National Rose Month was first observed in 1959 when efforts were made to pass a bill to designate the rose as the national flower. However, the rose wasn’t made the national flower until 1986 when President Ronald Reagan made it official.

National Rose Month recognizes that June has long been considered the ideal month for roses, the time when they have traditionally been “in season.” In our garden, our favorite rose is the Zephirine Drouhin climbing rose.

Also known as the Bourbon rose, it was bred by the French rose breeder Bizot in the mid-1800s, and it’s the parent of dozens of offspring, many of which carry its thornless characteristic. The semi-double, cherry-pink blossoms are heavily scented with a fruity, rose scent.

The blossoms appear in the spring and keep on enchanting through the summer, flowering abundantly and continually from June to the fall.

Besides being fragrant and not having any thorns, they have also bloomed in shaded areas for us. So, what’s not to like?

Sadly, this spring’s weather has affected many of our plantings, especially our forsythias, azaleas, and cherry trees, which hardly bloomed at all. Early warm weather temperatures encouraged flower buds to form, which were then killed off by freezing temperatures.

Our Knock Out rose bushes were definitely affected and it looks like we have permanently lost several of them. It has been a waiting game that we lost since we don’t see any new shoots growing from the canes.

To learn more about roses in general, be sure to visit The American Rose Society’s website at https://www.rose.org.

On a positive note, our blooming Kousa Dogwood (Cornus Kousa) trees are a joy to behold with their seemingly millions of petal-like, off-white pointed bracts. Also blooming this week are the climbing hydrangeas (Hydrangea anomala), ‘Summer Wine’ ninebark (Physocarpus opulifolius), ‘Nelly Moser’ clematis, blue false indigo (Baptisia australis) – and clumps of foxgloves (Digitalis purpurea), which seeded themselves at the end of last summer.

As our lilacs complete their flowering, I’ll try to remember to remove the faded flowers within a month. This will result in more abundant blooms next year.

And while on the subject of next year, I hope hubby and I remember to stake our peonies. Lazy lumps that we were in not using the round grow-through supports this year, it was tragic to see their gorgeous blooms knocked down and destroyed by the recent heavy rain showers.

Sigh!