For Valentine’s Day, a rose that casts a spell

Provided by Plant Select

Plant Select's Rosa "Ruby Voodoo"

I’m here to tell you: Nobody can resist a rose. But if you want to give a Valentine’s Day present that says you’ll be around a while? Sure, give one longstem, just in a nod to tradition. But add a giftcard to a local nursery that carries Plant Select plants. Because then you get to tell your significant other about this stunner.

Yeah. That’s “Ruby Voodoo.” In addition to just being fun to say (props to the name-pickers!) this rose is a new, 2012 selection for Plant Select. That means it’s one of six plants that the consortium of Colorado State University and Denver Botanic Garden experts have tested in Colorado conditions for years.

Plant Select exec director Pat Hayward gave me the chance to sniff-test this rose last week at ProGreen Expo, the industry conference that preceeds the Colorado Home & Garden Show, which kicks off today (Saturday Feb. 11).

It was sitting in a howling gale off the loading dock of the Colorado Convention Center. It wasn’t shivering, it wasn’t wilting. The blooms had been forced in a greenhouse in February, so my own iPhone photo of it doesn’t really do it justice. And yes, it IS fragrant. I definitely salivated. In warm weather, it might have that knee-weakening punch to the limbic system that any fan of roses hankers for. Gets about 5-6 feet tall and is called a “moderate repeat bloomer.” Plant Select’s website has another photo of the whole plant.

I have mostly Plant Select Plants on my hell corner, a.k.a. my “Proof of Life” garden. “Sunset” hyssop. Purple poppy mallow. They’ve done well in really horrid soil, with only occasional pampering. “Wild Thing” salvia got6 winter killed there, but that’s to be expected from a Zone 6 plant. It was still a stunner the year I had it, and drew hawk moths in droves, buzzing around it like crazy at dusk.

There are other 2012 PS plants: a killer bicolored ice plant; two tough, floriferous daisies, one white and one yellow; a weeping white spruce whose graceful, downturned branches will shed snow loads like the one we just got two weeks ago; and a lovely little blue forget-me-not.

And there’s a rose that casts a spell.