A long-standing myth among gardeners is that roses are difficult to grow and demand endless fussing, lots of water, and a spray program to produce good flowers. Nothing is farther from the truth. In fact, roses can be among the easiest, most carefree garden inhabitants. It just takes a little knowledge about which roses to choose in each particular situation and some simple, basic cultivation techniques.

The ubiquitous Hybrid Teas are by far the most finicky to grow. Highly inbred, they are often susceptible to diseases and without heavy feeding and regular deep watering they seldom perform to the expectations of the gardener who bought them while entranced with a photograph on the plant tag. However, the Hybrid Teas are really just the tip of the rose variety iceberg. There are thousands of roses, heritage roses bred before the dominance of the Hybrid Teas, that are disease-resistant, drought-tolerant, and neglect-tolerant. If one drives around the roadways of Mendocino County in the spring it is striking to see how many roses tumble over old buildings and fences, spring up from ditches, or climb far into trees to cascade down in a glorious fall of bloom. These old roses provide a vast cornucopia of plant material for the adventurous gardener looking for the gracious and lovely presence of roses in their landscape but also looking to avoid the pitfalls that have so often been associated with rose growing.

Heritage roses (also known as Antique Roses and Old Garden Roses) are "officially" (according to the American Rose Society) those which were bred before 1867, the advent of the first Hybrid Tea. They include shrubs and climbers in a wide variety of colors, fragrances, and flower forms. The genus Rosa contains ten different classes with quite variable characteristics. Most of these classes are represented in the roses which can be found naturalized (escaped from cultivation many years ago) around the county, often in old cemeteries or at the site of homesteads which have vanished except for the traces of occupation evident by the presence of a few apple trees and rose bushes. One can safely assume that a rose found growing on a hot, dry hillside in this county is going to be drought- resistant and disease-resistant to a high degree.

Many of the old roses found growing "wild" are climbers or ramblers of various types. Very common throughout the county are the pink and red forms of Dorothy Perkins, a rose hybridized around the turn of the century (thus, not "officially" an Antique, but a very old variety nonetheless). On the coast, Dorothy Perkins and its red form, Excelsa, have several flushes of bloom, sometimes bearing flowers into December. In the hotter inland valleys this rose has one long bloom season in June and then provides a beautiful background to other perennials in the garden with its beautiful, glossy foliage. Another popular and wide-spread climber is the American Pillar rose with large, single flowers of a bright reddish-pink with a white eye. The only problem a gardener might face with this rose is an excess of vigor, necessitating stern measures to keep it under control. The beautiful, ephemeral Banksia roses are common throughout the county, blooming early in the spring with a profusion of tiny yellow or white flowers in huge clusters adorning a very strong-growing, thornless plant. A tall, white-flowered rambler that grows throughout the town of Mendocino is Felicite et Perpetue and all over the county people treasure their huge specimens of the old Sweetheart Rose, Cecile Brunner.

For the smaller garden, there are many varieties of antique shrubs which form attractive bushes whether they are in or out of bloom. The older varieties tend to have healthy foliage which clothes the plant down to its base, as opposed to the Hybrid Teas which are rather gawky, with stiff, thorny stems bearing their blossoms on the ends of the stalks. There are several old Hybrid Perpetuals and Hybrid Chinas growing around the county, evidently passed on from friend to friend by means of cuttings or "slips." John Hopper is one of these; Mme. Gabriel Luizet is a lovely, silvery-pink, globular "Victorian" rose with a heavenly fragrance; Paul Ricault (known to gardeners as the Mendocino Crepe Rose) is beautifully formed, with hundreds of petals and exudes a perfect, "rosy" aroma; Marie Pavie is a early little Polyantha which produces its clusters of creamy flowers all summer. All of these roses thrive in widely-separated locations, many of them in places where they have had no care for decades.

All roses will do better if they are fed and watered. However, the heritage varieties, once established, can survive our summers with no water at all though they may look a bit dry by autumn. If they are allowed one slow, deep watering a month they will respond by remaining green and gorgeous and reblooming freely (if they are a variety that has this characteristic). A heavy feeding of manure, applied in the fall so that the rains can water it in, is sufficient to ensure robust health and profuse blossoming the following spring. So try something new by trying something old in your garden. You might find yourself looking for much more information about these wonderful and satisfying garden plants.