The Seven Roses Project

In Dec 2007, I bought a set of three bare-root roses from a warehouse store.

I planted them onto containers and wrote about How to Grow Bare-Root Roses in Containers at eHow. Eventually, I planted the pink one on the ground, beside our calamansi tree, but left the other two in their pots. I didn't fuss over them too much, the way a serious rose grower would, but I loved how every now and then I could bring in beautiful flowers from my own garden.

To celebrate spring this year, a local home improvement store offered shrubs on discount. The shrubs included hybrid teas and grandifloras. I couldn't pass it up -- I chose four.

This time I couldn't leave the roses in their pots because they would be harder to maintain than if I put them in the ground. So, now I had a project cut out for me.

I chose a sunny location in the front yard so that I'll see the plants all the time. With a plan in hand, I gathered the materials I would need to transfer six rose plants from their pots to the ground. I would need two bags of garden soil (they have organic ones now!), a bag of rose food, and concrete borders that matched the ones we already had.

I marked the area, peeled and rolled up the sod, and dug the holes one by one. Sounds easy when you say it like that, but that sentence took me three days in real life. And several pain relievers.

I enriched each hole with garden soil and rose food before I plopped the plant in (Florida soil is mostly sand). Then I positioned the borders and watered the entire plot.

Project complete!

The seven roses are: Intrigue (lavender), Queen Elizabeth (pink), Ambassador (orange), New Day (yellow), Scarlet Knight (red), Pristine (pale pink), and Eclipse (yellow-orange).