Life is too short to deny yourself the timeless beauty of roses in your own garden. Even if you have less than ideal sun conditions or limited space, there are certain types of roses that can accommodate your needs. If you're too busy and don't want to bother with the upkeep of roses, there are new hybrids and rose care products that make rose gardening relatively fuss-free.

Made in the Shade

For most prolific blooms, roses prefer 4 to 6 hours of full sun. Although roses will have reduced blooms in less than ideal conditions, if you have light shade you can still consider planting a shrub or floribunda rose which has multiple blooms per stem. If your garden is a shade garden, take a day to observe the sun every couple of hours to see if there are any pockets of your garden that may receive direct sun for a few hours a day or filtered sun throughout the day. Avoid areas with deep shade from buildings or fences.

One floribunda highly recommended by rosarians for its great shade tolerance and disease-resistant orange red semi-double blooms is 'Playboy'. In shrub roses, the award-winning 'Knock-Out Rose Radrazz' is beloved for its shade, drought and disease tolerance with non-stop red blooms throughout the summer. In climbing roses, 'Golden Showers' continuously produces fragrant yellow blooms while the fragrant 'New Dawn' has double pink flowers in the spring and late summer.

Care-Free Roses

Shrub and landscape roses require such minimal maintenance that they are often used in commercial applications such as the boulevard plantings along Pennsylvania Avenue, SE. One such compact, disease-resistant, low-maintenance ground cover rose is the 'Flower Carpet' rose series available in red, pink, coral, appleblossom, yellow and white. Ideal to provide masses of color through till frost, 'Flower Carpet' roses grow two feet tall and 3-5 feet wide.

Container Roses

Despite their diminutive size, miniature roses are surprisingly hardy even in containers. Though delicate in appearance, I have had great luck with miniature roses wintering over including the florist-grown miniature roses often given as gifts and readily available in grocery stores. You will be continuously rewarded with blooms throughout the summer. When choosing a pot, terra cotta is ideal for its porosity which will provide cooler conditions for the roots but you run the risk of the pot freezing in winter. If you select plastic, avoid dark colors.

Other roses that grow up to five feet wide and tall can be grown in containers of at least 15 inches in diameter. After a couple of years they will need to be transplanted into the ground or into larger containers. Climbing roses, however, for maximum growth are not recommended in containers.

Tree roses are lovely in urns and containers flanking doorways and entrances. Grafted onto a long stem, many tree roses feature roses which bloom repeatedly throughout the summer. Because of their slender stem, tree roses are somewhat vulnerable to cold weather If kept in a container, it can be moved to a protected location for the winter.

Roses are notorious feeders and container grown roses will quickly deplete the soil of nutrients so fertilize on a regular basis and amend the soil with organic material twice a year.

Classic Roses

Hybrid tea, grandiflora and floribunda roses will require a little more work but it's worth it for their sheer elegance, beauty and fragrance. Hybrid tea roses are the florist roses which produce one flower per stem. Grandifloras are a cross between a floribunda and hybrid tea, producing multiple flower clusters. Many modern roses have been bred to be more disease resistant with the downside of less fragrant blossoms. So for a deliciously fragrant rose, look for “Angel Face” with its unusual lavender/lilac colored blossoms and most heavenly scent.

According to dedicated rosarians, the best way to prevent blackspot and powdery mildew is before they ever appear. Recommended preventative maintenance includes a weekly spraying of fungicide alternating applications of Daconil and Funginex. Feed roses monthly from now up until the beginning of September with an organic fertilizer such as Espoma's 'Rose Tone' or fish emulsion.

The alternative to such pampering is a systemic rose care product made by the same company that makes Aspirin. Bayer offers an 'All-In-One Rose & Flower Care Concentrate' providing relief for those who want a rose garden without heavy duty maintenance chores. It provides 3-way protection with fertilizer, insect and disease control for up to six weeks. You simply apply by mixing in a watering can and pouring at the plant base.

For more information

All-American Rose Selections. See www.rose.org for a list of 2005 and previous award winning roses tested and selected by growers.

American Rose Society. Offers a large selection of rose care articles at www.ars.org.

Upcoming Gardening

Lectures

From Necessity to Artistry. Now through Oct. 17. Get ideas for your own container plantings by seeing the series of container gardens on the conservatory terrace to learn more about the evolving horticultural demands that drove the shape, style and material selection. US Botanic Garden ( 245 First Street, SW).

Satsuki Bonsai Exhibit. Sat. June 4-Sun. June 12 from 10 am-3:30 pm. This annual exhibit showcases the most spectacular examples from the arboretum's collections including breathtaking blossoms covering late-blooming azaleas, miniature in form. Free. National Arboretum ( 3501 New York Avenue, NE).

Adrienne Jenkins is the manager of the lawn & garden department at Frager's Hardware located at 1115 Pennsylvania Avenue, SE.