QuickTake:

Roses are blooming prolifically all over the Willamette Valley, and even indifferent gardeners are finding they have bumper crops.

The weather has conspired this year to produce a bumper crop of roses. If you think of Eugene’s Owen Rose Garden as a dripping muddy place that also has roses, this year will surprise you.

I ride my bicycle by there regularly, and the trip always takes an extra 15 minutes, as the display of flowers keeps growing and expanding. Make a point of visiting soon.

Or drop everything and go now!

The rose garden has a wide variety of climbing, floribunda and English tea roses, clearly named and well taken care of. Seeing them could be an inspiration — or a trap. Roses are always beautiful, and they can be a lot of work — if you want or expect the “perfect look.”

Because I don’t have high standards, my roses sometimes look great, and in other years their display is more muted. But some rose species are much easier and more dependable than others.

We’ll start easy, and work up toward the aficionados’ roses.

Rambling roses usually bloom just once in the spring, but the display is stunning with large clusters of flowers. The plants tend to be quite hardy and pest-free. If you cut back the flowers when the blooms are spent, you will get a longer bloom season. Similarly hardy climbing roses have a repeat bloom, and a long vines. Both climbers and ramblers need support, which can be a trellis, a fence, a house, even a tree.

It might appear that rugosa roses were originally bred to protect castles from marauding hordes and angry dragons — they are quite effective as barriers. But this east Asian import that grows almost to the Arctic Circle in Siberia just naturally has dense thorns, prolific blossoms and lovely red hips (seed pods) that can persist into early winter. Like the climbing roses, it is drought tolerant, and has few if any pests.

Several varieties of wild roses are native to Oregon, and are, of course, well adapted to our climate. Wild roses bloom once in the spring. They are often pink, but their color spectrum varies from white to red. You can buy wild roses from a nursery, but digging them up is illegal unless you have a permit from the Forest Service.

I don’t know much about English tea roses (the classic fragrant long-stemmed flower), floribunda roses, which produce clumps of blossoms, or grandiflora roses that combine traits of tea and floribunda roses.

This website gives more details on the classic rose types, as does Wikipedia’s list of 300 plus (and growing) varieties of roses — wild and cultivated. Growing them is a passion for many and can involve as much time as you have available — and maybe more. There are classes on growing roses and books that multiply every year.

But back to the sights and smells of this spring. The Owen is again perfect, neighborhoods are full of blooms and the I-5 bike path across from the Gateway Mall has half a mile of blooms and scents punctuated, but not diminished by, the roar of semis on the freeway.