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'Savannah ™' rose Reviews & Comments
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Initial post
16 MAY 18 by
 ksinGA
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A real winner- fantastic fragrance, beautiful foliage, and tight, well formed blooms.
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This was my first year with Savannah and I am extremely pleased. It is very vigorous, healthy, and heavily scented. It is among the most heavily scented roses in my garden maybe tying with Beverly, although Beverly can acquire a strong peony element to its perfume. I prefer Savannah's warm, glowing, and neatly-arranged blooms. I was not expecting it to grow as tall as it did based on the estimated dimensions in sales descriptions. One cane grew to almost six feet! We'll see how much of that lives through this crazy winter we're having. It did get a bit of blackspot closer to the bottom of the plant but blackspot is a horror in my garden and apparently I'm not so good at that sort of thing. It would be a good test garden for blackspot resistance if any company would like to send me free fragrant roses to test for them. ; ) (zone 5a WI)
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Thank you for the info. on fragrance. I have many peonies (don't care for their scent), so it helps to know about Savannah as better scented than Beverly.
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Straw, to my nose in my climate, I agree that Savannah has the nicest scent. It reminds me of baby powder or baby products in a way. Most of my Kordes have something in the fragrance that strikes me as similar but Savannah is different.
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'Savannah' did not grow for me at all in zone 5, upstate NY, and did not survive our comparatively mild winter. Perhaps it needs a dryer climate, or cannot tolerate an acidic soil. My soil ph, as shown on a big box ph meter, is about 5.5, 6.5 when amended by compost.
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Nastarana: What type of soil do you have, sand, loamy, or clay? I copy-paste what Lavenderlace wrote in Organic rose forum. Thank you, Lavenderlace, for providing the below info:
"My Kordes on own roots: Savannah- miserable for me in clay, fantastic in sandy soil, shiny clean leaves, lots of growth and blooms, nice scent, does fine in shade. Plant has a bit of an artificial look for me, leaves look like they've been poured in oil, blooms are incredibly bright.
First Crush- Can really take a lot of shade! Bloomed even in full shade same as sun. Much deeper prettier pink than the official photos for me and strong scent that I hope will change as it's unfortunately not my favorite.
Earth Angel- already taller than she's supposed to be but haven't seen blooms yet with an October planting. Very sensitive to too much water as bottom leaves often turn yellow after a rain even in fast draining soil.
Summer Romance- bush looks great with hot summer planting but still no blooms yet. Maybe more of a cool weather rose? Heard lots of hot climate complaints about lack of blooms.
Beverly- gets raves in my hot area but hasn't been impressive for me, maybe a slow starter? Staying small, few scentless blooms at this point. Looking forward to what others are seeing from this one!" Lavenderlace.
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Thanks Straw! That was very nice of you to take the time to dig up info but it just reflects my soil and climate at a given point!
I do have an update now that its spring. Earth Angel is covered in blooms and they are very pretty, look like Austins. The scent for me reminds me of First Crush, who also does well, including in clay and shade. EA has longer arching canes here and is quite bigger than FC, though the cute blooms are smaller.
Beverly is doing well with big blooms but in a hot pink. There is something in common in the scent to me with the previous two but I can't put my finger on it. Also Summer Romance finally bloomed!
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The soil is about 12"-18" of very nice, but acidic--lots of rain--loam over clay subsoil. I use a digging fork to break up the subsoil in the bottom of planting holes. I pile up compost for the vegetable garden.
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Thanks, Nastarana, for the info. One person in acidic clay reported losing 1/3 of his roses over zone 5b winter. I have a spot in my garden with a dense sub-clay bottom, which I dumped rock-hard & very alkaline clay on top. Since it doesn't drain well, the top rock-hard clay became fluffy & loamy with prolonged sitting in acidic rain. Anything sitting in poor drainage clay will rot, be it large tree roots, or roses. My Japanese Maple died this past winter since we had tons of rain in Jan, then freezing temp. So instead of 23" of snow this past winter, we got acidic rain instead, then another 38" to 40" of rain during the summer.
If you google "map of pH of rain across USA", you'll see pH of rain at 4 in the East coat, at 4.5 in my Chicagoland, and at 5.6 & higher on the West Coast. That's why I get horse manure (pH 8) monthly before a rain, to buffer the acidity of rain. Stable here uses shell lime to deodorize their stalls.
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Thank you for the information about clay soils. I have no access to horse manure, and I am not losing I/3 of my roses over the winter. Mostly, I lose about 2-5 each winter. Some of the body bags I grow as annuals. 'Cl. Sunflare' surprised me by growing back this spring, and I did see a sprout unfolding on 'Savannah' yesterday, so she gets a reprieve this year. 'Intrigue', OTOH, BS magnet extraordinaire, I think its' days are numbered.
I have begun experimenting with growing fodder radish in fall to help break up the subsoil.
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I'm having trouble with Savannah's size being larger than expected in my climate too so might have to move a few! I didn't care for the hard flat coral blooms the first year but this year they are big and looser and also a very soft pretty color. The blooms and scent are very long lasting, plus foliage stayed green though winter, so now I'm really happy with her.
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Thank you, for the update on the size. My zone 5a winter shrink roses .. so I always look for the largest roses possible. Cold-zone roses are 1/2 the size of warm-climate, and even smaller as own-roots. My own-root Kordes Poseidon is the most vigorous, yet only has 1 foot of green cane after this winter .. most roses die to the crown here, except for Austin and Old Garden roses.
Nastarana made a good point about her pH being too acidic for Savannah. Roses are much more vigorous in my clay when the pH is alkaline. But when I bring the pH lower (sulfur or used lemons), they shrink in size. Did some research and found there are more nitrogen fixing bacteria at alkaline pH. Chicago Botanical garden has the most vigorous and healthy roses (5,000), with their loamy/alkaline soil.
