The new Shrub Hybrids such as Knock Out are brilliant, of course, but for those gardeners who like their Roses with a bit of history, many of the Old Garden varieties cope better with black spot than most modern hybrids. (They didn’t last for hundreds of years by taking ill at the first prolonged rain every summer, after all!)
The lovely old Bourbon climber Zephirine Drouhin has grown on the north side of my parents’ house for donkey’s years. The epitome of “low maintenance” (purely a euphemism in our gardener’s mind for doing absolutely nothing, ever), old Z.D. gets about half a day of sun, when she’s lucky, and a barrow full of manure in good years. In a fit of ambition back in the 1930s or so, some long-departed gardener created a frame for her around two of the back bedroom windows, and at some point Z.D. was trained up and into this frame, then left to fend for herself. By the time my brother and I came along and took possession of the two bedrooms, Z.D.’s chief purpose in life was providing footholds for our trainers as we scrambled from the garden into our rooms (and later, as teens, out of our bedrooms and through the night garden to freedom!). I can verify that this Rose is “nearly” thornless, as we always say. More to the point, it really does put up with an amazing amount of abuse, and not only stays free of black spot but seems impervious to mildew as well.
New Dawn is another old Rose, though not reaching back to Victorian times or boasting French origins like Zephirine Drouhin. It debuted in the U.S. in 1930, a perpetual-flowering sport of the renowned ‘Dr. W. Van Fleet,’ and it received the very first patent ever issued to a Rose. Its glossy foliage is legendary, and I maintain that it is still the climber with which to decorate an arbor or pergola, for it’s simply so reliable you never worry about it. Use it as background, if you must, with newer, flashier climbers twined in, but don’t be surprised when they’ve done their bit by July 1 and New Dawn is still pushing out sweetly scented pink blossoms as August turns to September! I like to imagine the Rose lovers of 1930, a bit flummoxed by the stock market crash and the talk of a national Depression, somewhat guiltily splashing out on New Dawn, never dreaming they had just invested in one of the most dependable, beautiful, and flower-filled cultivars ever grown.
Iceberg is another older favorite for black spot resistance. Actually Kordes didn’t introduce it until 1958, but the instant it arrived, it seemed it had always been with us! The original Iceberg was a Floribunda, but ten years later a climbing sport was found in England, and it is this climbing version that I believe really outdoes itself in disease resistance. Its masses of white blooms are far more fragrant than their Floribunda parent’s as well, and borne over a seemingly endless summer season. There are few things in a garden more useful than a fragrant white Rose, and Iceberg needs no fussing over.
Finally, no Rose lover’s garden is complete without Rosa chinensis Mutabilis, the fine old single-flowered China Rose said by some to have turned up in Italy in the 19th century, and certainly given in 1894 to the Swiss gardener Henri Correvon by Prince Gilberto Borremeo. Graham Stuart Thomas, that consummate lover of old Roses, offers a description of many early “sightings” of this Rose in his stupendous The Graham Stuart Thomas Rose Book; from all these we can deduce that this was an extraordinary Rose, marked by everyone who grew or even saw it, and destined to survive into modern times by its easygoing adaptability and robust vigor. I confess that it is among my very favorite Roses, not least because it does not act like a Rose in the garden, and I scarcely think of it as such. Set in the sunny perennial garden, it flowers continuously all summer, its deep orange-red buds opening to blooms that change from butter yellow to rich pink to bold crimson during their short display. There is no time to mourn their passing; they are replaced by newcomers too abundant to snub! In my garden this shrub grows 6 feet high, but I confess to considerable pampering (and that hot southern U.S. climate); whether it reaches 3 feet or 9, it is exactly the right size, and will be adored.