think even beats floribundas) and extreme diversity in plant shape/bloom shape.
The only variant of Cecile B I have is Boomfield Abundance, and “grace” is not a word that comes to mind! LOL
There are a lot of wonderful attributes that miniatures offer, no doubt. But as coffee table/exhibition plants, they seem to be being bred for a different set of standards than the ‘garden roses’. I frankly don’t know anything of what I’m speaking, but wonder if the AoE merely reflects the demands of the market?
(As for Euphorbia pulcherima, the species always did pretty well in my zone 9 garden, but planting the newest hybrids in the garden is akin to throwing an over-bred pekinese dog into the wild and asking it to be a wolf. But they do hold on to their showy bracts, by golly.)
Hi Phillip,
That’s a good point that the main mini market is these potted florist minis. Ralph Moore and others have worked very hard to help get minis into the standard gardening arena for our gardens / landscapes. When I was a grower my boss for a long time would just buy in extra Sunblaze and other potted mini plugs promoted for the florist market to sell in the bedding plant area in spring. I encouraged him and for a couple years we got in Nor’East liners of fragrant minis, etc. that were selected to do well in the garden and not just force quickly from several single node cuttings in a 4 or 6" pots and that’s where their main purpose was accomplished. The plant habit of those selected for garden performance seemed better in the garden setting.
So much more can be done. I feel the nomenclature gets fuzzy and is arbitrary fast, but minis have creeped into our landscape roses with compact groundcover and landscape roses. Roses like most in the Oso Easy series by Proven Winners, etc. have a mini parent and are basically mini shrubs that have better health and hardiness than the traditional miniature hybrid tea and floribunda miniatures that AOE has focused on that have been bred for exhibition. The flower form of most of these newer mini shrub / landscape roses is too simple to show well I suspect. For instance, my new Oso HappyTm Petit Pink has a lot of mini in it and could have been classed as a mini. http://www.colorchoiceplants.com/oso_happy_petit_pink.htm
Hardier, healthier minis are out there if we call them minis or not. It would be nice if the momentum of the garden mini market through the work of Moore and so many others could continue to have a strong visible market instead of being absorbed into the florist potted mini market by the focus of mass plug production of Nor’East without a retail outlet anymore or absorbed into the landscape/shrub rose market. I guess we can be thankful the roses we value are being developed and hope in the end the marketers will somehow establish the outlets so the people that would want them can recognize them and have access to them.
Moore definitely had a good idea of a horticultural specimen. Rose Giladi, except for the “prickles of national defense”, is a really good example of a miniature that is extremely versatile. Weeks has a few that are equally healthy but definitely more architectually stiff (which can be displeasing in a garden setting). A prime example is Coffee Bean (which I love). I think Moore, based on his end products, definitely had an excellent idea of what grace and beauty mean when it comes to space within a given setting.
Oso Easy Peachy Cream looks decent but that series is not completely up to par with current potential. For example, a lot of the series is bred from Anna Ford line, which is not really my idea of healthy. I passed on Oso Easy Paprika because I knew it would be a bad idea to grow in Oregon. Oso Easy Fragrant Spreader is definitely healthy in this area. It looks simple but nice, easy to grow and healthy. A lot of these lines also bred from miniature climbers, which tends to give this really awful architecture in the garden. Oso Easy Paprika and What A Peach are popular examples. They create this really distracting popsicle stick effect in the garden. These are all things to consider when breeding miniatures, shrublets, etc for the garden setting.
I am happy that things are changing. It seemed to start commercially around the time Top Marks/Sweet Dream were intrododuced. They have this odd compacted, floriferous plant form. Unfortunately, due to the plant density and resistance, they defoliate very quickly. These were bred from Anytime (like Anna Ford was), which is a McGredy invention that stemmed from Moore’s original work of New Penny. There is definitely more possibilities that could happen that would create an even better end product for a gardener. The idea of the miniature is still young in terms of relativity and time.
