Curating a Rose Garden

Filed under: Gardening, Flowers, How-To, Experts

Good roses going bad: How one woman is steering a famous rose garden in the twenty-first century.

Sarah Owens has a wide smile and a sharp pair of Felcos. She needs both.

As the rosarian in charge of the Brooklyn Botanical Garden (BBG)'s Cranford Rose Garden, which opened in 1928, Sarah has over 5,000 roses in her care and a challenging brief to fulfill: re-imagining a rose garden that has been visited by a devastating disease.

Five years ago Rose Rosette Disease (RRD) was diagnosed in the Cranford, affecting in particular the older roses and ramblers in the collection, concentrated in the south end of the garden. Spread by the eriophyid mite, and behaving like a virus, the disease remains poorly understood. When Sarah came on board as the new rosarian in the winter of 2009, its effects had been felt in the garden for several years but the severity of the infection had not been apparent.


Fresh out of the two year horticultural certificate program at the New York Botanical Garden (NYBG), thirty-two year-old Sarah faced the challenge of not only recognizing a potential catastrophe but turning it to an advantage. She was compelled to re-envision what the rose garden was expected to be -- a monoculture planted in rows for habit-observation and cataloging purposes -- to what it should be for the health of the roses: a garden where companion plants coexist gracefully with the all-important stars of the show.


So, how did Sarah start approaching this challenge?

"I started digging. Everyone dug. I gave anyone who showed up, a shovel and said, Dig." Sarah's mission was to remove every one of the affected roses, including roots and to replace the surrounding soil. But it soon became apparent that it was going to take more than that. The garden needed a serious intervention and a back hoe arrived to put the 'D' in dig. "I think everyone thought I was crazy," says Sarah. "But the collection is amazing. Some of the old roses have been here since inception and I didn't want to lose any more."

As it was, the garden's south side and beds around the pretty white pavilion were all but emptied of old roses while the northern beds remain populated and perfumed.


Which begs the question, then what?

While one hundred yards of compost were added as an amendment to the clayish beds around the pavilion, it would have been cost-prohibitive to replace all of the soil previously inhabited by the diseased roses. Public gardens rely on public support and a recession is no time for high-budget renovations at a garden already undergoing extensive upgrades and redesign. The next best approach was to let the affected areas lie fallow for "at least a year," says Sarah, and then put a four-pronged approach into effect.


1. Companion planting.
The northern border of the rose garden is already host to an exuberant display of annuals, perennials and geophytes whose color, form and texture delight both human and insect visitors alike, achieving Sarah's stated goal of...

2. Cultivating a habitat for beneficial insects.
Insects have been released in the garden to aid with natural pest management. Creating an environment where they have cover and food -- something not provided by a monoculture of roses -- encourages them to stay, complete their life cycles and begin new ones. Predator wasps, lady bugs, lace wings and aphid mummifiers are now among the denizens of the rose garden. The previously bare and stricken-looking eastern border in the south garden is now a riot of gorgeous annuals (converting this annual-averse writer to their cause) in hues of red, orange, burgundy and sapphire blue, where butterflies flit as bees and cameras zoom with equal intensity. It is a stunning display and you would hardly think looking at the flowers' many jeweled hues that the garden is an insect laboratory.


3. Organic feeding program.
After a boost of Rose Tone in the spring, house-made compost and alfalfa tea follow during the growing season. The compost aids the formation of beneficial microbes in the soil and the alfalfa boosts plants' immunity and provides nitrogen.

4. Pest management and prevention.
Neem oil at 2% saturation is applied for insect and disease control.

Wettable Sulfur is used for fungus (powdery mildew, black spot) and mites. "It works well when used as part of a variable regime. It is non-toxic but not great for the soil when used excessively. It can burn foliage if used in hot, dry, sunny weather," says Sarah.


Natural fungicide recipe for home use:

1 gallon of water
1 tablespoon horticultural oil
4 teaspoons potassium bicarbonate (more effective than baking soda, sodium bicarbonate)

Mix and spray. Use as a preventative.


"Like some people," says Sarah with a meaningful gleam in her eyes, "roses are heavy feeders and drinkers. If you give them plenty of water and food, chances are they will remain healthy -- prevention being better than cure."

Where did Sarah's love and knowledge of roses start?

Well, not at home, apparently. "I was always grounded to my mother's beautiful rose garden," says Sarah grimly. "I would look at these plants and wish I was anywhere else." Home was Clinton, in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains in Tennessee, and Sarah's first career, after her flight from the rose garden, was as a sculptor inspired by horticulture and organic forms. After six years, several residencies and her own studio, she decided that artistic seclusion was overrated, and looked north to follow her second passion: gardening.


While studying at the NYBG she became involved in the renovation of the Peggy Rockefeller Rose Collection at the NYBG and realized that roses were not the pesky creatures she had imagined. After stints as an intern at the Battery Conservancy and head gardener at the Cooper Hewitt, the offer of taking up the curatorship of the Cranford was made, and she was ready.

Late on a June afternoon in the rose garden a slow bumble bee struggles to take off from the cup of a pollen-heavy bloom. A troop of inner-city schoolkids on an outing hurtles past chanting, "We can look but can-not touch!" A Japanese tourist out of range of the sprinklers zooms in on a giant white allium in the northern border. Profuse purple clematis blooms radiating from a pillar transfix a family from Colombia, who stare and point. A small bunny scuttles across a rose bed.



On Rose Hill, a ramble of cascading roses above the garden, the valerian that Sarah planted last year when she was suffering sleepless nights, sways gently on its six-foot stalks, its lacy white umbels carried delicately above the riot of rich rose blooms. Its roots can be harvested this fall, but I have a feeling that the need for them may have passed.


Now that the ground has been prepared, literally, Sarah will focus on the stories she wants to tell. A collection of roses featuring specific hybridizers; creating a Found Rose section where anonymous and forgotten roses from cemeteries and old homesteads are collected and honored; telling histories -- of moss roses, species roses and native roses; propagating rose hips collected in France and old roses from private collections in Austria and Washington State to replace those that have been lost.


There will be no time for sleep.

 

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