Flower Carpet Roses Gives Fancy for Garden

There's nothing simple about roses when you grow the hybrid tea types. They require too much care and too many unwanted chemicals to keep them healthy and productive. There is simplicity in growing roses if you select the Flower Carpet or Knockout selections.

Flower Carpet roses are, without a doubt, the most prolific and no-fuss roses on the market. Roses of Hybrid teas get blackspot, but the Flower Carpets stay really clean. The Flower Carpets have topped out around 2 feet tall, but they continue to spread laterally, even more than Word expected. These plants need no extra care.

Flower Carpets are the most commonly used ground-cover roses by Complete Land sculpture, but the company also uses Drift roses, the newest in the class. Planted in hard soil, baking sun and occasional tidal flooding, they perform without any TLC. They develop few, if any, yellowing leaves among their glossy-green foliage. They need no old blooms removed to promote new flowers, which is why they are called "self-cleaning." A plant established two to three years produces about 1,000 flowers, beginning in April-May in warmer climates and going through fall's killing frosts, sometimes Christmas.

Bugs, including Japanese beetles, never chew on their leaves. They require no special pruning techniques, just cut them back with hand pruners or hedge clippers in late winter. Flower Carpet roses thrive in Zones 5-10; in cold climates, they need protective mulch over the crown during the first winter, or until roots are securely established, according to their breeder, Anthony Tesselaar Plants. In zones 5 and below, continued mulch during winter is recommended.

The roses come in a pleasing selection of colors - a white that stays white, as well as dark red, pink, coral and yellow. Amber with shades of yellow, peach and soft pink is this year's new flower power color.