Top Rated Sustainable Roses

Due to New York City pesticide laws, the staff at the New York Botanical Garden made the decision to replace hundreds of high maintenance roses with earth friendly varieties. Since 2007, NYBG’s garden curator, Peter Kukielski, has eliminated hundreds of roses and replaced them with hardier varieties, transforming the Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden into a “sustainable” rose garden. Using a rating system created by Kukielski, staff and volunteers rate each new rose. To see a list of the top performers, visit the NYBG website at http://www.nybg.org/. Click on “Gardens & Plants”, then “The Collection”, and then “Rose Garden”.

Unfortunately, many of the new roses planted at the NYBG may be difficult, if not impossible, to find at your local nursery. So your next question will be “Then why did you bother to tell us about them if we can’t buy them?”. Well, if we tell our nursery retailers that we love roses, but don’t want to fill our gardens with plants that require pesticides, they will hopefully see the light and start to carry some of the roses mentioned on the NYBG list.

In the meantime, if you’re interested in adding hardy roses to your garden, look for varieties that have received the Earth-Kind® designation.

Scotts Miracle-Gro Offers Garden Grants

The Scotts Miracle-Gro Company has launched a program called GRO1000 which awards each community recipient $1500 to create gardens and green spaces in their local area. The company’s goal is to plant 1,000 gardens and green spaces across the U.S., Canada and Europe by 2018.

Communities interested in pursuing “2011 GRO1000” grassroots grants can apply online by March 31, 2011 at http://thescottsmiraclegrocompany.com/GRO1000 . Projects should include the involvement of neighborhood residents and foster a sense of community spirit.