I'm getting ready to plant a hedge of Sunny Knock Out® Roses in my front yard. These fragrant, pale yellow shrub roses, which grow 3 to 5 feet high with a 3 to 4 foot spread, will be just the thing to provide a bit of privacy from the sidewalk and shield some of the edibles that I plan to grow out front. I've been growing a couple of them in pots and find them to be as easy to care for as advertised. I like that they don't require deadheading and that pruning is a fairly simple task. I've also found that once they are settled in and established, they are reasonably drought-resistant.
I should note that this is not the prime time to be planting roses. A better time would have been in late winter/early spring, or in the fall. But I rarely am on time with my planting and I find that plants are surprisingly tolerant of my bad planning. Knock Out® Roses are proving to be very tough plants with strong disease resistance, so I expect they will be able to hold their own and settle in well enough as long as I keep them adequately watered through the summer.
So here's the plan for putting in the hedge:
For a hedge that's approximately 16 feet long, I'm planting 5 roses 1 1/2 feet back from the edge of the sidewalk where they will get more than the required 6 hours of direct sun each day. To plant, dig holes that are as deep as the containers they're in and twice as wide. Fill in with soil amended with compost and water them in well. That's all there really is to it. If you are planting in late winter/early spring, check out this
video on how to properly plant bare-root roses.
With all the rest of this year to get established and after getting a trim early next spring (check out this
video on how to prune Knock Out® Roses), I hope that next year I'll have a hedge that looks something this:
This post is part of the You Can Grow That! monthly blog series. Check here for more posts by other garden bloggers on how to grow all kinds of edibles and ornamentals.
Photo credits: Star® Roses and Plants/Conard-Pyle
Check out this article in the Washington Post about Will Radler, the amateur rose breeder who developed the Knock Out line of roses. I don't think it's fair to fault the Knock Outs because they don't fave a fragrance (with the exception of the yellow Sunny Knock Out rose). There are plenty of worthwhile flowers that don't have a fragrance, although I admit not many unscented flowers are allowed in my garden.If you ask me, Knock Out roses, with their disease resistance (except for rose rosette disease) and no-deadheading, have earned their popularity.
