- I think this is now going home with me today.

(Mark laughs) - How much will you pay for that?

- Calling all rose lovers!

Have you ever considered flipping your strip so that you can not only cut back on maintenance, but water?

Well we have you covered.

I am with Mark Mason Taylor today.

And he is incredible with Perfume Punk.

He is gonna show us how to flip a strip.

Planting beautiful roses that not only help us save water, maintenance, but also cleans the air.

Yes, cleans the air.

We're gonna learn more about that later.

So let's get into it, but before we do, I want to give a quick shout out to our sponsors Merit Medical and Red Butte Gardens.

Tell me Mark, how did Perfume Punk become Perfume Punk?

- Climate anxiety!

I felt I needed to do something.

I needed to do something to resolve my anxiety, and that's where I came up with the water savings.

And I realized roses were perfect for that.

We came up with parking strips where basically we can reforest or sequester carbon using everyone's parking strips.

We can cut water by about 94%.

- [Cynthia] Wow!

- [Mark] While still getting you something that's really green and beautiful.

- [Cynthia] And gorgeous.

- And better than, you know, brown poo lawn.

- I would rather not have brown poo lawn.

- Yeah, brown poo lawn doesn't sell well.

- No it doesn't.

You mentioned that roses actually clean the air.

- They will sequester more carbon than a tree.

Now how does that work?

If you reforest an area, you're actually gonna hit a limit once the trees are fully grown.

And they won't be sequestering as much carbon.

With a rose, you of course want to prune a rose, so you tend to cut it back by a third or half every year.

Which means you have new growth every single year.

So after a few years, if you take 20 years of a forest and 20 years of a rose bush, the rose bush is actually going to sequester more carbon after that 20 years.

- So we dug into this ourselves and unfortunately there's not a lot of information about carbon sequestration and rose plants in particular.

And it's a little bit more complicated than what we would hope for.

It really depends on plant species, plant size, root depth, geographical location, garden span.

All these things play a part into carbon sequestration.

- And get this, there are 30,000 different varieties of roses.

- [Cynthia] Okay.

- So you can have a rose be pretty much anything you want.

One of the biggest classes that I love are the Floribundas.

And they're constantly blooming, constantly coated in roses.

There's even a native rose called Rosa Woodsii.

The leaves change color in the fall to go a bright orange and red.

Kind of like a burning bush.

- Wait, what?

I have to have some honest conversations with you, Mark.

I have roses.

- Yeah.

- And I do love them, but I've never really loved them because I hate the thorns, but there are also a ton that don't have thorns.

Is that another classification or - - Yeah, there's a whole class that doesn't have 'em.

This rose actually.

Let me grab it.

Is called Firefighter.

- Okay.

- And it's thornless, so you can grab it.

- Can I rub my face against it and not get scratched?

- Yeah, feel free.

And it also has a great fragrance.

- Oh!

My goodness.

- Yeah.

- Mark.

I'm seriously in love right now.

Okay.

I'm sold.

- Yeah, and you can eat the blossoms.

That's one thing about roses that people don't know.

They're all edible.

Do it!

Do it!

- Should I eat it?

- Yes.

- It's actually not bad.

- Yeah.

(laughs) They came out with a whole line of roses that you can eat.

- Okay, now it's kinda a little bitter.

- Yeah, because you ate the bottom part of it.

You only want to eat the pedals.

- Well you didn't tell me what to eat, Mark.

- Well you put your mouth on it.

Like it's your fault.

(Cynthia coughs) (laughs) Do you need water or something?

- (coughs) Okay.

I gotta go spit this out.

So let's get to the nitty gritty.

You are here flipping somebody's strip today and making it like rose haven.

So tell me how we do this.

Step one.

What do we do?

- So what we're gonna do overall is we're gonna turn it into like a little ecosystem.

So the first thing we do is we don't rip out sod.

- [Cynthia] Okay.

- We use a technique called sheet mulching.

So we put a layer of mulch down.

Then we put contractor's paper there, and then we put another layer of mulch.

What that does is block out the sun.

And in three weeks your grass is all dead.

But the great thing is it's all biodegradable.

So it's just like putting mulch on any surface.

It's going to keep all the good microbes and reinforce that soil.

- Now what?

So you got the layers down.

- We're gonna grab the land auger.

And what we're gonna do is we're gonna plant the roses.

- [Cynthia] That's it?

- [Mark] Yep.

- What about water?

- We just convert an existing sprinkler into drip irrigation and then we cap the rest.

So one of the secrets about sprinklers is a lot of time they put out water too fast for the soil to actually take it.

So with a traditional sprinkler head only 40 to 50% of the water is going to get into the soil.

With drip, you're gonna have 90.

- So it's not like rocket science where you have to bring in the big dump truck and all these things.

You are doing this, and it's a one-day deal.

Give me some tips, like now I have this beautiful strip.

And I know a lot of times people are like I planted it, now what?

- So one of the first things is weeds.

Like how do you weed this?

Well first, that contractor's fabric is gonna knock out most of your weeds.

But say five years down the line, you have everyone's favorite friend, field bindweed.

What you can actually do is just take a piece of cardboard, and more mulch, and smother it.

- [Cynthia] Okay.

- And that will take it right out.

And then we put companion plants along so that they also box out a lot of the weeds.

We also use yarrow.

Yarrow is actually native and super water wise.

And yarrow happens to have that fragrance that ladybugs love.

And that's really what helps the little microenvironment there.

- Oh, interesting.

- 'Cuz we're building that little microcosm of an environment to self-regulate it.

- Mark, this is incredible.

Thank you so much for all this education on roses and how we can flip our strip.

Honestly, you have converted me.

I think I need at least, I don't know, 30 more roses in my garden tomorrow?

- Of course, that's - - Can you help me with that?

- That's how it starts.

I can start right now.

Here's another one for you to eat.

- I think I'll pass on that one.

(Mark laughs) Maybe another time.

Well that's it for "Modern Gardener."

Until next time, this is Cynthia Stringham.

We'll see you soon.

Can you really eat this one?

- No.

Just don't - we're not gonna let you eat anymore.

(Cynthia laughs)