Flower Carpet Amber grows similar to some miniatures. Its definitely different than the rest of its clan. I am still getting a feel for the Drift series. I like most of them and some of them are pretty bad here (Red seems to be the worst). A few of the newer ones have more modern blooms, which is good news. In contrast, even hybrid teas are older even if you started from the time pernetianas began.
However, none of this really directly relates to the AOE, which is a major problem. Should they? Shouldnt they? How can the AOE remain current and viable? And what about miniatures winning the AARS instead? Is there a difference? If so, how and why? Does it differentiate in the total outcome (sales, happy gardeners, how distributed, etc)? These are all inquiries that should be thought out well before investing energy in any given direction.
I agree the ARS is way overdue to abandon the labor and resource-intensive rose practices of the 19th century. AOE suffers from the same mass marketing flaw as the major rose producers: a quest for a horticultural class of rose that grows everywhere. How many roses are perfect everywhere? The only way a mini can be great everywhere is if it’s winter-protected where it’s cold and sprayed where it’s disease-prone. I see the return of the recognition of regional roses as a return to sanity for rose lovers.
I know I’m hungry for compact, healthy floriferous roses in a wide range of colors. Compact habit should be good enough.
IMO miniaturizing the foliage has been an over-rated objective. Once that became the standard, the number of breeding lines that could produce tiny foliage shrunk to those few miniatured roses apparently spontaneously produced by near-to-species cultivars. The choices: Happenstance/Baby Mermaid from Mermaid; miniature Chinas (so-called Chinensis minima); White Pet/F
The poinsettia analogy, obviously, was to allude to the bulk commodity market use of the mini. Clearly there is money in moving millions of $5 units, but it neglects the other potential uses of the group as garden plants.
I’ve beefed about the limited trials in the US before. As one who doesn’t live in “All-America” I don’t care about the AARS. I want something that fits my needs in my “part” of America.
There should, quite simply put, be different trials for roses intended for different uses. I would certainly pay attention to ratings for miniature landscape roses as that better fits my interests.
There is no disrespect intended for those who breed for the commodity market – it just isn’t my thing.
I would like to see more results of more regional trials. I don’t know how much notice they would get, but my impression is that something like the “Earth-Kind” ratings are getting attention from consumers, and marketing a rose as having won numerous trials should have merit beyond i.e. the AARS rating.
With miniatures, in particular, a plant for the garden needs real resistance. A vigorous rose can better outgrow or shrug off disease, but a mini? I’ve turned my back on most of them for that reason – I live in Fungus Central.
Philip,
Have you seen the disease resistance survey I published last week? It includes a section specifically on miniatures. See:
Link: paulbarden.blogspot.com/2010/09/disease-resistance-survey.html
I had not seen that list, Paul. Thanks muchly.
There are some real surprises in your list. I certainly wouldn’t have expected Tiffany to be an a+, though I admittedly do like Belinda’s Dream, her offspring. The one time I think I actually grew Tiffany would have been early on in my rose-growing years, and may have been a RMVed “body bag” purchase.
And Indigo too? Hmmm…
Red cascade is the only “mini” I have on your list. Softee has done comparably for me.
Of course I don’t have a tenth the collection you do, so I can’t really compare the relative merits of roses in our two regions!
I wish I could be more affirming of Paul’s observations for my climate (Eastern KS). I find New Dawn, Wm Baffin, Konegin von Danemark, Great Maiden’s blush, Dorothy Perkins and R soulieana (new this year) fully agree. Red Cascade, Popcorn, Salet, Mme Caroline Testout, Cecile Brunner (CL)are in the 75 % category. But Cal Poly and Sequoia gold are not very good. Unfortunately Joyce Barden and Incantation are extreme victims here. Incantation is nearly as bad as Austrian Copper.
So far no yellow of dozens I have tried is resistant, except Carefree Sunshine. Golden Arctic was rather good when I had it (75% or better). Around town there are a couple yellows that do OK, but I don’t reliably have their names. One is likely Sunny Knock Out.