I have heard that there are gardeners in the world who don’t love roses and I think I can almost understand why. For starters, they’re pretty common and might not appeal to gardeners who prefer oddities and rarities. To that I’ll just show one of my annual portraits of Rosa chinensis ‘Viridiflora’ (below left). That plant definitely satisfies my lust for the weird. There are even roses for gardeners who prefer native plants to exotic ones. (Alas I have no picture of R. virginiana because we don’t have that yet.)

I know some gardeners don’t like roses because they’re high maintenance. No argument there unless you consider a rose like redleaf rose (Rosa rubrifolia/R. glauca – above right), which only needs to be cut back hard in early spring and then left alone to bloom once and make gorgeous orange hips. But I happen to enjoy maintaining roses. There’s nothing like deadheading in June when the dropping petals are silky soft and full of perfume. I could spend whole days happily deadheading (and have the thorn scars to prove it). And I Zen out raking black-spotty leaves, which in recent years we haven’t had to do as much of because the roses are so healthy.

But I’ve come to the crux of it. Roses are notoriously sickly and difficult to keep healthy and pest-free without spraying toxic chemicals in all directions. Thank goodness most of us have become too health and environment-conscious to be willing to do that anymore. Rather than chuck all the roses, which isn’t an option in our book, we concentrated on making them healthier from the ground up. Our efforts (replacing sick roses with disease resistant varieties; compost for the healthy, fertile soil they require; 3 applications of organic fertilizer through the season as they break and bloom; and a generously donated irrigation system to keep them from drying out and becoming stressed and vulnerable to insects and disease) have paid off in non-stop blooms and deep-green leaves. We also think roses look their best when they’re used in a mixed garden, planted with a wide variety of companions. Packing them into a garden might not give them the airflow they like but they bloom away just as happily and other plants can help disguise any unhappy foliage and naked stems.

I wouldn’t want to try to convince anyone who doesn’t love roses to give them a chance but I can’t help thinking that for anyone on the fence, our Rose Garden presents an argument in their favor – living proof that they can be healthy, relatively easy to care for, and even a bit out of the ordinary. Do you like roses? Have you given up growing them or found a way to enjoy them?

… but most spring flowers don’t. It hasn’t yet reached the temperature that was forecast for today (82!) but it’s definitely warmer than most things want to be so early in spring. As much as I hate to have to say it, the daffodils are now officially past their peak. Not to worry though because the tulips have taken over the show. Of course, warm temperatures this week might make some of them a passing  fancy too. But then, that’s what spring is all about. This is definitely the week to take a day off to sit under the cherry trees as they snow, breathe in the heavy scent of winter hazel, listen to the frogs sing, take a photo essay of faded flowers, and celebrate the preciousness of life. Since every day is bloom day from now on, here’s a small sample of passing fancies for a hot and sunny Monday.

To see what else is blooming (and passing by) all over the country and the world, visit May Dreams Gardens.

Yesterday was the kind of day that made me feel very sorry for anyone stuck indoors. High 60s, sunny blue sky, birds singing, bees buzzing: Exactly the kind of short-sleeves day we all desperately crave when it’s hot as blazes or when it’s bone-chilling cold out. Exactly the kind of day best spent soaking up the warmth of the sun, sucking up the scent of the fragrant honeysuckle (Lonicera fragrantissima), and getting the garden cut back, and roses pruned and transplanted. Which is exactly how Gail, Tricia — our new garden intern, and I spent our day.

Your employer should thank me for suggesting that the very next time a day like that is forecast for a work day (tomorrow by the looks of it), you call in well and get your body outside. Disregard the calendar, quit worrying too much about the pendulum swinging, and cut back the buddleia, lespedeza and caryopteris. Go for it. It’s time and it will do you good to get out and enjoy it.

