I happened upon the Chorale rose in a horticultural catalogue several years ago, and for obvious reasons thought I’d give it a try. This high-end nursery sells only “own root” roses, not grafted ones, and my rose bush has been happy, even through the Polar Vortex of 2019—the canes all froze, but the base plant put out strong, healthy new shoots and they bloomed appropriately and beautifully, by the middle of the summer.
Chorale doesn’t flower just once, in early summer, like many roses; a real “work horse” of a rose, it enjoys at least two major blooming periods, and is never without at least one blossom. Japanese beetle season, in August, is always devastating—the beetles skeletonize the leaves and eat the flower buds, both. A single blossom can have as many as ten of the beetles in it, munching away happily. But the plant survives, just as it survives our bitter winters, and is none the worse for what appears to have been a truly horrible experience.
I dump a bucket of horse manure at the base of each rose bush in November, after dormancy has set in. The manure rots slowly over the course of the winter-- the original slow-release fertilizer. Then, I prune the roses in late February/early March. Older canes have become less productive, and either die outright, or limp along for another season, spoiling the look of the plant, harboring pests, and accomplishing nothing good. New canes from the previous season may be too tall and ungainly; some of them may be weak; there may be too many of them, blocking air circulation.
In their own seasons, I prune roses, raspberries (a close relative), peaches, apples—they all have their needs, all need particular attention. I drink a lot of coffee, don my leather gloves and jacket, and go at it, trying not to feel like a murderer, trying to make the right choices. My family and I lived in Virginia for five years, on the eastern slope of the Blue Ridge, an area rich in apple and peach orchards, and I often drove by the orchards, studying the pruning methods, marveling at the beautiful work being done by the pruners.
This photo shows the Chorale rose in early April, maybe a month after being pruned. I pruned it hard, and was somewhat worried, awaiting the results. But the new growth is strong and vigorous, with great color. The year ahead will, as usual, have its beauties and its beetles; some new pest or malady may show up, or a car may crash through our fence and crush the plant. Who knows? I do my best, plan for the future, and take the best care I can, knowing that the plant is a good one, and likely to thrive into the future.
Gardening has been my living, dirt-under-the-fingernails metaphor for building choirs, ever since I began building them. Chicago Chorale, like everyone else, has had a hard time of it, this spring. But we have good roots, and we will bloom, true to those roots, again, and even more beautifully than before.
