Resilient Rose Garden

Like all other sectors in the garden industry, rose growers have been working towards a poison-free garden, and the moment seems to have arrived.

- By Alice Spenser-Higgs

It started with the introduction of disease-resistant roses, like the Eco-Chic range in 2009, and more recently the Stamina roses, selected by Ludwig’s Roses as powerful growers with strong roots and tough leaves to survive both variable weather and disease.

But pests have always been a problem, especially those like thrips that spoil blooms and deform new growth, and red spider mite, which can defoliate a rose if left unchecked, making it susceptible to die-back.

In a hunt for alternatives, Halmar Taschner made contact with biological product manufacturers and for the past three years has been trialling their products for controlling aphids, thrips, beetles and red spider mites at the rose farm and their other nurseries.

“We kept quiet about it because we wanted to see how well it worked first,” explains Halmar, “and now we feel that we can offer safe solutions to some of the pests that bother people’s roses.”

It also meant waiting for the products to be available in a usable form for gardeners.

So what are these biological controls? Think mushroom spawn that parasitises the thrips pupae, aphids and beetles; parasitic wasps that hunt down aphids; and two predatory mites, Spical and Spidex, that feed on red spider mites.

However, Halmar points out that using a biological control is not a quick fix – it’s more about introducing the right kind of natural controls and then letting nature take its course.