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Rosaceous Rosarian Photography and Roses
by Roberta Forbes
Photography and Roses by Roberta Forbes Summer is fading away. We look forward to the last blooms of the season. Then what? Months without the beauty of roses? Never! Not in this group! This August 24th, GVRS will help you take a proactive approach to surviving winter without rose-withdrawal. How? Take pictures! This spring I heard Dave Kennedy present to the Western Colorado Gardening Foundation (WCGF) on plant photography. He has a knack for explaining and illustrating information of use to photographers at all levels of experience. I (who may have taken 3 photos in my whole life, and never paid more than $30 for a camera) and my friend (familiar with high-end 35mm cameras) both learned something useful. I am delighted to announce Dave will offer GVRS his photography workshop, with a few embellishments thrown in just for us. Dave is a member and active leader in the Photographic Society of America and Thunder Mountain Camera Club. He is also a charter member of Chinle Cactus and Succulent Society. He has been taking pictures since he was 15, and has a diploma from the New York Institute of Photography. His photos are truly beautiful! Since the slides used in his WCGF presentation were mostly of cacti, I asked if he would include a few roses for us. He not only agreed, but jumped at the opportunity! Dave took rose photos in his backyard, in a "studio" (table top) setting at home, his mother-in-law's yard, and both Lincoln and Hawthorne parks. I can't wait to see them! The focus (no pun intended!) of this workshop is on photo techniques and tips rather than presenting a rose photo show. Not all of the slides in the presentation are roses. Dave has tried to pick slides that demonstrate the various techniques he will be presenting. When asked if rose photography was more difficult than other kinds of photography, Dave replied: "To me, any type of close-up photography has difficult elements because of depth of field issues, where it's hard to know how much of the frame will be in focus in the finished product, and because of things like camera movement and outdoor subject movement. As to colors, lighting is always critical no matter the subject, because at its most basic element photography is the capture of light. The better the light the better the photos will be." This just gives a small glimpse of the expertise Dave has to offer. Get ready to take photos during the Rose Tour! Join us on August 24th, 7 PM, to learn more!
Fall Rose Tour, September 18, 2004 GVRS has had several rose tours, and each one has been different. One year, we focused on diagnostics and advice to the rose growers we visited--another year we tried to feature rarely seen roses. We've found that the best thing about any rose tour is getting to ogle each other's roses and yakking about gardening! Each year, we've talked about making the tour a fundraising event that is advertised city-wide, and each year, we talk ourselves out of that idea. By September, all of us are just about burned out with organizing gardening events, and all we want to do is enjoy the fruits of gardening labors. Fall rose bloom can offer some of the loveliest displays of the year, and that's what we really want to celebrate. We are going to have a rose tour this year, and we are not going to advertise it beyond this newsletter and word-of-mouth. Sue Roberts, who agreed to shepherd the tour, has chosen yards that you've read about in the newsletter, or yards that we know to be lavishly wonderful, and we're limiting the tour to six homes, plus a tour of the prize winning roses in the Hemmerich Memorial Rose Garden in the Botanical Gardens. With luck, we'll see blooming English roses, shrub roses, climbers, and cutting roses of every variety. Bring your cameras and practice the photography skills you gain from attending the Rose Photography program on August 24th!!! Our final location, at Janet Coleman's home, is traditional. Janet, who can't abide a wimpy rose, has a yard full of 85+ shrub, English, ground cover and Old Garden roses--if it's a tough rose, she has it. Refreshments will be served. The plan is to meet at the Botanical Garden at 12:30 PM, visit with those roses, and then hit the road at 1 PM. Maps in hand, we'll caravan to the six locations. This will be a great opportunity for us to get to know some of our newer members as we carpool around the Valley. Don't miss it! PS: Roberta had a really good idea. Let's take lots of rose pictures while were touring, and then we can have everybody bring their pictures to the October Program Meeting and share!!!!
