40,000 Thorns & a Million Prickles

Yesterday a dozen volunteers from the 'Deadheaders' of the Morcom Rose Garden in Oakland arrived to help in the garden. We started with a group of Tea roses that have not been pruned for 3 years; Monsieur Tillier, Rhodologue Jules Gravereaux and Bon Silene. Above is that group in May of 2007, with Bon Silene the tallest in the center back, M. Tillier the large, double pink on the right. This is how they looked on their first bloom after being pruned back to about 6 to 7 feet that winter. Bon Silene yesterday was about 10 to 12 feet tall, and all three were crowded with tiny branches, elbowing one another to see who would be the survivor.

As I shared my thoughts about pruning the group asked politely if they would get a chance to pull out their secaturs and have a go! We all launched in. Answering many questions I moved from plant to plant trying to guide the process, so that all 13 of us might together act as one mind with a single mission, and end up with some grace, some consistancy.

Now you'd think that 13 pruners would have polished off this job on three plants in 15 or 20 minutes, but we took more than an hour. An hour of snip, snip, snip...I was run ragged, and later had to extricate quite a few thorns from various parts of my body. I would never have allowed myself an hour for these three roses on my own. At that rate, I'd still be working on my first hundred roses... But pruning these great glories, the Tea roses, isn't fast, or easy. Perhaps that's why I've convinced myself that roses don't really require pruning?

After, we mulched the lower Hybrid Tea beds with Pamela and Michael's delicous Rice Straw, and nearly finished all eight beds, all 850 roses! Deadheaders ROCK!

Joanie Helgeson, who writes the Old Roser's Digest now, spent the day in focussed attack on the weeds swamping our climbing roses! What pearls are people.

Thorns come big and small. The really big ones can strike bone when they go in. But the smaller ones are the dangerous ones. The pop in right under the skin, and the wide wedge at the base of each thorn, once under the skin, prevents the thorn from popping back out (or being coaxed out, for that matter.) In my hands at the moment about 30 thorns are currently embedded, in various stages of emerging. Mostly they only hurt when you put pressure on that point, but once in a while one goes deep, and strikes a nerve, and just sits there, making you wonder if you should bother those lovely people at the emergency room... One such culprit sits lodged between my index and second fingers on my right hand, just at the knuckles.

Ah what martyrs we are to the rose!

Gallicas are the worst. Their tiny, needle-like prickles are short and closely spaced on the stems, allowing you to hold a stem in your bare fingers without even piercing the skin. You work blithely along thinking this isn't so bad. But after half an hour you realise that, even with gloves on, dozens of those little tikes have stuck to your skin and won't let go. Then you bear down on your pruners for another snip, and ten little prickles inject themselves. Tweezers aren't made small enough to extricate the prickles of Gallicas...

Lesson: keep your tetenus shots up to date.

The Generosity of Strangers...and friends!

I often think I'm quite crazy with my Polyanna notions of pruning 4000 roses. I never worked this hard when I was 30, and now, and nearly 60, my body just says 'no' every day.

But thanks to the generosity of strangers and friends, somehow the progress of preparing the garden for May continues along. Yesterday one new friend, Polly, and two old friends, Sarah and Carolyn, came to work for the day, weeding the Damask Perpetual borders. This is the section of the garden east of the house, which Teresa and I call the 'pretty garden'. The two of us spent days last year cleaning and pruning it and then filling it with companion plants, so that at least one corner of the garden was full to over-flowing. Our theme was 'blue companions' and included violas, salvias, agapanthus, fuschias (in lavender-blue tones), lavenders, dahlias, sweet peas, giant forget-me-nots and tall asters. It was magnificent all summer long, the blue companions spilling across the pinks and crimsons of the reblooming Damasks and Hybrid Perpetuals.

Yesterday we faced the devastation of the late summer weeds that had escaped my attention, mostly grass weeds that surged up above the roses and perennials and draped everything with golden threads—so impossible to comb out from the thorny branches. Polly and Sarah weeded all day long and Carolyn soon arrived and worked alongside me—Carolyn who can scarcely walk thanks to failing knees that aren't scheduled for replacement until May!

We managed to clear out more than half of the garden—enough to leave me confident that the rest will soon follow, along with the pruning and then the mulching!

This week Tora Rocha of the Morecomb garden of roses in Oakland is bringing a small army of her dead-header volunteers to learn a bit about pruning various types of old roses, and then to help with the mulching, and perhaps a bit more weeding, in the lower Hybrid Teas, where we first began this misguided process.

It's clear that this garden of three acres is beyond me, and now beyond the manpower that Vintage Gardens can supply. But this year, thanks to the generosity of so many who love old roses, we have May to look forward to, and a garden of scents and colors that will give joy to the many who visit. I hope you can be among our visitors!

