An 1870's granary restored and renovated into a small home for our petite daughter, Melanie, cried out for a garden of diminutive plants to surround it. So that's what Melanie started designing and planting as soon as she helped clear up the area surrounding it. The clearing up was a significant one, involving all the detritus connected with leveling, squaring, reinforcing, plumbing, and electrifying this building built of stacked Douglasfir two-by-fours in 1875 by one of Cache Valley's earliest settlers. 

A fuller story of the conception and complicated job of the granary's restoration appears in An 1875 Granary in Utah Gets a Facelift.

 
Miniature and Small-flowered Roses
Especially charming are Melanie's myriad miniature and small flowered roses that have just recently burst into their early summer bloom, and which were among the first she planted. 

Miniatures and small flowered roses of compact habit are excellent for use in small spaces where they can be enjoyed individually. Their use in edging beds of traditionally sized roses makes for a charming sight. They are excellent as well as for small hedges, according to Sean McCann (Miniature Roses), and for the marking off of mixed borders. I have a small display of miniature roses given me by Melanie over the years as gifts along the edge of our brick patio east of the front porch where they can be enjoyed while sitting on the benches there.

Melanie reminds me that miniatures are not all the same size by any means. In fact, of the small bush plants, there are good sized roses with small flowers and small leaves able to hold their own fairly well, whereas the smaller micro-minis can be swamped easily by larger plants. The "Rouletii" described below is a case in point. A tiny plant, Melanie has constantly to keep clearing away nearby violets to give the rose breathing room.
Melanie's front garden is planned with this thought (of swamping) in mind. Close to the building is her row of mixed small shrubs, perennials, and the two climbing roses (shown right). In front of this row is a stone path, then the miniatures and polyanthas, then a row of antique small-flowered roses and species roses, then, next to the drive in front of the house, a row of the smaller minis and polyanthas.

Another suggestion for miniatures' is their use in raised beds and, in Europe, balconies and windowboxes are used extensively to display miniatures, especially the trailing and cascading types. The miniatures also afford a wide variety of roses for the collector who must confine her gardening to the three sides of a thirty by twenty feet, two-storied house.
The photo at the head of this piece includes two of Melanie's miniatures by the Granary's front porch. The oddly named 'Single's Better', introduced in 1985, is a bushy miniature rose with semi-glossy green leaves and mossy buds. The plant's five-petaled flowers are red with a yellow tinge but have little fragrance.

Also only slightly fragrant is the vigorous white, single rose, 'Simplex', a variety said to have sparked American gardeners' interest in single-flowered miniatures. Introduced in 1961 by California's pioneering miniature rose breeder, Ralph Moore, the blossoms' five white petals surround a gold center.

The small-flowered Gallica, 'Cramoisi Picote', shown in the foreground, is an heirloom rose, introduced by Vibert in France in 1834. Her stems are  nearly thornless and carry small dark green leaves. The flowers, a pom-pom type of around two inches across, are full, mottled pink and crimson but, sadly, have no fragrance. This small-flowered plant needs plenty of room for, like many Gallicas, it suckers freely and can spread a square foot in a season. The photo shown was taken in 2000. The 'Cramoisi Picote' has been since banished to the back garden of the Granary where it can spread to its heart's content without vanquishing its more diminutive neighbors in the front.


Farther south in front of the Granary is a charming grouping (shown left). The modern groundcover miniature, 'Royal Edward', is in the foreground.  Directly behind is Rosa wichuriana poteriifolia and behind that is the taller miniature, the white 'Gourmet Popcorn.' Scattered over the ground below these roses are the tiny white flowers of Silene unifolia, a groundcover, and the yellow blossoms of the tiny Sedum acre. Lightly scattered throughout are the delicate blue cup-like blossoms on the slender stems of campanula.

'Royal Edward' is a recent introduction (1995) by William D. Ogilvie of Canada. The medium pink flowers are semi-double and slightly fragrant. The R. wichuraiana poteriifolia (otherwise known as the Compact Memorial Rose) is a species groundcover rose of delicately tiny habit, a sport of the larger 1891 species rose found on many grave sites in the last century, R. wichuraiana or Memorial Rose. This rose has half-inch white pom-pom like blossoms with a slight fragrance. 'Gourmet Popcorn', a 1986 sport of the 1973, honey-scented 'Popcorn', is a taller miniature with pure white, semidouble slightly fragrant blossoms in full sprays. Melanie informs me that this rose is seldom out of bloom.