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I read somewhere that boron deficency, often associated with acid soil, can also cause die back and pruning cuts not to heal.
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Thank you, Andrew and Nastarana, for your info. Anna in ALKALINE California was the 1st person to post a picture of boron deficiency: blind shoots (no blooms) and witches' broom (leaves bunch up). I traced that to boron deficiency (from high pH). She lowered her pH to neutral, and solved the problem. Link from Cornell University on boron deficiency at high pH:
http://www.greenhouse.cornell.edu/crops/factsheets/boron_deficiency.pdf
Andrew is right about at low pH, more chance of black canker through the winter. Still remember Austin rose Wise Portia with 1 foot of green cane in Feb, then I dumped used acidic grapefruit juice (meant for my rhododendrons), and the canes turned black. It sprouted a tiny shoot (shorter than my finger) in June.. it took 2 years before that own-root rose recuperated from the acid.
Gypsum (calcium sulfate, slightly acidic) works wonder in breaking up my ALKALINE hard clay at bottom of the hole. But it's caustic with 17% sulfur, so that won't be best for acidic soil. Last year I learned that lime (pH 9) is recommended to break up acidic clay. There's an inverse relationship between calcium and magnesium. UP the calcium will lower magnesium. Magnesium is what makes clay sticky & dense, thus working in calcium sulfate will break up alkaline clay, and working in lime will break up acidic clay.
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I started to put lime around my roses last autumn. Borax household cleaner used to be available and a very good sorce of boron but, in the U.K. at least, this has now been replaced with artificial boron. However, you can still buy borax in a cone from jewellers' websites, they use it to make a flux.This and the lime is starting to make a difference to my roses.
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With my heavy & dense alkaline clay, I give gypsum (calcium sulfate, pH 6.8) in the fall to Austin roses so they can have calcium to form zillion petals in spring time. Here's an excerpt from Garden Guides website:
http://www.gardenguides.com/95154-nutrients-blooming-plants.html#ixzz3iHjrn4sD
" Calcium-deficient plants may show little or underdeveloped bloom production. Twisted new growth, black spotted leaves, pale or yellow leaf margins are also signs that the plant lacks calcium."
My personal observation: when roses have less petals, it's time to give calcium via gypsum (calcium sulfate) for my alkaline clay. I use red-lava-rocks (high in boron and potassium) to buffer the acidic rain. Red lava rocks are sold cheap here, but they come in large chunks, so I put them in buckets of rain-water for them to leach out minerals. pH of red-lava rock is 8.2, so it works well in neutralizing my acidic rain at pH 4.5.
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I purchased this rose from Chamblees towards the end of last summer. I have been very pleased with it so far. I have it growing in a spot that gets too much shade, but Savannah has been healthy and grown quite well for me in spite of this. The flowers are long lasting, and unlike many roses, the flowers maintain some fragrance until the petals cleanly fall from the plant.
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So far, the ones that I have growing in what should be too much shade, are doing way better than the ones in full sun (Z8). I purchased them for heat tolerance but I wonder if they mean shaded heat and not necessarily sun?
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I only have one nevertheless my Savannah is also shaded and is doing amazing well. It growing dark green foliage and its blooms still have a strong fragrant which is very uncommon for shaded roses. It looks better then the ones left in the sun all day at our nursery but that could also mean it doesn't grow well being root bound with over hot soil.
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Thanks so much for the feedback! I'm starting to rethink how I plant this rose. But that leaves me back to the drawing board to find a strongly scented extra hot sun-tolerant rose.
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For sunny hot spots you can't go wrong with (Kordes) Parfuma series I've had great results with Dark Desire, First Crush, and Summer Romance each one have all that you're looking for. Looks wise Summer Romance would be the closest to Savannah and that is most likely why is was not place into this series and into Sunbelt instead.
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Thanks for the tips! I had recently planted Summer Romance and First Crush from Heirloom's but they haven't bloomed yet. Though I did get nervous when Chamblee's said that they don't sell Summer Romance anymore because it's not blooming well in the heat. They recommended Beverly so fingers crossed! I just planted Earth Angel and it arrived with a beautiful bloom that's bigger than I expected (a plus!). I did plant it where there is more shade because I didn't want it to bleach out and look like just another white rose. I'm in Zone 8 high nineties in mid September.
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An update from Z8! Summer Romance still doesn't have its first bud but Savannah is looking good. Some of the flowers are really coral here and I find myself hoping that they will fade to a soft pink though. The leaves and flowers almost look artificial, quite vivid, and the scent is already very nice. First Crush is doing great in sun, and also amazing in a spot with no sun. Beautiful blooms with a color that looks better than the Kordes photos. I'm not sure if I care for the peachy scent at this point but it certainly has one.
Earth Angel doesn't seem to like shade and also seems to like less water than the others. Beverly hasn't done anything yet in full sun. Around 90 here now approaching November, finally cooling off a bit at night.
UPDATE 7-17-17: What a difference another season makes!
In my warm climate, my Savannahs are way bigger than expected and tough. I've been cutting the six feet ones (some with eight foot canes) and finally gave up on some and moved them to a more appropriate location. The move was in 105 heat index. She defoliated because we cut so much of the roots but came right back in full sun. She doesn't seem to like too much water here so I have to skip her a lot.
My Earth Angels grew too big for their spots, very vigorous, and I removed them. Summer Romance occasionally blooms but is a nice, healthy looking plant. First Crush has performed well in both sand and clay. Beverly has nice big blooms and the plants have stayed smaller, thankfully.
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I'm actually quite pleased with the fragrance on my first year plants. They are still showing a preference for shade in Z8 but hopefully next year will be better for overall blooming. Very clean foliage in my no-spray garden.
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