Roses

Every year the month of June celebrates the timeless and beautiful rose.  Roses have been around for quite a long time.  Rose fossil bones date back 35 million years.  In Hildesheim Germany at the Hildesheim Cathedral you will find a thousand year old rose along the wall. Amazing right?

Rose petals are edible, either from rose water added to jams and jellies or the berries, called rose hips that are jammed with Vitamin C.  These can be made into dry tea.

Rose oil is used in perfumes but don’t try and make it yourself.  You need about 2,000 roses to make just 1 gram of oil.

This US National flower, (thanks to President Ronald Regan in 1986), is grouped into three categories:  Hybrid tea, Floribunda and Shrub.  

There are 150 varieties and about ten different colors.  The colors have different meanings:

Red – love and romance

Pink – grace and elegance

Yellow – friendship and cheer

White – sympathy but also purity, spirituality and innocence

Orange – congratulatory

An interesting trivia fact.  It took 15 years for a famous rose breeder named David Austin to create a rare rose variety called the Juliet.  He spent $5 million but sold the rose in 2006 for $15.8 million!

Private Home Health Care loves roses and enjoys growing them in containers.  Here are a few tips to grow your own beautiful roses in containers.  

You should get floribunda, hybrid tea (no longer that 4”-5”) or miniature.  Make sure your roses have enough soil for deep roots and excellent drainage.  Width and depth of the pot is important.  If you have a 20” diameter pot, the depth should be the same or deeper.  Finally, do not use a lot of fertilizer at the beginning.  Young roses don’t like it.  

Happy planting!