A Polyantha and a Species
It was around the turn of the 20th century that a group of small, cluster-flowered roses started appearing. These roses were bred from the larger multiflora roses which were then called polyanthas. Accordingly, these new roses were called dwarf polyanthas. These roses are hardy, adaptable to many soil types, and are a cheerful addition to any small garden. One of the  earliest polyanthas still available, 'Mignonette' (lower right), introduced by Guillot Fils in 1880 in France, is a sweetly fragrant rose, blooming in dense pink clusters of single pink flowers rimmed in a darker pink.  Just visible behind 'Mignonette' is the fascinating Rosa glutinosa, which appeared in cultivation in 1821. Closely allied to Rosa Eglanteria with its apple-scented foliage and stems, R. glutinosa emits a penetrating pine scent from its sticky buds, thus its common name, Pine Scented Rose. In the fall it produces large, bright red hips. Another clump of Silene unifolia is blooming to the side.


Popularity's Evolution

In Sean McCann's excellent survey of miniature roses (Miniature Roses: Their care and cultivation), he recounts the bewildering array of theories arising from efforts to trace the evolution of the thousands of modern miniature rose varieties available today. "[T]he roses came from Mauritius;" he writes, "they were always grown in France; they were exported from Britain to France as potted roses; they came from China; they were cultivated from a bunch of seeds from a larger rose." Of these theories, a popular one among authorities is that today's miniatures started with an original small rose, R. chinensis minima, though its very existence seems to be in dispute.

Regardless of its ancient beginnings, the little roses were a staple on European balconies during the 1800s, and in 1917 the miniature pioneer, 'Rouletii' was introduced by a French nurseryman, Henri Correvan, and this introduction is considered the beginning of the modern miniature rose culture. Beginning with small, tight red buds, the blossoms open into slightly double, one-inch  blooms of China pink. The most apparently legitimate history of this rose is outlined in McCann's book. Thriving as a pot plant for many decades in Switzerland, it caught the eye of a Swiss friend of Correvan's, a Colonel Roulet, who then obtained cuttings of the rose and gave them to Correvan to propogate. The nurseryman named the rose 'Rouletii' in his friend's honor.  Another, similar, miniature rose was introduced in 1839 as 'Pompon de Paris'. This little rose had almost identical flowers with a more leggy habit.

At the right is a photo of Melanie's tiny 'Rouletii' on August 6, 2003, with one small bud preparing to open. Melanie tells me that 'Rouletii', a China type, is among the first roses to bloom in her garden and continues to bloom intermittently throughout the season.

A couple of interesting sidelights to these small roses is that they were at first called Fairy Roses or Lawreniana Roses. Also, people assumed miniature roses had to be grown in pots and brought inside during the winter because of their China rose connection. So, miniature roses didn't really take off in popularity until buyers discovered their hardiness out of doors.

'Rouletii' was crossed to other plants by a Dutch breeder, Jan de Vink, producing the miniature 'Peon'. 'Peon' was eventually marketed, in partnership with de Vink, by Robert Pyle, who renamed it 'Tom Thumb' and introduced it in the United States in 1936. Thus began the burgeoning hybridizing and marketing of miniature roses which soon spread to Britain, Spain, and around the globe, until today thousands of varieties are introduced by breeders every year.

Of these breeders, Ralph Moore of California is accepted as the strongest influence among miniature rose nurserymen today. As McCann put it, Moore "really placed miniature roses on the map." Among other breeders well known for their miniature roses are Dickson, Harkness, and  McGredy (see sources, below).

Best wishes,

Joan Katherine Shaw
July 2003

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To read about the granary's restoration, go to:
An 1875 Granary in Utah Gets a Facelift

Book mentioned in this essay:

Miniature Roses, Their Care and Cultivation -- Sean McCann

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Except where noted in parentheses, all photos by Joan Katherine Shaw

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Click for more on Roses:
Cascading Roses
Old White Roses
Prolific Climbing Roses for the North
Roses of the Middle East
Some Tough but Elegant Roses

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Links and Addresses for miniature and small-flowered roses:

Forest Farm
Heirloom Old Garden Roses
    24062 NE Riverside Drive
    St. Paul, OR 97137
    (503) 538-1576
Hardy Roses of the North (Links and addresses)
Nor'East Miniature Roses, Inc.
Oregon Miniature roses, Inc.
    8285 SW 185th Ave.
    Beaverton, OR 97007
    (503) 649-4482
Sequoia Nursery (Ralph Moore)
Vintage Gardens

A search for "Miniature Roses" on the Internet with give you many additional sources

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Click for more books on miniature roses:

Click to enter American Rose Society site

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All contents copyright (c) 2000-2009 by Joan K. Shaw.  All rights reserved.

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