bed of roses

Old-timey blooms are back in vogue-and none more so than roses. An Indiana pro shares growing tips and new varieties for frills, fragrance and Victorian charm.

- TERESA WOODARD

GET TO KNOW TERESA BYINGTON Podcaster and blogger. Loves roses (and dirt). Calls her home garden (pictured) Bloom Thyme Cottage Garden.

FOR 30 YEARS, Indianapolis gardener Teresa Byington has been growing and giving away rose bouquets. It all started in her teens when a friend brought her a hand-picked bunch as she recovered from surgery. "I was in shock," she says. "They were so big and beautiful and fragrant, and I didn't know you could grow them in a home garden." Smitten, Byington vowed to grow her own roses to share one day.

She did a lot more than that. Today, Byington's cottage garden overflows with modern shrub roses, old garden roses and more (plus companion plants). She also writes a blog and hosts a podcast, aptly named Rose Chat. Waxing romantic about her lifelong love, Byington says, "She is the queen of flowers, with her classic beauty, her rich history, her season-long blooms and her fragrance." And thanks to modern breeding, Byington explains, it's a great time to discover or rediscover rose gardening. Choose your varieties well, read up on care and you, too, could be giving away bouquets by the dozen.

FOLLOW YOUR ROSE

Today's rose hybridizers combine winter hardiness and stronger disease resistance with nostalgic fragrance and blousy blooms that are loaded with petals.