It all starts here.

Welcome to Hartwood Roses, the East Coast’s newest old-rose nursery. It seems appropriate that I announce this now, since it’s been almost exactly a year from the time I decided to do this as a business.

The past year has been filled with lots of rose collecting and garden designing. I have gathered an eclectic collection of historic roses. I am especially fond of climbers and ramblers, old Hybrid Teas, and ‘found’ roses (roses that have been discovered in cemeteries or old home sites, whose original identity is unknown). There’s a fairly good representation of most of the other rose classes, too.

We should open for business in June with a limited list of roses, and I hope to have a full selection available by Spring 2010.

In the current economy, with some nurseries closing their doors and others struggling, you may think that it’s nuts to open a new nursery. I don’t think so. We need to have a place to provide roses and rose advice for gardeners, and a place to gather with rose people and discuss gardens and roses without boring the other people around us. I need a place like this, and I hope you do too.

Check back here often to keep up with what’s happening. You’ll see how each of the gardens began and how they’re progressing as the roses mature. (I expect this will probably keep me busy for months.) Maybe we can have a Rose of the Week feature, if there’s a rose that interests me each week that I think you might like to hear about. Who knows what else I’ll come up with.

- Connie