The Golden State: Where & How to Live, Secure, Visit, Enjoy and Thrive in California

15 Basic Ways To Landscape Your Homepage

The floribunda or cluster family of rose is probably best suited for mass planting. Outstanding characteristics are their bushy habit of growth, winter hardiness, case of culture and continuity of bloom in the numerous clusters of brilliant color.

Flowers of the floribunda are fairly large, ranging from single to fully double. In color they encompass the full range of any other rose. The blooms are exceptionally long lasting.

Easier to grow than most annuals, the floribundas can be used in much the same manner, but with noticeably longer lasting results. Plant closely, 14 to 18 inches apart, in large masses or groups or in beds to completely blanket the ground. For effective and colorful results you might group several of one variety in front of a shrub border. The floribunda rose plants seldom grow over three feet tall.

Baby roses, known as polyanthas, are for practical purposes a miniature variety of the floribundas. They are popular for edgings and bedding purposes. The plants grow into shapely compact bushes about 12 to 18 inches high. They are usually covered with a mass of flowers from early in the season until severe frost occurs. Blooms are not large but effective when arranged in showy trusses accentuating their rich colorings.

The rambler, pillar and climbing roses are generally grouped as climbers. Most retain the flowering characteristics of the standard varieties from which they were developed and vary only in habit of growth.

Few other plants vines included—will provide as much beauty and color over large areas as climbing roses. They are ideal for use on fences, trellises, arbors, as entrance plants, over doorways, to frame a window, ramble along a stone wall or climb along pillars and fence posts.

Climbing roses require no spring pruning in most sections of the country, beyond cutting out of very old or dead wood. You should shorten the laterals and long canes to make stem growth conform to the space desired. However, it is beneficial to prune in July after the first heavy flowering.

Pruning of hybrid tea roses consists of cutting out all dead, wreak, diseased and crowded stems plus shortening back the other stems. Polyanthas and floribundas need little pruning other than cutting out diseased, dead or weak shoots.