Zanthan Gardens
Weblog of a Central Austin Garden

Carol at May Dreams Gardens invites us to tell her what’s blooming in our gardens on the 15th of each month.

October 15, 2010

Second fall is firmly entrenched in Austin. As September rolls into October, usually a front will come in from the north and banish the humid Gulf air for a month or six weeks. Then Austin gets a lovely October of intense blue skies, dry air, and temperature ranging from lows in the 50s to highs in the 80s. This has been one of those perfect Octobers; my only complaint is that we didn’t get the prelude of a good long rain. We’ve had a few sprinkles but the last really good rain came with Tropical Storm Hermine at the beginning of September. Hermine dumped six inches of rain all at once and some Austinites got twelve inches or more. It would be nice to spread these rain events out a bit. These are lovely October days but dry, dry, dry. And it’s so cool I become negligent in my watering.

The garden has some fitting golden yellows for October. However it is mostly a jarring clash of reds and pinks at the moment. It was even worse at the beginning of the month before the oxblood lilies and the red spider lilies died down. (And people wonder why I don’t paint my gray cement wall purple.)

Turks cap clashes with coral vine

Ipomoea quamoclit, cypress vine

Dianthus ‘Fandago Crimson’

Ipomoea nil ‘Chocolate’

The package art and description led me to believe that this ‘Chocolate’ morning glory would be a gentle mauve or dainty buff. Not.

Cosmos bipinnatus ‘Dancing Petticoats

I planted some cosmos in the empty larkspur beds thinking I’d get some nice fall color. I always forget that it is too dark for annuals until the pecan tree loses its leaves. This was the only tiny pathetic flower from the entire packet of seeds. All the seeds sprouted but the plants quickly got leggy and died when they were about a foot tall.

The two ‘New Dawn’ roses are covered with flowers. And so is ‘Blush Noisette’. You probably would never guess it from the rest of the garden, but I really prefer these dainty pastel pinks.

Rose ‘New Dawn’

October 15, 2010

The list of all plants flowering today, October 15th 2009, at Zanthan Gardens.

• Abelia grandiflora (2010) full bloom
• Abutilon incanum (2010)
• Antigonon leptopus (2010) full bloom
• Antirrhinum majus (2010) rebloom, survived summer
• Commelina communis (2010)
• Cosmos bipinnatus ‘Dancing Petticoats’ (2010)
• Datura inoxia (2010)
• Dianthus ‘Fandango Crimson’ (2010)
• Duranta erecta (2010)
• Galphimia glauca (2010)
• Helianthus annuus (2010) wild
• Hibiscus syriacus (2010) fading
• Ipomoea nil ‘Chocolate’ (2010)
• Ipomoea quamoclit (2010)
• Lantana ‘New Gold’ (2010)
• Lycoris radiata (2010) last day
• Malvaviscus arboreus (2010)
• Nerium oleander (2010)
• Nierembergia gracilis ‘Starry Eyes’ (2010)
• Oxalis crassipes (2010)
• Oxalis triangularis (2010)
• Pandorea ricasalonia (2010)
• Parkinsonia aculeata, Retama (2010)
• Pavonia hastata (2010)
• Plumbago (2010)
• Polanisia dodecandra (2010) one flower left
• Rivina humilis (pigionberry) (2010)
• rose ‘Blush Noisette’ (2010)
• rose ‘New Dawn’ (2010)
• rose ‘Red Cascade’ (2010)
• rosemary (2010)
• Ruellia (all three) (2010)
• Salvia madrensis (2010)
• Senna lindheimeriana (2010) mostly gone to seed
• Setcresea (both purple and green) (2010)
• tomato (2010)
• Verbena canadensis (lavender wilding) (2010)
• Vitex agnus-castus (2010)
• waterlily ‘Helvola’ (2010)
• Zexmenia hispida (2010)

After losing almost half my roses to drought over the last 18 months, I feel the wheel of fortune has turned again. 2007 has been a boom year for roses in Austin. Among my own roses, I’m seeing a flush of flowers like I’ve never seen before. The vast number of flowers are weighing down the canes. You’d think we were in England or something. Driving around town, I see it’s the same all over. One block east of Congress on East Annie, a Travis Heights cottage has its front picket fence covered with roses. The roses in every garden I visited this weekend were spectacular.

Three of my roses, ‘Heritage’, ‘Blush Noisette’, and ‘New Dawn’ took the center stage last week. After six years, ‘New Dawn’ is tumbling over the front fence as if she’s modelling for a photo in a rose catalog. The very thorny, stiff canes spread ten feet in each direction. I’ve read that they can get 20 feet long.

The pale pink flowers have a modern pointed shape and are lightly fragrant. (Peter Beales describes it as “well-scented” in Classic Roses. I disagree. He also says ‘New Dawn’ “flowers freely from June to October”. In England, I guess.) They fade to ivory when past their prime. The leaves are a bright glossy green that turns russet after a frost. If you don’t prune the spent flowers, rose hips develop.

Introduced in 1930, ‘New Dawn’ is the everblooming sport of ‘Dr. W. Van Fleet’ and the first rose patented in North America. Although the thought of plant patents now conjures up nightmares of Monsanto, after reading about the struggle of rose hybridists in For Love of a Rose, I understand better how important plant patenting is given that you can work for years developing a plant and anyone can stick it in the ground and propagate it.

Which is exactly what I did with ‘New Dawn’. Now I have three ‘New Dawn’ babies, one of which I managed to get planted last December. All three babies began blooming this year on April 22.

The question of whether ‘New Dawn’ is actually remontant keeps coming up on the net. Mine has one good flush in late April, and then a flower or two in the fall. Despite the weather (drought or flood, heat or cold) it is the one rose that always blooms at about the same time each year. Some people theorize that roses being sold today as ‘New Dawn’ have actually reverted to ‘Dr. W. Van Fleet’. Others posit that it depends on climate and in Austin’s hot summers ‘New Dawn’ goes dormant. Still others say they have no problem getting repeat bloom as long as they deadhead.

That might be my problem. Of all my roses, ‘New Dawn’ is the one I find most difficult to prune…yes even harder than ‘Mermaid’. Or it could be that it gets too much shade. Mama ‘New Dawn’, which is planted between the pecan tree and the Texas Mountain laurels, gets blooming the week the pecan is leafing out and doesn’t do much the rest of the year. However, it listed as a rose that can tolerate some shade, performing well with as little as 4 to 5 hours of sunlight.

In 1997 ‘New Dawn’ was voted the most popular rose in the world at the 11th World Convention of Rose Societies. Do you grow it? Does it rebloom for you? If so, what are your summer temperatures like and how much sun does it get?
Read the rest of this entry »