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His Rosy Affair: With 15 years of experimentation, Martel has perfected his flower-full rose garden
HARRIET HOWARD HEITHAUS
John Yves Martel admits he babies his roses, as the blooms of Gemini in the foreground prove, but the huge caladium leaves to his right show that all his plants get plentiful attention.
HARRIET HOWARD HEITHAUS
Martel’s Fragrant Cloud is a prolific bloomer and changes colors from a light tangerine into pink.
HARRIET HOWARD HEITHAUS
This Climbing Peace rose has pink tips, white petals and a creamy center.
HARRIET HOWARD HEITHAUS
This sepia-glazed yellow rose is known as Honey Dijon.
HARRIET HOWARD HEITHAUS
The Gemini, a rose softly edged in a second color, as been a prolific bloomer this year.
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John Yves Martel talks about roses the way anglers talk about big fish.
"Too bad this one’s not in bloom. It has a crazy awesome bloom," he declared, cupping his hands around the glossy leaves of a small shrub.
Martel was giving a recent tour of his rose garden of 100-plus bushes in 52nd Street Southwest in Golden Gate, and the color in his foliage-and-flower swath made it impossible to believe any rose could be better than what was already blooming.
Blended-color roses such as Hot Cocoa, mid-pink with dusty burgundy petal tips, and Sweet Freedom, which blooms in tones of white with a center of pale yellow, were in a flowering frenzy. Gemini, a pink-and-milk toned rose, was nearly covered in flowers — "one of the bloomiest roses I’ve ever had," he declared.
Tropicana, the familiar coral hybrid tea rose, was blooming on several bushes. Fragrant Cloud, a heavily blooming color-changer, evolving from pale orange to pink to white, was spreading its perfume around the south end of the porch. There were roses in lavender, yellow with pink tips, race-car red and even a cinnamon-tinged gold rose known as Honey Dijon.
Martel says he looks for roses bred for USDA Hardiness Zone 11, even though Collier County is generally considered as Zone 10A.
"That’s California, Arizona, where it’s hot," he explained of his choice.
But he’ll work with any rose he can find. Martel has pedigreed roses he’s ordered through catalogs, roses from the $2 near-death clearance stands at Home Depot and yet-to-be-released roses from Jackson & Perkins. Martel serves as a test panel member for that company.
Don’t ask him to name them all. He knows his oldest is a David Austin English rose that branches out to the perimeters of the 6- by-12 foot bed that borders his driveway and sidewalk. He has even propagated some of his roses from cuttings.
"It’s very tough. I got lucky," he admits.
The Quebec-born Martel has been raising roses for the last 15 years in his front yard. He admits to killing a lot of his first plants, until he began reading about raising roses in Florida and buying plants from Jackson & Perkins, who sent him a detailed care pamphlet for this region
Martel is a turf and landscape spray technician who is, like many people this year, in the market looking for a job, which he hopes can be in landscape or gardening. But in the meantime, he’s been able to really baby his plants, and it has been a banner year for rose production.
Martel’s interests don’t end with thorny success; he has propagated a good number of the giant-flowered "Purple People Eater" Angel’s Trumpet (Datura meteloides ‘Cornucopaea’); healthy stands of night-blooming cacti; and blooming bushes such as Firebush (Hamelia patens). Caladiums with leaves as big as lawn chair seats peek out from under some of his bushes. But roses are clearly his favorite plant; his house is nearly hidden by stands of roses, some of them nearly 6 feet tall.
Unlike many rose gardens in Florida, where black spot and various fungus problems will turn a group of leaves yellow, Martel’s is full of glossy green leaves. It’s the result of a quarterly regimen of 16-32-16 fertilizer at the base and several annual feedings of iron and micronutrients. Religiously keeping water off the leaves, Martel occasionally uses a pre-rain fungicide spray or often takes a post-rain trip around the plants, tapping the leaves with a stick to shake off excess water.
May, when the weather in Southwest Florida is driest, is when his roses are at flower-show best. But Martel hasn’t pursued competitions.
"I’m just interrested in growing things," he said.
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ROSE RULES
• Roses like to eat, so keep them fed. Rose growing hobbyist John Yves Martel feeds his with granule food every quarter and gives them a helping of iron and micronutrients as often as every month. But don’t overdo it, he warns: "The plants will burn."
• Use a gravel mulch rather than bark or pine straw. "They’ll absorbe the food. Rocks don’t," he explained.
• Pick off and pick up diseased leaves daily. "I leave the petals out there for fertilizer, but I get rid of dead leaves as soon as I see them," says
• Keep roses watered but only at the base. Martel waters his plants daily during the dry season, and Get the leaves wet as little as possible. "That’s a no-no. I water underneath the bushes only," Martel said. "Usually you spray with fungicide before it rains so the leaves will stay nice and healthy. Sometimes I just walk through with a stick and knock the water off the petals and leaves."
• Don’t apply fertilizer when the plants are thirsty. In Martel’s experience, the plants will take in the water but not the fertilizer.
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