The Making of the Rose Field

Sarah, across the pond at Modern Country Style, is having a link party ... inviting us to share our gardens at her Garden Party.  She asked me, in her lovely English way, if I would please join in.  It's winter, and it was really cold and windy yesterday, so let's see if I can make everyone feel a bit warmer with a dose of summer roses.

Gratuitous rose photo that has nothing to do with this post.  :)

I was sorting through the photos here on the laptop, trying to decide what to write about since almost all of my posts are driven by the pictures ... and I thought you might be interested to see the story of how my Rose Field came to be. 

When we moved to this house in October 2007, the area where the Rose Field is now was a former vegetable garden, 80 by 160 feet (24 x 49 meters), and it was completely overgrown by blackberry brambles, honeysuckle, and every other manner of weed.  It required a lot to prepare the area for its next life as a rose garden.  We had to use a bushhog to mow down the thick brush to a manageable height, spray everything with herbicide, plow it ...

... disk it, till it, raise the individual rows, and let it all settle so the latent weeds would germinate.  After a final application of herbicide, and the prescribed waiting period, the ground was perfect!  (I hired the plowing, tilling, and sculpting part of this.  I'm a menace on the tractor and I avoid using it if at all possible.)

There are almost 300 roses planted in this garden, laid out in rows by class.  One Saturday in June 2008, my friend Robert came over to help me start planting.  We consulted my carefully-scribbled plan and laid out the pots of roses in their designated locations.  (See our neighbors' beautiful vineyard in the background?)

Robert dug holes, and I planted roses in them.

We got to about the point in the photo below, when my neighbor came over and offered to dig the holes for us ...

... with his tractor-mounted auger.  This made the work go SOOO much faster.  This auger dug a hole that exactly fit a one-gallon plant, and the backfill was all powdery and ready to put into the hole around the rose. 

By the end of the day, Robert and I had planted about half of the field.  By the end of the summer, I finished planting the rest of the roses myself. 

 By April of 2009, things were filling in quite nicely.

I hired a strong young man to line all the paths with crushed stone.  It took three dumptruck loads of stone to do the whole field ... all of which was hauled one wheelbarrow load at a time.

In this photo, you can see the tubing for the drip irrigation system that waters the roses.

After all the paths were finished, and the rows of roses covered with mulch, I was really pleased with the way this garden was coming together.

In the center of each row of roses is a pair of crossed rebar arches that form a tunnel down the center aisle of the garden.  The pipes you see are driven about two feet into the ground, and the arch is slipped down into the pipe. 

By late summer 2009, the roses didn't look so much like babies anymore.  At this point, we still had a few arches left to do.

In spring 2010, at the beginning of their third year in the ground, the roses were poised to put on a spectacular show.

I wish someone would invent a way for me to include the fragrance with these photos.

Looking at these photos, and remembering all the pleasure that I get from this garden, makes me wish even harder that spring were here.  Most mornings while the weather is warm, I can be found wandering the rows, coffee cup in hand, spending quality time with my roses.  This time of year, I stare longingly at them through the window from my warm house.

I can't wait to see what this year brings!

Now that you have seen the development of my garden, run over to see what others are sharing at Modern Country Style.  Thank you, Sarah, for hosting ... and for giving all of us such a lovely dose of summer.

Easy-Care Heirloom Roses

This Sunday, February 13, I will present a program for the Arlington Rose Foundation titled "Easy-Care Heirloom Roses".  The meeting, at Merrifield Garden Center in Fairfax, Virginia, starts at 2:00pm, and I will begin my program shortly thereafter.

I wrote this program to show folks that there are plenty of roses available for your garden that don't require heroic measures to look good and bloom. 

Most people get their rose information from mainstream nurseries or big-box stores.  These locations are driven by their suppliers, who buy whatever the reps are pushing, and this has increasingly become exclusively some sort of Knock Out rose.  This leads folks to think that their only options for easy-care roses are Knock Outs. 

We HAVE choices!! Don't feel as if you HAVE to plant a Knock Out rose ... unless a Knock Out rose is what you WANT to plant.

"But I HAVE to plant Knock Out", you say, "because other roses are hard to grow."  

WRONG!!!  There are SOME roses that take more effort to grow than others.  These are NOT the ones I'm talking about. 

The roses that I am featuring in this program grow and flower and thrive with minimal care.  Nothing in the garden is completely maintenance free.  Give these roses water and fertilizer, and perhaps the occasional spritz of fungicide (though not required), and they will reward your effort many times over.

My program is divided into sections:  Small shrubs, Medium shrubs, Large shrubs, Repeat-flowering climbers, and Spring-flowering ramblers.  This should provide more than enough choices for whatever situation you have in your garden.

Within each of the shrub categories, I am featuring both repeat-flowering roses and once-blooming Old Garden Roses.  Both of these types are very valuable in the garden, and I try to show folks that they need not limit their choices to repeat-blooming varieties.  (Banshee, the beauty I show above, is a once-bloomer, and the shrub without flowers is beautiful all season long.)

By the time I get to the end of the program, and I have answered the last question, I hope folks will leave having been introduced to at least one rose that they will want to add to their garden.

If you are local, I hope you can come out on Sunday to hear me speak.  I would love to meet you.  If you can't come, check back here next week and I will publish the whole list of the roses I feature.  I would do it now, but I'm still editing it a bit ... I may add one or two to the list between now and Sunday.

Everything in its Place

Yesterday afternoon, The Husband and I went to his parents' old house to measure some cabinets that we will be bringing to our house soon.  While we were there, I was amazed at the level of organization that his father kept in his shop ... and I was touched by the sign above his work area.