So what will you do on the next blue day? I’ll feel better if you tell me you’ll at least be able to open the windows, and will try to invent excuses, like a friend of mine did yesterday, to take some mini-walks around the neighborhood…

I also think it would be good for you — and good for your garden — to plan on taking another day off on Thursday, April 5 to attend a day of lectures on Planting for the Future by Doug Tallamy, author of Bringing Nature Home, and Warren Leach, brilliant landscape designer and co-owner of Tranquil Lake Nursery. I have heard both of them speak several times and they always keep me at the edge of my seat: Doug with his fervent call to arm our gardens with certain native plants in order to recreate a working ecosystem; and Warren with inspirational design ideas that show that environmentally friendly gardens can still be highly ornamental and sublimely lovely. Please come if you possibly can.

Gardeners are reputed to be an optimistic group but I think we might just be stubborn. Most of us at least are prone to occasional – usually weather related – bouts of pessimism, gloom-and-doom opinion competitions, and worry. But no matter how dire we guess things will be, giving up is never an option. (And doesn’t the garden always surprise us by being beautiful beyond our wildest dreams?)

Never mind that wild temperature swings have caused the marginally hardy trumpet spur flower’s (Rabdosia longituba) pipes to burst. We should have left the stalks standing as protection… and I’m mentally preparing myself to replace the plants if they die. An unusually warm December caused the quince’s (Chaenomeles speciosa ‘Contorta’) flower buds to swell and open just in time to be blasted by an arctic freeze. The buds on Cornus mas are perilously fat too and it looks like the acorn-deprived squirrels have eaten most of the tulips. Will spring still be lovely? (After Tropical Storm Irene blew the color out of the leaves last August, I worried that we’d have a lousy fall. It wasn’t lousy by a long shot.)

In any case there’s absolutely nothing we can do but wait and see and enjoy what we have in the meantime. In honor of Garden Bloggers Bloom Day (yesterday) hosted as always by Carol at May Dreams Gardens, here are a few indoor distractions. Who cares what it’s doing outside when the sweet olive is scenting the whole house? Our Brugmansia should have gone into dormancy down cellar ages ago but I won’t deny it or myself one last bloom. If we can’t grow Camellias outside, might as well have them in. And the razzleberry has just pulled ahead of its witch hazel cousin (running fast this year – what if they’ve finished before Valentine’s Day?!) in the race to bloom.

Are you worried about spring or are you distracting yourself with an abundance of blooms inside?

One of the most asked about shrubs on the property is the one that nearly hits us all in the nose as we walk towards the North Garden from the mansion. The Harlequin glory bower or Clerodendrum trichotomum stands at the very corner of the top of the North Garden wall and in August it really-truly does pack a wallop. The scent from its clustered white flowers is knock-out strong, even cloying, if it isn’t dissipated by a breeze off the water. But the shrub is almost more noticeable now that the bright blue – a kind of southwestern turquoise – berries have formed. And just so that we won’t miss the berries, they’re surrounded by glossy red calyxes. It’s a stunner of a plant and I’ve never seen a single visitor pass it by without stooping to look for its name.

The harlequin glory bower (also known as the peanut butter shrub because – and I never knew this until this minute and haven’t gone back out to sniff for myself – the foliage smells like raw peanut butter – who knew?!)  is listed as being hardy from zones 7-9 and is supposed to die back to the ground in the colder zones. Ours however, even in this exposed, zone 6 to 7ish location (only its feet are protected by the North Garden wall) has grown over the years into a very elegant specimen.

The species’ one liability is aggressiveness. It suckers like mad and seeds itself around – a bad combination that has earned it the reputation for being invasive. But I believe it isn’t in danger of escaping cultivation because the birds aren’t interested in the berries. Berries simply drop and grow where they fall. And you know me – I think any aggressive plant that can be easily controlled by an attentive gardener with a weeder or a spade (and shared with friends) is a keeper.

I might have already mentioned that the North Garden wall, which not incidentally is celebrating its 100 year birthday this very month, is going to be restored this winter. The shrubs along its edge will have to be removed, along with all of the plants in the beds below, before the project starts. I’m sad to see this one go but my hope is that it will survive the winter in a nursery bed. But if it doesn’t come through, I’m sure one of its pups will take its place, if not in that exact location again, then elsewhere on the property.

Have you met a Harlequin glory bower yet? Do you think it’s more of a menace or a miracle?