This rose never fails to attract attention from garden visitors. Its flowers are medium butter-yellow, and they don't fade much as they age.
The brown petals on these two buds are the only damage this rose shows in response to a whole week of damp, rainy weather that we have had.
The best characteristic of this rose is its foliage ... large, dark green leaves that are incredibly disease resistant. I took this photo of the bush yesterday afternoon (and all the rest of the ones in this post, too), and you see leaves clear to the bottom of the plant, with almost no blackspot in sight.
This rose provides a perfect example of why it's important to evaluate promising roses for a number of years before making a decision on them. Its first year in the garden, this one was out-performed by another seedling planted beside it and I almost dug it out in favor of the other seedling. Now, three years later, this rose has become a star ... and the other one is gone.
Next week, I will be taking cuttings from this rose, to propagate plants to give to other gardeners ... so they can grow this rose and see if it does as well in their gardens as it does for me. If it continues to do so well, expect to find it named and registered and available for sale in two years or so.
A shrubby rose with yellow flowers and disease-resistant foliage? There was a time in rose breeding when this was seen as the impossible dream. It's hard to believe that I may have achieved it by growing open-pollinated seeds from a hip that I snapped from one of my neighbor's roses.
I see that a few of you are planning to follow along and grow rose seeds with me this winter. If you missed the first installment of this soon-to-be series on how to grow roses from seed, scroll down to the post right before this one to get started.
