Monday, March 5, 2012

"Fairmount Red"

Noticing this rose in Denver's Fairmount Cemetery in 1991  while on a bike ride turned me into a rosarian. I snuck back that summer with organic soil foods and pruners in my back pack and brought the sad bush from near death nestled up against a very old granite headstone. Years later, root sucker clones of it thrived in my Denver yard and landscape clients' yards.  I was obsessed with determining its true ID  for years. It shares much with 'Great Western' but when I showed the original plant to Mike Shoup, Fred Boutin, Bill Grant and Stephen Scanniello and others they agreed...very reminiscent but not the same as 'Great Western'.

I am so pleased that High Country Roses has carried it for years from cuttings I gave them, which is why I wrote about it  in 'Sunset Magazine' many years back in hopes that people from a wide mix of soil and climate types would give it a try. In Denver it is an arching, husky shrub rose, once-blooming June into July bloomer. It died for me a few times here in Tampa in the ground, as happened to a Sunset reader of mine who tried it in the Florida panhandle who moved there from out west. It thrives year after year in a Restricted Drainage Container Garden made from  a scavenged black plastic tree pot.

A specimen that Heather sold me  is now entering year four here in south Tampa, thriving in a Restricted Drainage Container Garden made from a scavenged 20 gallon black plastic commercial tree pot. It is SO cold hardy in Denver....I am baffled and delighted that "Fairmount Red" once again is bringing me joy with its vigor, saturated color, and evocative perfume.

I hope you enjoy the photos of it here....I will share the wonderful photos that my long time Denver friend Michael Mowry took of the original plant in Fairmount Cemetery one June in the late 1990s. So cool to see it go leafless as needed this mild winter...it is now breaking dormancy with swelling leaf buds. Tomorrow I will take cuttings.


An Article From My Rocky Mountain News Gardening Column Back Then....

In August of 1998 I had the honor and pleasure of visiting Americas top rose hybridizer, Tom Carruth, in southern California where he has created some truly unique roses for the joy of millions of gardeners. His keenly planned, and sometimes playful, swaps of pollen between two willing parent roses, have given us living gems like Scentimental, Flutterbye, Gracie Allen, George Burns, Fourth of July and the sleek cool Stainless Steel. As an amateur rose boinker myself I was profoundly awed and inspired by the sight of 26 THOUSAND tagged pollinations ripening in one half of a vast greenhouse at the Weeks Roses headquarters in Upland, California. It was a thrill to walk with Tom between the seedling benches filling the other half, seeing the often gorgeous and deeply scented first blooms of his newest creations, and to hear their widely varying parentages.

   Tom is a gracious host who made sure I got to prowl through a few unique nurseries for exotic tropical Salvias and Ruellias to plant in my Tampa customers gardens this fall. He saw to it I experienced fabulous private and public gardens, including those at Balboa Park and the legendary Huntington Botanic Garden. His own garden is a soothing composition of bamboos, herbs, roses, subtropical perennials, pools, and a stunning assortment of variegated perennials, defined and linked by paths and boardwalks. And I was a sponge, soaking it all in.

   One memorable high point in a week of many was our visit to Weeks growing fields in Wasco, California, nestled in Americas farming capitol, the San Joaquin valley....600 acres of roses, a psychedelic profusion of hundreds of colorful rows extending to the horizon! He took me to several acres where many hundreds of his own creations are grown for open-air testing, their having survived his rigorous and ruthless culling process in the greenhouse, his keen eye and mind discerning flaws that often eluded me until hed point them out. It was a thrill to walk with this amiable and talented man down those rows, me holding his breeding records and together looking up the parentages of roses we found especially attractive and/or interesting. Since Tom breeds specifically for fragrance (the main reason I became obsessed with roses) I had to sample them all, sneezing now and then, delighted at the intensity and quality of scent he often achieves. By using roses like Westerland and Autumn Sunset and Gourmet Popcorn and others, plus some of his own hybrids, Tom is creating a very eclectic family that includes Hybrid Teas, Miniatures, Shrubs, Climbers plus many that defy classification. Some of the fine yet nameless, number-coded roses I saw that memorable day will no doubt in the future enjoy acclaim and commercial success.

