Hartwood Roses in the Paper!!

I received an email from a friend this morning, congratulating me on my upcoming opening. He saw it on the Business Page of today’s Free Lance-Star, the Fredericksburg newspaper.



So much for my quiet little opening. This is really exciting!!

Mislabeled Roses in the Garden.

This is something that all gardeners have had happen to them at least once. We order a named variety of a plant from a vendor (in my case, roses) and the plant we receive isn’t the one we ordered. Most of the time with roses, we don’t find out that it’s the wrong one until the thing blooms the next year.

Here are a few of mine:

This is definitely not 'Mrs. Aaron Ward'. What I expected to be an apricot Hybrid Tea is more of a dark pink sprawler. I’ll move it to the rose field and see if I can get it to climb, and put a real Hybrid Tea in its place.





What I ordered was "Hoag House Cream", a creamy white found Hybrid Tea. What I received was Reveille Dijonnais, a red and yellow blend climber. ???? Needless to say, it can’t stay in the bed of antique Hybrid Teas.



This is not 'September Morn'. 'September Morn' is a light pink Hybrid Tea. This isn’t light pink. I have no idea what it really is.



This one was supposed to be Schultheis’ American Beauty, an obscure Hybrid Tea. It’s actually Schoener’s Nutkana … a really nice, large, arching shrub, with huge, dark pink flowers. I’m pretty pleased with this mistake.



The tag in the pot this rose came in said 'Mme. Berard', which is an apricot tea climber. Does this look like an apricot tea climber to you? It’s definitely not the Madame, though it seems like it's a nice rose. What’s interesting about it is that this rose is completely thornless … smooth as a baby’s you-know-what.



All but one of these came from Sequoia Nursery in California, which closed last year. Some day, I will re-order the roses I originally wanted, from another source. In the meantime, I will try to identify the ones I have. If you have any ideas, let me know.

I am going to try as hard as I can to make sure that this doesn’t happen to any of you when you buy roses here. If there’s a tag on the rose, you can feel confident that the rose in the pot is the same as the name on the tag. If I’m not sure of the name, I’ll tell you … it’s as simple as that.

Robert's Fabulous Garden!

My husband and I spent part of yesterday visiting my dear friend Robert. His garden is in full, glorious bloom ... and it's the most beautiful garden I have probably ever seen. His use of color, and vertical space, and his imaginative combination of roses and companions is incredible. I just can't think of enough superlative adjectives to describe what he has accomplished.

Here is a slideshow with a taste of a few of his roses. I had to leave before I photographed the whole garden .... I'll be back later this week to finish the job.

http://s135.photobucket.com/albums/q157/HartwoodHoney/Rose%20Gallery/Roberts%20Garden/?albumview=slideshow

Enjoy!!

Introducing … Hartwood Wine.

This is a very promising Hybrid Perpetual seedling from my batch in 2008. The flowers open a dark pink/maroon color, they blue a bit as they age, revealing nice yellow stamens. It wintered over as a tiny little thing in the Rose Field, and it’s already over a foot tall with 12 (yes, 12!) buds on it. I hope to have a limited number of these available for the 2010 season.



… and it’s FRAGRANT!!

I named this in honor of Hartwood Winery, my next door neighbor. They are celebrating their 20th anniversary with a festival on June 6th … the same weekend as my opening. Go to their web site (www.hartwoodwinery.com) for details.

And in the Beginning . . .

. . . there are the Chinas.

Spring is definitely here now, and the roses are beginning their sequence of bloom. First up are the Chinas … my second favorite type of rose (after the ramblers, of course).

'Ducher'

"Mableton Rouletii"

'Fabvier'

'Climbing Rouletii'

Old Blush has almost finished its first flush, and Reuter China, Jean Bach Sisley, and St. Thomas China will probably have flowers in the next couple of days.

Fun with Google Maps.

There’s a Google Map of our location on the Contact Us page of the Hartwood Roses web site. Recently, Google upgraded the resolution of the satellite image of our area …. it’s really crisp and the detail is amazing. (You can even see one of the neighbor’s horses in our back field.)

Here’s an overview, so you can get the lay of the land . . . our property is inside the red line.


If you zoom in on the image, you can see what it looked like around here about 3 years ago.

I think the photo was taken in early spring. Things are beginning to green up, and the angle of the sun is very low … notice the shadows of the oak trees in the front yard.


The new garage was under construction ... you can see piles of materials all over the driveway. The little building on the right is the workshop.


The barn was in its ‘unrestored’ state, with all the overgrowth and the rotten fence surrounding the barnyard.


The rose field was covered in brambles and honeysuckle. What a difference a few years, a lot of work, and some heavy equipment can make. (Ignore the red A ... it's a Google thing.)


Click HERE to play with the map yourself.

Come visit us on June 6th for our grand opening to see all of this from ‘ground level’.

Roses in Hollywood Cemetery

Some of the buds on the roses in the garden here in Hartwood are just beginning to show color. An hour south, on the James River in Richmond, many of the Hollywood Cemetery roses are already in full bloom.



Click Here for a slideshow of the photos I took while I was there on Saturday.


Enjoy!