2009 All-America Rose Selection Winners
A winning rose embodies all of the characteristics consumers desire in a
garden plant: beautiful, fragrant, disease resistant and easy to maintain. These traits have earmarked All-America
Rose Selections (AARS) winners for 70 years. Every AARS winning rose completes an extensive two-year trial
program where it's judged on everything from disease resistance to flower
production to color to fragrance.
All-America Rose Selections
All-America Rose Selections is a non-profit association dedicated to the
introduction and promotion of exceptional roses. Since 1938, the AARS trial
program has encouraged the rose industry to improve the vitality, strength and
beauty of roses for American home gardens. Today, the AARS program is one of the
most successful and highly regarded of its kind, having brought to the forefront
such roses as Peace, Mister Lincoln, Knock Out, and Bonica.
Unlike some other rose trials, the AARS trials are based upon performance in
22 test
gardens throughout the United
States. Roses that win the award tend to do well everywhere. The rose varieties
in these trials receive only as much care as your average home gardener would be
likely to give. In fact, AARS members voted to remove fungicidal spraying from
the testing process, to ensure that AARS Winners are natural top performers.
Each variety in the trials is judged and graded
four times a year for two years by a nursery professional associated with the
test garden (and unaffiliated with any nursery that has roses entered in the trials). At the
end of the two years, a selection committee representing the 15 members of AARS
reviews the trial scores and notes. The top scoring rose in each of the six
classes is considered for an award, but occasionally a second place rose is
also given an award.
One of the best ways to stop and smell the roses, besides those planted
in your garden, is to visit one of the 130 plus AARS-accredited public rose
gardens. Each AARS garden blooms with hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of
roses, and showcases AARS' new award-winning roses - just look for the metal
markers identifying the rose by name and award year. The two accredited rose
gardens in Wisconsin are at
Boerner
Botanical Gardens in the Milwaukee area and
Olbrich Botanical Gardens
in Madison.
Three roses are the 2009 All-America
Rose Selections winners.
The shrub rose Carefree Spirit™, the floribunda rose Cinco de Mayo™,
and the hybrid tea Pink Promise™ will be available for the 2009 planting season
through selected catalogs and at retail garden stores nationwide.
 Carefree
Spirit™
This vigorous, well-branched shrub rose exhibits even better disease
resistance, habit and blooming power than its award-winning siblings,
Carefree Delight and Carefree Wonder. It boasts huge clusters of 2"-2.5"
flowers over a long very season and healthy dark green glossy foliage.
The deep cherry red blooms with white accents do not fade and have a
light fragrance.
This rose, hybridized by Jacques Mouchotte, director of research at
Meilland International and introduced by Conard-Pyle Co., thrived in
AARS test gardens for two years without any fungicide applications. Also
known as 'Meizmea' this great landscape plant has a mounding habit, can
grow to 5 feet tall, and is hardy to zone 5.
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 Cinco
de Mayo™
This mysteriously colored, wildly bright floribunda rose offers giant clusters of blooms
that are impossible to categorize as any single flower color. Each
flower is unique, and a fully blooming shrub is a conflagration of
festive colors, enhanced by a fresh-cut apple fragrance. With a flower
color described as "smoky
lavender and
rusty red-orange blend", blooms
containing every shade of red, pink, orange, magenta, lavender, purple,
smoke, and more! The 3˝" ruffled double flowers continue to open over a
long period of time. The colors become smokier in cooler weather.
This seedling of 2006 AARS winner Julia Child, given the
tongue-twisting cultivar name 'Wekcobeju', was hybridized by Tom Carruth
and introduced by Weeks Roses.
Cinco de Mayo has the plant habit and great foliage of its
award-winning parent 'Julia Child', growing in a rounded mound to about
3 feet. It's just the right size for a low hedge, large containers, or mass planting,
and will be a standout in any garden setting. It blends well with any
color in the garden, so is equally suited for planting in mass as
nestled amongst your favorite perennials.
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Pink
Promise™
This exquisite hybrid tea combines all shades of soft pink on
high-centered, perfectly formed large blooms. Arising on long,
elegant stems just right for cutting, these lightly
fruit-scented flowers convey the essence of romance and promise
hope for a cure as the official rose of the National Breast
Cancer Foundation. This organization helps extend women’s lives
through education about breast cancer and early detection. A
portion of Pink Promise’s royalty will go directly to the
support of early detection and research for mothers, sisters and
friends.
The 5" flowers with about 30 petals each are borne on 16"-60"
stems. The cool pink center blends out to a soft white. The
plants with dark green foliage may grow up to 5 feet tall.
Although it performs best in California and other dry, warm
climates, this strong hybrid tea rose will show well in any
landscape with some extra care (i.e. winter protection). It was
hybridized by Jim Coiner and introduced by Coiner Nursery.
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– From the All-America Rose Selections website and other
sources
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