This year's Roses in Review (RIR) marks the 79th time the members of the American Rose Society have evaluated new rose introductions. We need your contribution, whether you grow only one plant of one variety on the list, or many of them. We need input from "garden" rosarians as well as exhibitors, and from NEW rosarians as well as seasoned veterans. We also welcome reports from those who are not yet ARS members. The complete results of this survey will be included in the January 2005 issue of American Rose, and will help determine the ratings in the ARS Handbook of Selecting Roses. For these results to be meaningful, we need everyone to participate. The 2004 list of eligible roses and report forms can be found in the July 2004 issue of American Rose, or online at www.ars.org. The website makes it particularly easy to file your reports, and if you've planted roses in the last three years, you probably have eligible varieties. Don't miss this chance to get your Rosarian observations on the record! Deadline for the reports is September 26, 2004.
Wanda Smith-Valencia was the only person to enter roses in the Mesa County Fair--22 of her 24 floriculture entries were roses. She took prizes for other categories as well, with first prizes for her gladiolas, hibiscus, and seedless grapes, and awards for pie cherries, apricot-pineapple jam, apricots, and hot pepper salsa. What a woman! Here are her rose results: Next year, we need to give Wanda some competition, so start planning your entries NOW! (HT=Hybrid Tea; S=Shrub; F=Floribunda; GR=Grandiflora; LCl=Large Climber)
Confessions of a Compulsive Deadheader ["Dr. Leda" is a column that is featured on the Regan Nursery website. She is funny and knowledgeable, and the following is a severely edited excerpt from her last two articles about deadheading.] [Dr. Leda Horticulture, O.R. (Obsessive Roseologist) aka Elizabeth Churchill, is a Rosarian who worked for eight years at nurseries in the San Francisco Bay Area. She recently retired and moved to a beautiful old Victorian in southern Louisiana. If she told you how much room she has for new roses, you would hate her. She reads her email frequently. Find her online at www.regannursery.com.] . . . So far, We've learned that "deadheading" simply means the removal of funky faded finished flowers from the plant. We learned that we deadhead roses primarily to promote rebloom, to make the rose bush look tidy, and because we have an innate genetic urge to pick at unsightly growths. We learned that trespassing on private property to obsessively groom other people's roses is a [clue] that we need to work on our boundary issues. And then, just as loyal readers were beginning to digest this useful background information, BAM! They were hurled into an existential void by the revelation that cutting back to the next group of five leaflets is not necessarily the ideal way to deadhead roses. In fact, this old saw may be a suburban legend on a par with . . . The Hook! There is no single ironclad rule governing the correct way to deadhead. Instead, each individual rose has its own specific location on the stem that is the optimal site (referred to as the "good spot", or G-spot) for removing the spent bloom. Detailed diagrams of the optimal sites of every known rose in existence were not provided, and many readers panicked. For the next few weeks, Dr. Leda's email box was flooded with high-strung queries bearing such riveting headers as, "Help! Where Exactly Is Gertrude Jekyll's G-Spot?" Dr. Leda replied: Relax. It doesn't matter. Now, as soon as everyone has returned from plastering "Question Authority" bumper stickers all over their vehicles, we're going to take a look at why it doesn't matter. But first, let's talk about deadheading without clippers, aka "snapping." That's right, we're going to groom our roses with our bare naked hands! No more clean, precise 45-degree angles. And our role models in this daring adventure are going to be the world's most obsessive-compulsive rose gardeners, the British. Researchers from both the Royal National Rose Society of England and the Royal Horticultural Society, prestigious organizations that oversee thousands upon thousands of roses, have scientifically deduced that snapping the spent flower by hand is a luvvly-jubbly way to deadhead. Not only can twice as much deadheading be accomplished in half the time, the researchers also discovered that by preserving more tissue, snapping encourages roses to produce more flowering shoots, and quicker. There is also evidence that by not exposing pith, snapping reduces the plant's vulnerability to cane borers. Our British experts tell us that the dead flower heads should