   Both Tom and Weeks vigorously support amateur rose breeders, (one reason he invited me)  and Tom pointed out some of their hybrids growing next to his in that testing field. And so it was a special thrill on this trip to submit to Tom one of my own mild-climate hybrids for stage 1 commercial testing in the Weeks greenhouse! And while the odds are slim mines will cut the mustard, he reminded me that St. Patricks and Sally Holmes and Baby Love plus many others were bred by amateur back yard rose boinkers like me.


   Back in his minivan, we drove further, passing thousands of roses till he stopped and pointed out one bright row of roses, saying that it marked the beginning of what lay before us....OWN ROOT ROSES as far as the eye could see!  Weeks is growing own root roses on a vast scale: Hybrid Teas, Shrubs, Climbers, his own hybrids, Floribundas and more, having sold 600,000 last year as cold climate gardeners continue to discover own-root roses advantages of longevity and vigor. Tom knows how prejudiced I am towards own-rootedness, and had saved this moment for near the end of my trip. It is a joy to learn that thanks to Tom and Weeks Roses, own-root roses are once again becoming mainstream as they were early this century, no longer coveted solely by a fringe group of fanatics!

   I saw and experienced so much in that intense week that in a future article Id like to share more, especially the highlights of visiting some excellent private and public rose gardens growing in a climate new to me, one that is neither Denver nor Tampa yet with elements of each. So imagine my surprise at seeing odd juxtapositions like  mild-climate Teas and Chinas and Noisettes and even Gigantea Hybrids (like Belle of Portugal) growing several yards from cold hardy Mosses and Hybrid Perpetuals and English Roses!  Id always heard it was rose heaven there; now I know why.

Saturday, March 3, 2012

'Oklahoma'

This lovely deep red Hybrid Tea with velvety black shadings boasts a soul-stirring Old Rose perfume. It is one of my very favorite roses and is my most beloved red rose. What a joy to see it in bloom this spring.

Sunday, February 12, 2012

Easlea's Golden Rambler......

Is taking off in this tree pot-based Restricted Drainage Container Garden. Since the one I saw at Peter Beales' nursery and in Bill Grant's garden were huge husky semi-climbers, I need to choose carefully where I will bury the pot. I'm leaning towards it going due west of the fish pond so that it can fill that whole bed if need be. The new growth is uncannily glossy. A shame I can't find the photo I took two days ago!

Spring Pruning

Yesterday I gave a hard pruning to the Fairmount Cemetery Mystery Rose "Jo Ann's Pink Perpetual" and stuck the cuttings in hopes they root as despite south Tampa being Zone 9B this lusciously fragrant cold hardy rose that loves Denver THRIVES here in a 15 gallon Water Wise Container Garden. I hope to have plants to sell in about 18 months. Next I give it and 'Baronne Prevost' a good feeding and deep watering, then do the same to the lanky "Moroccan Rose" that Mike Shoup of The Antique Rose Emporium donated to my studies. The attached photo is of "Morrocan Rose" last spring when it bloomed for the first time, thriving in a buried 5 gallon Water Wise Container Garden.

Friday, February 10, 2012

A bit early but....

Today I cut back my young but thriving own root 'Baronne Prevost' in a buried Water Wise Container Garden and stuck the cuttings. Next I feed and DEEP water it in an effort to grow a bushier frame of canes. Tomorrow I will do the same with "Morrocan Rose", 'Louise Odier', "Jo Ann's Pink Perpetual" from Denver's Fairmount Cemetery, 'Graham Thomas' and "Fairmount Red". In six weeks or so I should see evidence of how effective these steps were.