It's spring! Time to plant some Flower Carpet® roses!

As I’ve mentioned in several of my previous posts, I just moved to a new home with a huge yard just begging to be gardened. And now that it’s spring – prime rose-planting time for many – the first plants to go in will be Flower Carpet roses.

In particular, I’ve been eyeing Flower Carpet^® Amber (at right), not only because of its unique, luscious color (orange yellow with a brighter yellow center aging to soft pink) but because like all roses in the Flower Carpet line, it's virtually a low-maintenance (or no-maintenance) rose. One of three new Next Generation Flower Carpet roses (offering 15 years of extra breeding for better heat and humidity tolerance on top of the original line’s 25 gold and international awards).

Not only did Amber just win the coveted designation as an All Deutschland Rose (the world’s highest honor for disease resistance) – it and the two other Next Generation Flower Carpet roses (Scarlet and Pink Supreme) also outperformed three out of four home testers’ other roses, perennials and shrubs in a nationwide survey last summer. On top of that, they did better than all other roses tested between 2006 and 2009 at Cornell University.

While it’s hard to argue with scientific tests, first-hand testimonials sealed the deal for me. I loved how Flower Carpet fans, for instance, recently rushed to defend the brand’s honor on the iVillage’s GardenWeb rose forum (in response to a landscaper’s claim that the roses are “falling out of favor because they don’t live up to their claims.”)

Says jacqueline3: “They have thrived. Once a year I shape them with a hedge clipper and throw on some Osmocote …They DO NOT get any disease that I have ever noticed.”

Adds terryjean: “Blackspot pressure is very high here in the Midwest … and my FC roses are spotless. I don't spray them and they're clean … I don't take any extraordinary winter protection for these guys, either; just oak mulch at their feet and they've survived happily for 6 years …”

And finally, from lainey 6b va: “Years ago when the original dark pink Flower Carpet came out, they advertised that it would grow in any soil, so I planted it in hardpan clay with blue streaks in it …  It thrived, grew and bloomed nonstop for fifteen years. It might occasionally get a black dot on its leaf, but it just shrugged it off.”

Well, that’s more than enough for me, a busy stay-at-home mom who works part-time from home. Between meeting deadlines and keeping my almost-three-year-old from drawing on the dog with a Sharpie marker, it’s nearly impossible to consistently remember to water, deadhead and spray for black spot.

So, I’ve already prepared a raised bed in full sun (well, up to four or five hours of full sun, but I’m the one who chose the yard with all the shade from mature trees. Good thing Flower Carpet can grow well in the shade, maybe slightly fewer blooms – but what’s a few less out of a thousand or more per bush?)

I must admit, my “raised bed” (at right - and yes, that's me) is just a hill of dirt left by the former owner’s pool excavation. But it’s an ideal for mass planting because it’s a big, sloping area that needs to be covered. (Next year, I’ll probably add Flower Carpet roses to the deeply sloping, curved walkways (at right) bending around both sides of my house to the backyard). Plus, if I can grow Flower Carpet in hardpan clay (see above) I’m not going to pay for a truck full of topsoil). I just weeded the pile, raked in several bags of manure and organic compost and watered it all in. Of course, I’m so busy I haven’t gotten around to doing a soil test in my yard for acidity and nutrients, but I know I’ll get a little sachet of the perfect fertilizer with each Flower Carpet rose (guaranteed to work in all kinds of soil). So that saves me another step – figuring out what kind of food – and how much – to feed my new roses. To keep in moisture and snuff out weeds while I’m waiting for Flower Carpet Amber to show up at Home Depot, I’ve topped off the raised bed with black pine bark mulch.

While Flower Carpet roses are great for flower beds, mass plantings, large containers and even as standard tree roses, my personal preference is to plant them, en masse, as a groundcover. Not only do mass plantings of one kind of plant make a more dramatic impact and visually “read” better from a distance, I’ve got so much yard – almost an acre – to work with, so I think an occasional rose bush here and there would get lost. While mixing any of Flower Carpet’s 14 colors would be fine, I like to keep the color the same for a bolder statement.

So, since I’m planting Flower Carpet as a groundcover (shown here, at right), I’ll space these compact, tidy bushes with their green, glossy foliage two to three per square yard. (In his video on mass planting Flower Carpet roses, GrowingWisdom.com host Dave Epstein suggests using seven to 13 in a 10-foot-square area. I guess it depends on how dense you want the planting to look. Either way, the roses will eventually knit together, since each plant grows to be about 4 feet wide when mature.)

There’ll be more posts on all this when I get the plants from Home Depot. But till then, watch Dave Epstein’s great videos on planting Flower Carpet roses – not just the mass planting one, but on using Flower Carpet roses to beautify a walkway and using Flower Carpet roses with other plants.

That’s all for now. Happy rose planting and see you here next time on Your Easy Garden by Tesselaar!