Climbing roses reward hard work
Rose arbors have a history in our family. My maternal grandmother had a rose arbor. Here’s a picture of my Grandfather and Grandmother, Samuel and Jessie Isaman in front of their home rose arbor. The arbor was still there when I was a child but the roses were no longer thriving as they are in this picture.
There was also a rose arbor at my wife’s maternal grandparent’s house, Clifford and Mildred Wilcox. I often visited there to date their lovely granddaughter, JoAnne. And each time, I entered through the rose arbor gate.
JoAnne always wanted a rose arbor at our home and I did too. But in our first two parishes, there just wasn’t a good place for one. But when we moved to Copper Hill/West Granby parsonage, there was an old broken down gate to a fenced-in area. (It had been a dog run.) The gate and fence were overgrown with poison ivy. But the gate was clearly visible from the dining room window. I saw my chance. I sprayed the ivy and dug out the remaining roots (I’m still digging.) I tore out the old gate and saved the hinges. I turned the fenced area into a garden spot and rebuilt the fence. (We ate strawberries from the garden this week.) Even before I started replacing the gate, I planted the first climbing roses. Then I started building parts for the arbor in the garage. Eventually, I finished the construction. It took at least a year as I did not have much time to work on it. By then, I had roses to tie on it already. The following year I painted it white. After all, both my Grandmother’s arbor and JoAnne’s grandparent’s arbor were white.
To maintain our rose arbor, I fertilize each bush each year and remove the weeds. In the spring I remove the dead material. As the bushes age, there is more of that. I tie the climbing canes to the arbor so they don’t tip over. In the most recent picture, there are a couple canes that have come lose and need to be retied. If the weather is unusually dry, I water them. At first, the red rose (Blaze) dominated as in the featured picture from 2020. But now the pink one is taking over (lower picture set from 2022). The first couple years, I mulched the base of each bush for winter. But that seems unnecessary now.
