Organic gardening: Growing roses

If you like to garden organically, trying to grow healthy roses is a nightmare. If they succumb to blackspot, for instance, you can't reach for the chemicals. As a result, I've grown many different roses for periods of two years or so before abandoning them to disease. This trial-and-error process has shown which roses are strong and healthy; these days I tend to grow trouble-free rugosas, gallicas and many small-flowered ramblers instead of modern, repeat-flowering varieties.

A couple of years ago I stumbled upon the British Association of Rose Breeders (BARB) Rose Trials held at Pencoed College near Bridgend. The small team does not have time to spray the roses as well as judge their performance, so a true picture of each rose's constitution emerges - making the trial unique in Britain.

Ivor Mace (the trials supervisor) and other judges noticed that roses bred by German nursery Kordes stayed healthy while others around them floundered in the damp climate of South Wales.

The health and vigour of Kordes roses isn't a fluke. This company stopped spraying their own rose beds in 1976 because eco-minded young German gardeners had virtually written off the rose as ungrowable. Initially whole fields of roses went down with disease. The few healthy specimens were selected to form the basis of a new breeding programme and within 10 years, Kordes had bred a range of healthy, modern roses. They were sold in Britain by Mattocks Roses, then part of Notcutts.

Following the Pencoed trials, I started growing Kordes roses in my own garden. The star performer has been Champagne Moments, a soft apricot floribunda (flowering June-Oct; see no27, right). I surrounded these with sultry late-flowering penstemons ('Blackbird', 'Purple Bedder' and 'Bredon') and added cream peonies (Paeonia lactiflora 'Duchesse de Nemours'). There has been no hint of disease, even in 2007's damp, disease-ridden summer. It proves that some roses can perform well au naturel - just as well, because roses that need chemical props are no good to green gardeners.