be snapped off at the abscission layer (the place we crassly refer to as the G-spot), a slightly swollen section of the stem anywhere from one to four inches below the base of the bloom. Left to their own devices, roses will cause this layer to develop within the stem when they decide it's time to cut off nutrients to the hip. Thus, if you were to neglect your deadheading duties for months on end, the abscission layer is the natural breaking point where the stem would eventually separate from the cane to drop the hips in your absence. Now let's take a look at some of the Frequently Asked Questions anxious readers are likely to have about this alarming new technique. Q. But Dr. Leda, what if I can't find the abscission layer? Q. After I finish snapping, my rose bush is covered with ugly little twigs
where the bare stems stick out. Now what? Q. My rose stems seem kind of mushy, and I have to bend them several times
before they snap. What am I doing wrong? Q. How do you snap multi-flowered roses that bloom in large clusters or
sprays? Ultimately, there is no final consensus on the ideal way to deadhead roses. The most important thing you can do is pay attention to your roses. Get to know each plant and its particular habits. Observe where the new growth usually comes in, and arrange to remove the flowers above that point. Experiment! Deadhead half a rose bush with clippers, and try snapping on the other half. See which method produces the best rebloom on which rose, and determine how much time you actually save by snapping. The only absolute truth you must remember when you're deadheading is this: It's Not Brain Surgery. OK? So relax and enjoy it. According to the Royal Horticultural Society, as long as you get those dead heads off the plant, Bob's your uncle! [Editor's note: This excerpt, while attempting to include all pertinent information about deadheading, brutally excised huge chunks of Dr. Leda's humor in the name of brevity. Check her out at www.regannursery.com and get all her laughs!]
PROGRAM MEETING REPORT: David Austin
/ English Roses At our last Program Meeting, Shari Daly-Miller talked with us about David Austin/English Roses, which combine the best features of Old Garden Roses (OGRs) and modern roses. She said that there are many hybridizers working on similar combinations of old and new roses, and there is difficulty of finding a common name that would lift these roses out of the ARS "shrub roses" category. We discussed the idea of expanding GVRS's rose show divisions to make distinctions that would showcase these beautiful roses. Shari suggested that you get "own root" roses when possible. Own-root roses are sturdier and not as susceptible to disease. Heirloom Roses in Oregon is a good source for English roses--they sell mostly own-root, and they say their roses are all virus free. The official David Austin nursery in the USA is in Tyler, Texas; they also do retail mail order. They sell both grafted and own root versions--be sure to ask. Due to stiff competition in rose ordering from other parts of the country with longer growing seasons, Grand Valley residents should try to reserve their roses as early as January, and then you'll have to work hard to get the roses shipped to you at the appropriate time. Because we are lumped under "Colorado" as a growing area, nurseries assume we need shipping at the same time as Denver, which is June. June is much too late for us--we need roses shipped in late April or early May. Subsequently, some discussion has arisen regarding just what is meant by
"English Rose”. Are the terms "David Austin Roses" and "English Roses"
synonymous? The answer is, sometimes! David Austin, the English hybridizer,
first
introduced a group of roses in 1969. He coined the term, " English Roses", to
describe the products of his breeding program. Thus, the terms, "Austin Roses",
"David Austin Roses", and "English Roses", tend to be used interchangeably,
particularly by nurseries, rosarians, and rose fanciers. The characteristics
he sought and was able to achieve include: Shari brought several of her own David Austin’s, including Evelyn, Othello, Gertrude Jekyll, Golden Celebration. Twelve of her 19 roses are David Austin’s, and you can see them on our Rose Tour!!! Information on English Roses can be found online by searching for that topic, or using the ARS website at www.ars.org. Two interesting articles on the topic: The Genealogy of the English Rose, by Marily Young, and English Roses Before David Austin, by S. Andrew Schulman. [Editor's note: Several local nurseries sell a few David Austin roses in gallon containers. We hope to publish a list of those available for next Spring. Stay tuned!]
