Naked in the Roses: A rambling beginning...

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

A rambling beginning...

The first phase of pruning this year will be the lower Hybrid Tea and Floribunda beds. These arching borders form an amphitheater at the bottom of the garden. They are planted four roses across; the eight beds containing a total of about 750 plants. It's a good place to start, because roses planted out in close grids like these generally outgrow their neighbors rather quickly. The point of all pruning is simply to size down plants to fit the spaces we have allotted them. There is no other purpose for pruning except this one; it's both practical and aesthetic—we have to do it to maintain a balance of plant sizes, and we delight in the finished, orderly result.

This section of the garden was largely replanted a year and a half ago, and I allowed it to grow unpruned through last winter. Many of the new roses were young still, and young roses suffer more than older ones from being pruned. Every shred of their built-up, stored energy serves them to grow more robustly the following season. But now the older plants have grown up rather massively and their shade will set back the younger plants if we don't even out the whole garden.

Teresa and Juan both worked on this section with me. Juan had a more specific task; cuttings to take from a number of roses that we have had special requests for. There was a time when we did large numbers of cuttings in the winter, but this process slows down the pruning to a crawl, and our take on winter cuttings is not very high. All told, after about 8 hours of labor we got through less than 70 plants. Not enough. But, Teresa and I had first to weed the bed where we began, and it was rather full of grasses and mallows. This bed, one of the two very long top beds, is now about half done. The soil is lovely, as we have mulched with a good organic compost (Grab n Grow's Allgreen Compost) for two years now. No wonder the weeds were so lush! This year a top-dressing of rice straw to supress the weeds.

Rain tonight, and much work to do in the nursery tomorrow. But, I'll be at it again very soon!

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Preserving a Garden of Old and Rare Roses—Can it be Done?

Preserving a Garden of Old and Rare Roses—Can it be Done?

In my garden I grow over 4000 rose plants of all classes and types. Like a museum of roses, the garden tells the story of roses from the most ancient to the most recent. But, unlike a museum, it is a living organism, always growing through cycles of bloom and renewal. Along with the roses live gophers, hummingbirds, pigmy rabbits, the occasional deer, and a host of other life forces—some welcome, and others not. The garden and its collection of rare roses are known by many rose lovers around the world, and have been shared with other gardeners and gardens for the past 26 years. Today it stands on the edge of disappearing, and in this blog I hope to share with you both the peril that threatens it and the effort that has begun now to preserve it.

The Friends of Vintage Roses
A garden is a temporary thing, it is often said, destined to disappear with its creator. But I do not agree. A garden is an idea that once experienced lives in the minds of those who can imagine it. It belongs to no one and to everyone. Once I understood this my garden began to live. It has lived for many years now in the minds of those who have visited it, and those who have only imagined visiting it. It has the power to elevate all of us to Cloud Eleven.

Roses are powerful life forces, pulled from the imaginations of artists over many centuries of human existence. They speak to us, and if we listen and can hear them, they have much to say. They transcend their creators, their admirers and their custodians---they transcend us and inspire us. Their powerful sway bore fruit in a gathering of people who wanted them and heard them calling---the Friends of Vintage Roses. This scattered group began to coalesce about a decade ago one May in the garden I had built. These people have pulled together once again for the roses to keep alive a vision, a dream and an inspiration. Their hard work and pragmatism account for the survival of so many beautiful beings, and they work now to spread the word, the joy and the delight of old roses.