Lifestyle Zone

With more than 3,000 possible roses to choose from, it's nice to have someone else sort through and pick out the highlights -- those roses that will grow and bloom well in your garden and mine.

That's what the All-America Rose Selections (AARS) program does.

Each year, new roses are planted out at trial gardens across the country, such as the Woodland Park Rose Garden. After a two-year test, AARS releases the results, and a chosen few become All-Americas. And then, says Steve Herbig, horticulturist at Point Defiance Rose Garden in Tacoma, "We get to display the winning roses."

But national honors haven't always translated into local fame. The few roses honored each year exhibit generally good characteristics for the country, not specifically for the Pacific Northwest.

So this year, AARS went a step further: The program announced Region's Choice winners, selected from previous national winners, to showcase the roses that are best for particular growing areas.

The 10 roses selected for the Pacific Northwest (and Northern California) encompass a variety of styles. So whether you are looking for a hybrid tea -- good long stems for cutting -- or an accommodating shrub for the border, or a low-growing landscape rose, you'll find one here.

The traditional rose garden includes many hybrid teas, those large, commanding plants that grow upright and produce single flowers on strong stems. Grandifloras are similar to hybrid teas, but usually carry more than one flower per stem and don't grow quite as large as the teas.

But don't tell that to 'Sunset Celebration,' one of the AARS regional choices for the Pacific Northwest. "It's a beast of a rose," Herbig says, adding that one at Point Defiance reached 12 feet easily.

It's worth the space. With fragrant blossoms of warm peach to apricot coloring that just keep coming, it will be a rose that you and your neighbors will admire. Just be sure that, if you let it reach its full potential, you provide it with a sturdy support system, such as a strong metal arbor or arch.

Floribundas are easy to incorporate into the landscape, and they usually are long-blooming. That includes 'Day Breaker,' another regional AARS choice, which combines a light-apricot color with tea fragrance, and 'Honey Perfume,' with apricot-yellow flowers.

Small-growing roses are not left off the list for our area. 'Carefree Wonder' is a landscape shrub to about 4 feet high and wide with loads of medium-pink flowers that keep coming.

The appeal of all those roses is obvious, not just to us, but -- as many readers are thinking -- to the local deer population, too.

No problem with deer in my neighborhood, because they rarely escape the zoo nearby, but Herbig has had to match wits with the Point Defiance population.

"We've tried a number of things," he says, "strobe lights, flood lights, sonic noisemakers, soap, cougar dung -- I was the lucky one who got to put that out." Even humans got into the act: From 8 p.m. until morning, a patrol would watch from the gazebo in the garden and chase out any intruders.

"We discovered a doe that would drop her fawns off on one side," Herbig says, "and then go around to the other side. She'd get chased away, but her fawns would get to eat."

Lights, sounds or smells would work for a while, but the deer became accustomed to the deterrents and then ignored them. The only thing that works: a tall, industrial metal fence that is painted black. "You look right through it," Herbig says, so for us it blends into the landscape, but for the deer, it's a barrier.

Point Defiance roses grow well without deer interference, and with a fertilizer regimen. Herbig uses Puyallup Rose Food, a recipe devised by the Puyallup Rose Society and sold by the Tacoma Rose Society each early spring.

The Tacoma group advises on the Point Defiance garden and schedules a pruning day in early March -- good thing, too; no telling how long it would take Herbig to prune 1,500 roses.

Go soon to visit the garden. Late May and the beginning of June are peak times for roses, and the Point Defiance Flower & Garden Show is on June 6-8 (ptdefianceflowershow.com), which is another great reason for a visit. But don't despair if you can't make it then, Herbig says there are roses in bloom until October.