Rose
of the Month #14
By Gaird Hamilton
SOLITAIRE
This month,
as the 14th in our “Rose of the Month” series, I am going
to write on the rose which probably would have been my number one rose
of the month except that I was avoiding difficult to obtain roses. I
felt that the series would give people good ideas for proven roses which
would be good to buy. Now I am forced to include a very hard to obtain
rose because Pat and I won “Queen of the Show”with it, plus
Stages of Bloom, Three Yellow or yellow Blend HT’s, Best Yellow,
and it was in the arrangement that won the Kathy Leonardi Trophy
for Pat. That rose is called “Solitaire”
The rose
show results alone would make it a winner, but it is also wonderful
in the garden where it grows vigorously on it’s own roots, with
the cleanest green glossy healthy foliage on any of our plants. In a
friend’s garden, who was having trouble with all of his roses
having lots of powdery mildew because he had been ill and unable to
spray, Solitaire stood totally unmarked while surrounded by diseased
roses. I’m not going to say that it is totally disease free, but
it is as close as you can probably come with a hybrid tea of this quality.
Now to the
bad part. While this rose is readily available in Europe, according
to the Combined Rose List, it is not available in North America. I got
it some years ago from Pickering in Canada before they quit selling
it. It was hybridized by MacGredy and has yellow flowers tinted pink
with reverse yellow. It has 25 petals and a slight fragrance. It won
RNRS PIT in 1985. Since I have been unable to buy any more “Solitaire”,
I have made a number of cuttings and we have eight bushes growing in
our gardens, plus a few more started. I can heartily recommend this
rose to anyone who lives in our cool coastal climate. I only hope that
some reputable company starts selling “Solitaire” in this
country. In the meantime three of the Judges at our rose show requested
that I bring cuttings of “Solitaire” for them to next year’s
rose show.
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