Pink Home Run Rose, Never Worry About Black Spot Or Powdery Mildew Again

Online, March 8, 2011 (Newswire.com) - Now the "most disease resistant rose on the market today" is available in both red and pink colors, with the addition of the Pink Home Run® to the Proven Winners® ColorChoice® line of flowering shrubs.

Home Run roses are recently developed hybrids, derived from a bestselling black spot-free rose, with the added benefit of the highest resistance to powdery mildew. Home Run roses are easy-to-grow, thrive in most landscape conditions and require little maintenance. They are also tolerant of heat, humidity and drought, bloom from spring until frost and produce nearly non-stop blooms.

Pink Home Run is identical in every way to Home Run rose except for the flower color. This sport of Home Run has showy 3-inch wide, 5-petal blossoms of an intense shade of pink. And just like Home Run, it produces fresh flowers every day and requires no deadheading.

"You can imagine my surprise when we found a pink-colored sport of Home Run one day in our fields," said Tom Carruth, director of research and marketing for Weeks Roses, and breeder of Home Run and Pink Home Run. "This single branch on the red-colored shrub had mutated to produce pink blossoms. Now that one branch has produced enough plants to introduce the all-new Pink Home Run."

"Home Run roses are the most disease resistant rose on the market today. Now you can enjoy roses in your landscaping all season without the need to spray - or even deadhead."

Key features of Pink Home Run® Rose:
- Landscape rose (Rosa 'Wekphom' PPAF; PBRAF)
- Highest resistance to both black spot and powdery mildew.
- High level of tolerance to downy mildew.
- Hardy in USDA zones 4 - 9. Full sun.
- Heat tolerant. Cold hardy. Requires no deadheading.
- Size: 3.5 to 4 feet tall - fits gardens large & small.

Craig Reiland, supervisor of the Tyler (Texas) Rose Garden stated, "We have grown Home Run for three years. It did so well in the main garden, we've used it in many other median, park and City Hall plantings around the city. It's nearly always in flower through the growing season, and we've never observed any black spot or powdery mildew at any of the locations, with absolutely no spraying required."

Home Run roses are hybrid cultivars fathered by the Knock Out® Rose. But unlike Knock Out® Rose, Home Run roses have natural immunity to both black spot and powdery mildew - diseases common with other rose bushes. Black spot and powdery mildew distort the leaves and reduce the foliage of roses. Both often spread to infect other rose plants in the garden. Home Run roses are the first on the market to remain free from these diseases over the entire lifetime of the plant.

"Home Run is one of my favorite landscape roses. I have had this rose in my home landscape for four years. It is easy to manage, always in color and has never shown any symptoms of disease," said Mark R. Chamblee of Chamblee's Rose Nursery.