Actually, RWM, I don't really have a green thumb. I just lucked out and found a really good bush.
Twenty five plus years ago, I heard about a really neat little place. It was a specialty antique rose grower out in the middle of nowhere called
The Antique Rose Emporium. And at the time, they had a few greenhouses and a single building, and their "showroom" was a big garden out back. And as you can imagine, a rose grower's garden meant to show off their products must be an awesome sight when the roses are all in bloom. So I planned a weekend trip and drove 6 hours out to find the place. I picked up a rose bush in a 5-gallon pot that sounded neat, and brought it home.
At the time, "home" was an unfinished house an hour's drive from where I lived. It was open pasture, that had once been a cotton field. The soil is a heavy black clay that in the winter is a gooey mess and in the summer dries into concrete. I put this poor plant out there, watered it once a week with a few gallons brought from where I lived, and otherwise ignored it for about three years. After three years I could no longer ignore it as it was getting in the way . . . It was taking over the 2nd floor balcony and blocking the outside stairs. It had gone from a small shrub to being 14-foot tall and 10 feet around.
The rose is a climbing Cecile Brunner. But as a climber that was never trained . . . picture a weeping willow with thorns. 25-foot canes that grew up and then due to gravity, arced out and hung back down towards the ground. So after a few more years, it became an enormous bush 20+ feet in diameter, with the bulk of the body reaching 10-14 feet, and canes supported by the house growing over the 2nd story roof.
Against my wishes, my wife has cut it back severely several times, but it grows on . . . to this day, I do not and have never fertilized it, sprayed it for bugs or diseases, watered it (except occasionally), pruned it, or done anything to take care of it. The main stem is now a massive gnarly trunk bigger around than I can put my hands around. But I can't take any credit. Roses aren't supposed to grown well in this heavy soil, and roses are supposed to require care. But this thing is disease resistant, drought resistant, and thrives on neglect. It's just one great rose bush. None of my other roses do very well at all.
The flowers on this one are tiny, but perfectly shaped pink buds, that open out to be about an inch and a half across, and have a very strong rose scent. The canes do have a few thorns, but not a lot, and the stems with leaves/buds do not have thorns. It is a polyantha/floribunda, which means it has clusters of 3-7 roses on a single stem and blooms throughout the spring/summer/fall. But it's usually the first bloom in spring where the bush is covered with flowers all at the same time. The individual flowers have a stem about 1-2 inches long. The bud lasts about a day, and the open flower about two days. Right now, the ground under the bush is a pale pink, littered with a layer of fallen petals.
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Topic: Modelling... its not for sissies (Read 2952 times)