Go Wild with ROSES

The accepted wisdom on roses is forbidding. The queen of flowers requires royal treatment: the richest soil, drip irrigation, a bed of its own, and precise pruning at a 45-degree angle. If the rituals aren’t done just right, the luxurious shrub with its delicate flowers turns into a single spindly cane.

North America's native wild roses, however, require no such pedestal. You can burn them, mow them, step on them, and eat them. They’re equally at home growing by train tracks, on the edges of swamps, or in frozen tundra as in the most coddled garden. They’re so tough that the United States Department of Soil Conservation once tested some species in highway medians, finding that they