My father-in-law has been gone for a year now, and my mother-in-law is settling into her new house.  The only things left at the old house are tools and parts and fix-it supplies that my mother-in-law has no use for.  Many of these things will come to our house, to be integrated into our lives, to be used by the next generation.

These cabinets were original to their house, built in 1965.  My father-in-law removed them about ten years ago, when he remodeled the kitchen.  They became his work area, where he would repair household items and electronic gadgets, and build his radio-controlled planes.  I see them living their next life in our basement workshop.

This white cabinet will probably be installed in the cottage by our barn, where the nursery office will be this year.  The large brown cabinet may go into our laundry room ... I think it will fit where I'm imagining it.

This green wooden cabinet will be very useful in our garage.  I have the perfect place for it ... as soon as I move some other stuff out of that spot.

I am most about this chair.  The Husband remembers spending many hours in this chair as a youngster ... sitting at his father's workbench, drawing, painting, coloring, and spending time with his dad.

I doubt that we can keep the same level of organization that Dad did.  I tend to have more of a 'hunt-through-the-piles-to-find-it' kind of system. 

I can't wait to bring these things here and make them part of our home!

The Annual Lynchburg Garden Symposium!

Gardeners within commuting distance of Lynchburg, Virginia, are going to want to mark their calendars to attend the Old City Cemetery's annual "Ready, Set, Bloom!" garden symposium, Friday and Saturday, March 25 and 26, 2011.  This year, the rose speaker is one of my favorite people ... Rev. Douglas Seidel, who is probably THE most knowledgeable rosarian I know (no offense is intended toward all of the other knowledgeable rosarians I know, of course.). 

'Dublin' climbing on the porch of one of the Cemetery museum buildings.

According to the brochure I received in the mail yesterday, this year's theme is "Extending the Life of your Garden".  The schedule is as follows:

Friday afternoon, we will take a walking tour of Diamond Hill and experience period architecture, old plantings, and stories of those who made Lynchburg one of the South's wealthiest cities.  Light refreshments in a period home will finish the tour. 

Here is a beautiful Diamond Hill Victorian.

Does the style of this Lynchburg beauty look vaguely familiar?

Friday evening, symposium guests will mingle with the three speakers in the Old city Cemetery's new reading room and conservatory, and enjoy drinks and light hors d'oeuvres.

'Climbing Souvenir de la Malmaisson' on the brick wall beside the Pest House Museum.

Saturday is for the presentations.  At 9:00am, Peggy Singlemann, director of horticulture at Maymont in Richmond, will present a program titled "Flowering Shrubs to Spice Up Your Garden".  We will learn how mixing in flowering shrubs will add bursts of color, wonderful fragrance, and fall color to our gardens.

The Brick Wall in the cemetery's Confederate Section, where most of the historic roses are planted.

At 10:45, Cherie Foster Colburn will speak about "Fireflies and Four O'Clocks:  Ingredients for a 24-7 Landscape".  This program is intended to help us extend our enjoyment of our gardens into the evening hours.  Cherie's web site is HERE.

The cemetery has a spectacular collection of trees!

After a box lunch (which is always delicious!), at 1:30 Doug Seidel will present a program called "Final Resting Places", a brief history of cemeteries and why people grew certain plants on and around the graves of their loved ones.  He will also demonstrate unique ways we can use these items as inspiration for our home landscapes.  After his presentation, Doug will lead a walk through the Cemetery gardens for a hands-on walk and talk.

Here is Doug Seidel, seated, and Dennis Whetzel doing their annual Antique Rose Show ... a rose identification workshop at Monticello's Tufton Farm open house every May.

I have attended this symposium every year, and last year I was honored to be the featured rose speaker.  I did blog posts from Lynchburg about it last May, which can be found  HERE and HERE.

This is Stephen Scanniello during the first Symposium in 2008, demonstrating how to divide and replant over-crowded colonies of rose suckers.

The Lynchburg City Cemetery is very unique, and it is one of my all-time favorite places.  It is owned by the city of Lynchburg, who still actively carries out burials in the Potter's Field, and it is managed by the Southern Memorial Association.  It is a rosarium, an arboretum, a museum, a park, a wedding destination, and a beautiful place to spend the day.  Proceeds from the symposium will benefit the Horticulture Endowment of the Old City Cemetery.

Interested in attending?  Be sure to let me know, and we can meet up and do something while we are there.  There is a WONDERFUL deli downtown!!  You can buy your Symposium tickets HERE.  The cost for all activities is $125 ... Friday tour $15, Friday night reception $30, Saturday workshops $70, Saturday box lunch $10 ... it's definitely money well spent!

Will I see you there?

Anticipation

Our daughter has oatmeal and two hard-boiled eggs for breakfast every morning.  She doesn't eat the yolks of the eggs.  The dogs each get one.  Daniel knows this.

"Are you finished peeling those eggs yet?"

"Which one of those is mine?"

"Hi, Mom."

He's so cute!

A Little Dream House

When my dog Emma and I go to Manassas (about an hour away) for her acupuncture appointments, we always take country roads to get there.  Besides being incredibly scenic and relaxing, it's also the most direct way to get there from here.  Along the way, we pass this incredible house.

I can't tell if it's a converted church, or a house that has been modified to look like it's a converted church.  Whatever it is, I fell in love with it the first time I saw it.

Whoever lives here must work during the week, because I have never seen a car in the driveway on the days Emma and I go past.  I have vowed to stop and knock on the door to introduce myself, if I ever go past and find any sign of anyone at home.

I tell my dear Husband that this house will be my widow's retirement cottage.  I will fill the yard with roses and the house with cats.  He just laughs at me and nods.

One day, I will meet the person who lives here!