Antique Rose Qualities

A GARDENER'S WORLD; Old-Style Roses Are Tough as Well as Sweet

By ALLEN LACY

LEAD: SINCE the first hybrid tea roses were bred early in this century, they have loomed ever larger in the consciousness of the American gardener as well as in the commercial horticultural economy. They appear early every spring in huge numbers at almost every neighborhood garden center, as familiar a sight as bales of peat moss or bags of fertilizer.

SINCE the first hybrid tea roses were bred early in this century, they have loomed ever larger in the consciousness of the American gardener as well as in the commercial horticultural economy. They appear early every spring in huge numbers at almost every neighborhood garden center, as familiar a sight as bales of peat moss or bags of fertilizer.

Each rose is packed in its cardboard box, pruned back to a few sturdy stems coated with paraffin to prevent drying out. The plants transplant well, burst quickly into lusty growth, and bloom in June as if they were old-timers in the garden, not raw newcomers.

I have no intention of hurling harsh words at hybrid teas, which do indeed have the most beautiful buds of all roses. The wholesale nurseries that produce them by the millions every year generally deliver vigorous plants of high quality. Besides, I've got some friends whose chief horticultural pleasure is tending to their tea roses every evening during the growing season.

But for some well-considered reasons I don't grow these roses. They thrive best when they have a bed all to themselves. I like a more mixed style of garden, with shrubs and perennials and annuals pleasantly intermingled. Furthermore, a bed of roses is no bed of roses, considering all the fussy care they require. Faded blossoms need to be removed, and there's constant minor pruning, as well as spraying and dusting against insects and the multitide of distempers that tea roses can suffer.

Moreover, the tea rose is not the gardener's only rose choice. When the hybrid teas first appeared, they muscled aside the shrub roses developed in Europe and Great Britain in the 19th century that had previously ruled the garden: the Bourbons, the damasks and all the rest. These varieties have wonderfully mysterious names to the 20th-century ear. Madame de Hardy. Madame Isaac Perriere. Frau Dagmar Hastrup. I have no idea who these women were, but their names survive because someone thought to name a rose after them.

Now these old roses are back in fashion. They are not much in evidence yet at garden centers, and their role in the horticultural economy is probably modest. But some larger mail-order nurseries have been listing them of late, and several nurseries specialize in them. Nostalgia for heirloom plants no doubt plays its part in the comeback, but there are other reasons. These old roses are toughies. Many have survived in cemeteries and schoolyards for decades with no human care whatsoever. This is partly due to the fact that they are grown on their own roots rather than grafted onto another rootstock, a procedure that almost inevitably weakens the plant.

Lots of these roses bloom only once a year, but a fair number bloom heavily in June, then sporadically until frost. Some have handsome foliage, more than can be said for forsythia and some other once-blooming shrubs. They mix well with other kinds of plants, and they don't call for elaborate programs of spraying or dusting. Their scarlet or orange or even black-purple hips often make them handsome long after blooming.

I admire the roses of the 19th century for their overall sumptuousness, and for the heady perfume many have - a fragrance all too often missing in the modern hybrid teas. But I like even better the oldest roses of all, the wild or species roses. Among them are the native American Cherokee rose (Rosa laevigata) and prairie rose (R. setigera), both of which bear single flowers in the spring and remain handsome in foliage for the rest of the growing season.

As for the European species, R. rubrifolia, I have several discriminating gardening friends who would choose it, if some horticultural dictator were to order them to grow only one rose. Its little pink flowers aren't especially significant, but the enormous clusters of red hips are wonderful to behold, as well a fine food for birds in winter.

But the real glory of R. rubrifolia (which botanists now tell us we must call R. glauca) lies in its foliage. As Graham Stuart Thomas points out in his very handsome book ''The Complete Flower Paintings of Graham Stuart Thomas'' (Abrams, 1987), its special value lies in the color of its leaves: ''They are glaucous or even palest jade green in shade, but in full sun they darken into a rich coppery mauve tint.'' Mr. Thomas writes that some people even cut it back to the ground every spring. It usually doesn't bloom with this stern treatment, but these gardeners don't mind, for it's the wonderful foliage that interests them.

At least three nurseries specialize in old and species roses grown on their own roots. They are the Antique Rose Emporium, Route 5, Box 143, Brenham, Tex. 77833 (catalogue $2); the High Country Rosarium, 1717 Downing Street, Denver, Colo. 80218 (catalogue $1), and the Heritage Rose Garden, 40350 Wilderness, Branscomb, Calif. 95417 (catalogue $1).

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