DEFINING MODERN ROSES by Don Julien E-mail:
roseguy@ami.net MINIATURES . . . In the mid-1960s, the expectations for miniatures began to change as larger bushes and blooms began to appear. Bloom form began to vary, ranging from the open, somewhat quartered form of 'Judy Fischer', to singles such as 'Simplex', to the contemporary hybrid tea form of 'Starina'. Today, the miniature class is so broad that it is informally divided into micro-minis (which are closest in size and form to the early miniatures), miniatures and mini-floras. MINI-FLORA After a fair amount of contention over what the class should be called (Nurseries preferred "patio rose" because it sold well; exhibitors hated it because it describes where and how grown rather than what) and whether mini-flora would be eligible for the miniature court in rose shows, the class was created and hybridizers/nurseries began changing the classifications of existing roses that seem to fit the new class. Since reclassification is up to the original registrant, there are a number of roses that might logically fit the new class but won't be changed because the original registrant is no longer around (or cares). At this point, the class is shaping up with two types of roses: 1) patio roses and small floribundas, and 2) large exhibition-form miniatures. The former tend to be fairly dense bushes with clusters of formless or old-fashioned blooms; the latter tend to be large bushes...long canes, large leaves, large blooms, but much too small for hybrid teas. SHRUBS . . . So, what should be expected in a shrub? Just about anything. Pay attention to the claims of the introducer. The variety may be part of a larger "collection" with similar growth habits. Examples would be Poulsen's "Town & Country" collection of groundcovers and mounding shrubs, Meidiland's "Meidiland" landscape roses intended to be grown as low borders, or Guillot's "Generosa" line — an English Rose competitor. At this point, bloom form falls into two major categories, the multi-petalled OGR forms and an open, loose, airy form. POLYANTHAS Polyanthas are smothered in clusters of roses with an open, cupped form, similar in appearance to Ranunculus. They are appropriate for containers, low borders and mixed plantings.
Founder's Corner by Ursula Hemmerich, President Emeritus [Editor's note: The recent storms battering the southeast reminded Ursula of the days when she and her husband Rolf lived in Texas. We asked her to recall her days of trying to grow roses in tough times and tough places, and her days with the Houston Rose Society.] As I listened to the news about the devastation from Hurricane Charley, I was reminded of some doozies we survived along the Texas Gulf Coast and panhandle. Great, huge storms! I often recall the tough times we had to produce good roses. We learned the hard way. Living north of Amarillo, we battled 120 degree summers and -30 degree winters. We had just four rose bushes that we gave huge doses of TLC. Friends used to joke about "finding the shack with Four Roses", which was also the name of one of the most popular hard liquors of the time. In the summer we shaded our roses with bushy plants grown between them, and in the winter we wrapped them completely in straw, similar to Japanese winter culture. We both loved roses, and since this was our first real "home", we were determined to pull them through. We succeeded, and were usually able to bring roses to friends who invited us for dinner. Later, we lived in Houston. Houston's highest point is 50 feet above sea level. Tropical storms and hurricanes were frequent. Drainage was iffy, due to clay soils and so much concreted area. We were acutely aware of the freaky weather--hot, humid, and a yo-yo climate! At that time, we had 40 roses in the pool area behind our house. When we joined the Houston Rose Society, it had about a hundred members--I'm told poor soiore than 350 today. After joining, our rose knowledge really took off. To improve our poor soils, we learned to maintain two compost piles, one for the present, and one that was constantly recycling the old stuff. It worked, but it was hard work. My engineer husband tested both piles and added what was needed, because sudden, copious rains could change a compost formula overnight! Those huge storms could mash rose petals to a pulp in no time, so we learned to improvise--some of our solutions were off-the-wall. We soon started a collection of one and two gallon plastic bottles that we removed the bottoms from and then mounted, umbrella-like, on tall dowels. We drove the dowels into the ground near blooms we were trying to protect, saving them from storm damage. This method has never been duplicated commercially, but it was fool-proof for us. After years of water-logged gardening, coming to Grand Junction was quite a case of opposites. We had to learn everything all over again. One thing we didn't miss was the fat Japanese Beetles that thrive in Texas. One of the first rose shows we ever entered found us scrambling at the last minute to save buds and blooms that the Japanese Beetles zapped, overnight! Next time, I have some hairy stories about the days when we were Texas Rose Rustlers! In the meantime, don't let this dry, hot climate get to you--as my husband and I agreed, never consider throwing in the towel! Once you come to term with the constraints, you, too, can have a "Queen of Show"! Top of page This page last modified: September 07, 2004 |
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