The Smile Bed

    Mignonette, Polyantha  1880                The two-room cottage

When I began sharing my thoughts on roses, gardening, and gardeners, I promised to share some of my experiences of people and the roses that inhabit their gardens. Few things in my life have given me so much joy as the garden with the 'Smile Bed'. Its story began in the early 1980s when Jim and Dotty Walters fell in love with a Queen Anne Victorian house just outside of Healdsburg, California. They spent many years restoring the house and its two-room cottage to their former glory, with great patience and a dream that one day they might live there, in the grey lady they had so much respect for.

By some great stroke of fortune they found me, and asked me to help to make a garden—one that embraced and honored the old houses. We chipped away at it, Dotty and I, with Jim always at the ready to manage the clearing and hauling, always cheering us on. To the music of Pavarotti and Callas, ringing from a portable boom box, and the devoted encouragement of my Bassett hound Nigel, we cleared a space in the woods, carved out a laughing patio of brick, shifted ancient camellias and towering fuschias, planted and then dug and divided and planted again the offspring of our favorite perennials and ground covers, until one day we stood back and knew that the garden was right. The old grey lady was smiling.

The remnant of an old lawn set with a noble flagpole became our anchor. And in the lawn we set three circles for planting; one around the pole, and two more for company (and because we liked the notion of planting in threes.) In the lower two circles I chose as a centerpiece a Polyantha rose, Mignonette. This old French variety was introduced just at the time that our grey lady was built. Its tiny flowers of snowy white bloom in clusters and scent the air.

A garden evolves over the years. Mistakes are corrected, sometimes several times. New perspectives offer fresh ideas that sometimes transform a thing you've done well, but not quite well enough. Twenty years after our three circle beds were made Dotty invited me to take another look—was there anything we were missing? Below these two beds a long shady border had been planted in the lee of a cypress hedge. It had always seemed a bit narrow, and lacking in drama. I suggested that perhaps the long bed should be expanded upwards to connect with our Mignonette circles, and Dotty and Jim agreed. It was a small expansion, but one that brought perfection. We made a curving line that swept upward from both ends of the long border, skirted round the circles and curved back downward again. Dotty looked at it when we finished and declared, 'it's the "smile bed"!'

We could all use a smile bed with our roses. Dotty and Jim have kept me smiling now for 25 years with the joys of sharing roses and wines, families and friends. Santiago, who tends the garden now, and helped with its creation from the start, makes me smile with the loving care he gives the roses, and the masterful pruning he does of all the smiling, rosy inhabitants.

The Itsy Bitsy Spider...

This pruning business, year after year, is a bit like the labor of Sisyphus, rolling a ball up the mountain, only to watch it roll back down again, and begin again. But today, despite rain which helped to cancel plans of the Friends of Vintage Gardens to help to mulch, we did accomplish minor miracles. Our rice straw mulch was spread over about 3/4 of an acre by me, Michael and Pamela Temple, Juan and Mario who helps out from time to time. It was a wet and exhausting day, but worth the suffering, at least until the weeds show up again, and we begin again...

Climbing Roses & What Comes First

Climbers...what can I say? Clearly most of you out there agree with my thought that climbers are hard. I'll share a few experiences and observations, but first I'd like to address a few questions about when you prune different roses. What's the best time to prune the Teas and Chinas, for instance, given that in climates where they thrive, they are likely to grow and bloom year round.

The Evergreen Roses—Teas and Chinas

Teas and Chinas have been very happy in my garden. Winter temperatures often drop to below freezing, and sometimes dip into the mid twenties for several days. Not a very cold climate, but near the breaking point on occasion for this group of nearly evergreen roses. In the early 1990s we experienced 100-year lows. The ground froze an inch or so down, and temperatures remained below freezing for several days. At the end, the Teas had no damaged tip growth, except for very soft new shoots. But after a week or so I noticed that the middle growth, canes that were more than a year old, but not gray and barky, had turned black. I've never been able to explain this, but it resulted in die-back of about half of the growth on the Teas. The Chinas were much tougher, perhaps because they were lower to the ground, and the Teas much taller. After cutting out all of the damaged wood, the Teas rebounded and never looked back.

What I do find about the Teas is that because they try to grow, even in the colder part of the winter, and do not lose their foliage completely, they seem to resent being pruned too early in the winter. Once cold sets in, they don't put on new growth until the air warms up somewhat in February. I have pruned them in December and early January, and those years I do experience more susceptibility to bacterial disease, particularly water-mold bacteria which can affect the roots.

I've found that waiting until the weather begins to warm, and pruning the Teas then, or even after they begin to leaf out seems to yield better results. This exact timing will vary by climate; the warmer your winter, the earlier you might time the pruning for. What I look for is to leave the canopy of foliage and slowed or halted growth through mid winter. The Teas can photosynthesize better through the winter, store energy, fend off disease, and tap their feet waiting for spring. Then, when I begin to prune the Teas and Chinas are ready to begin growing, so they don't sit a long time in a completely dormant state.

I have pruned the Teas sometimes after they have already put on 3 to 4 inches of new growth, in late March, and they seem quite happy, and respond by simply putting on more new shoots lower down on the canes that are now exposed to more sunlight. I suspect that in very mild winter climates this is what folks are doing anyway as the Teas will have bloomed right through the winter. Because I time my open garden for the month of May, this very late pruning has the distinct advantage of shifting the first full bloom of the Teas into early May. Unpruned Teas, or those pruned earlier in the winter, would tend to peak for me normally in late April.

Old Roses

As you follow my progress on the map of my garden, you'll notice that I will arrive at the end with the garden of Old European Roses left to the end of the pruning season. This is in part because they take such a long time to prune, when I do prune them. It is also because many of the old classes, Gallicas, Mosses, Albas, Hybrid Chinas and Hybrid Bourbons, experience a real dormancy from which they are slow to break, even in a milder climate. Damasks and Centifolias actually begin to grow quite early in the season, though they may not reach full bloom much sooner than the others.

This late start to growth allows me to get in to prune the bushes later than I might be able to prune a Hybrid Tea or a Tea. Even when they begin to leaf out it is a slower process, so I am able to see into the plants that are not yet completely obscured by their new foliage. Similarly the repeat blooming old classes, Bourbons, Portlands and Hybrid Perpetuals are slower to break into leaf that Teas and HTs. Hybrid Teas, oddly enough are the first to break into new growth in my garden, beating out the Teas by a couple of weeks. Hence, I begin with HTs and Floribundas, move on to the Teas and Chinas, continue with the reblooming old roses, and finish with the old Europeans.

Climbers

One troublesome element in this handy rule of thumb are climbing roses. While they do vary in when they start to grow by type, Climbing Teas & Hybrid Teas first, Ramblers later, once they have begun to grow, it is almost too late to prune them without causing lots of damage. Canes that must be untangled and re-arranged may lose most of these tender new shoots with all the jostling about. I keep a close eye on them, and when I see buds beginning to swell, I'll drop all of the bush rose pruning and just concentrate on them.

Climbers don't need to be pruned every year, or at least not so completely. And, of course, recalling our first rule, that we only prune for our sakes, not for the roses, the need is an aesthetic stricture. When my arbors produce 6 to 8 feet of new growth over the tops of their roofs, I'm not pleased with the outcome; squashing their structures and reversing the proportions that I find attractive.

In the photo above, Juan and I are working on a 10' x 10' x 10' arbor, an entrance to the old rose garden. The rose is Long John Silver (which may in fact be Iceland Queen), a hybrid of Rosa setigera. It's a very vigorous grower that sends out 15 foot long canes in all directions during the summer. It would quickly knock the arbor right over if we did not diminish the growth each winter. This and other rambers pose the very simplest of pruning tasks. We can simply cut out all of the older shoots, or most of them, and train in the new long canes onto the structure. These newer, unbranched shoots will make thousands of flowers. Smaller climbing roses, especially those that rebloom like climbing Floribundas and Tea-Noisettes produce long canes that will settle into years of productivity, so I keep much of the old growth, but remove the very oldest each year to make way for new canes. Trying to extricate older canes that are embedded in the mass of the plant is much more challenging.

I'll talk more about climbers, and hope to offer a little slide-show of a climbing rose or two, from start to finish in the process. Keep pruning!

Long John Silver (or maybe Iceland Queen?)

Tick, Tick, Tick...

The clock is ticking, and the rain is falling... 

Chris Pederson worked all day with me and we made excellent progress on the upper section of old Hybrid Teas and Floribundas. These are the decade beds which run from the 1930s through the 1960s.

We pruned and trained a climber, which brings up an issue that I must address. How to prune climbers. Our poll indicates that many of you find this to be the most challenging group to prune.

I've also had several requests to discuss which roses need to be pruned first. And, some specifics, like when do you prune the Tea Roses?  I will set myself on a straight path for the next week to try to talk about these specific questions and a few others. Just let me get in gear, finish my work for Rosa Mundi (Journal of the Heritage Rose Foundation), and complete an article that is several days overdue for the Heritage Roses Group in England. Keep checking; I'll have things to say over the next few days!