Heritage Rose Foundation Conference, Next Month

One month from today, rose lovers from all over the US (and at least a couple of foreign countries) will spend three rose-filled days in Fredericksburg, Virginia, for the 2017 Heritage Rose Foundation Conference.  

It's not too late for you to plan to join us.  Let me show you what we are going to do.

The conference will begin on Thursday, May 18, with an optional pre-conference bus trip to Charlottesville to visit the Thomas Jefferson Center for Historic Plants at Tufton Farm, home of the Leonie Bell Noisette Garden, and to tour the gardens and mansion at Monticello, home of President Thomas Jefferson.  Lunch is included.

"Bremo Musk" in the Leonie Bell Noisette Garden.

Friday, May 19, we will enjoy a day of presentations at Belmont, Gari Melchers' home and studio in Falmouth, Virginia.  Continental breakfast, buffet lunch, and tours of the mansion and garden are included.

'Tausendschoen' in the garden at Belmont.

I am very excited to have put together this slate of speakers:

Benjamin Whitacre, who paired a fascination with ancient texts and roses as a college student in Williamsburg, Virginia, before spending a year at the Arnold Arboretum researching Harvard's historic rose experiments.  He has also worked with roses at Mount Auburn Cemetery, the American Horticultural Society, and at Monticello.

Beate Ankjaer-Jensen, who has served as Cultural Resource Manager at Gari Melchers Home and Studio since 1999.  She led the research and restoration of the gardens and historic buildings, and directed the creation of native grassland meadows and trails that interpret the cultural and natural recources on the 29-acre estate.

Scott Dean, who became interested in roses at age 5, when his father entered a rose in his name in the youth class in a rose show.  He combines his hobby of studying the Middle Ages, as a member of the Society for Creative Anachronism, with his interest in roses, researching the rose varieties grown in Europe prior to the year 1600.

Mike Shoup, who opened the Antique Rose Emporium in 1984, with the goal of creating a resurgence in the preservation of rare and beautiful roses.  Specializing in the re-introduction and distribution of historic roses, the retail center has theme gardens that show the versitility of antique roses in garden settings.  Mike is a past president of the Heritage Rose Foundation, and the author of three books and numerous national articles on the subject of using Old Garden Roses in today's gardens.

Saturday, May 20, we begin with a bus tour to Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond to learn about the history of this 19th Century garden cemetery and its roses.  Goth Gardener and I are writing a new tour especially for this event.  As part of the day's activities, we will be replanting three lost roses to their original locations!  Lunch is included.

One of the roses that we will replant is 'Safrano' on the Waller lot in Section Q near Presidents Circle.

Saturday evening is the part of the conference that I'm most excited about ... a buffet barbecue dinner under a big tent in my garden here at Hartwood Manor!  My roses should be in full bloom for the guests, and I have been working SO hard to make everything look its best.  Roses will be available for sale.  A Heritage Rose Foundation banquet would be incomplete without the star attraction of the evening, Stephen Scanniello, president of HRF, acting as auctioneer for a wonderful assortment of rare roses and rose items ... including an oil painting donated by my very talented artist husband.

'Shailer's Provence' in the Fence Border, at Hartwood Manor ... home sweet home.

Registration fee is $210.  This all includes activities on Friday and Saturday, including lectures, tours, and meals, as noted.  An additional $85 fee is required for Thursday's optional tour to Charlottesville.  We also offer registration for individual activities, for folks who have scheduling conflicts and cannot attend the entire conference. (If you can only come to one thing, the banquet is the one that I recommend.  It's going to be so much FUN!!)

Edited to say:  Registration is closed, because this event is now history .. and it was FABULOUS.  You should have been here!)

I am coordinating this event with a little bit of help, but not much, and it has required an ever-increasing amount of my time and thought processes.  Folks who are coming have told me that they are very excited to come see the world of roses that we have here in Virginia ... and I am over-the-moon delighted to be their hostess.

Carpenter Gothic

It's not unusual for me to be looking for a particular thing, whether online or elsewhere, and have my attention drawn to something completely different.  I'm curious and that curiosity leads me in many different directions.  (When I was a kid, I would easily get drawn off task while looking up words in the dictionary, as interesting other words caught my attention.   Ten minutes later .... what was that word I was originally here to look up?)

Something like this happened to me last week, as I was surfing Pinterest looking for Gothic Revival house images.  Whenever possible I visit the original page from which an image was pinned, instead of repinning directly from the Pinterest image.  On one of those pages, I saw a reference to this book:

Carpenter Gothic, 19th-Century Ornamented Houses of New England (1978)

Carpenter Gothic.  That's the original style of our house.  It was built in 1848 by a couple who had moved here from Connecticut, introducing the Gothic style to this area for the first time.  In the case of our house, it's Carpenter and Gothic were removed in the 1960s.)  A book about Gothic houses in New England got me really excited!

Earliest image of our house that I have seen, from 1933, when the place was already 85 years old.

I'm completely unable to resist the temptation of books, especially garden and architecture books.  All it took was a few clicks, a credit card number, and the book in question was on its way to me.  (I love shopping for used books online.  This one was $4.10 from a dealer on Abe Books, with free shipping, and it arrived in four days.)

As I sat down to read my new treasure on the evening of the day that it arrived, I was struck by to a sentence in the Foreward written by Charles Moore.

We live ourselves in an exciting time, when the past is coming again to be seen, not as a dead hand on our own creativity, but as an exhilarating source and stimulus, a connection that gives us strength and an enhanced freedom to make buildings that speak in many tongues, heresiarchs, and gigglers, to excite people of many moods and attitudes and concerns, to make concrete and stimulate our dreams.

This one sentence, a really LONG sentence, puts words to my attitude about the way that I try to handle the restoration and renovation of this place of ours ... to not be a slave to a particular style or time, to allow it to evolve while respecting its origins, and to give it a story and a voice in the present. 

*************************

All of this began because I was looking for images on Pinterest to help with the last few little details in the design of the new gingerbread trim for our front porch ... which is completely different than any of the other designs that I have put forth to you in past posts.  I love what we have come up with, but I won't show it to you until we have a final version of the design that's been approved by the county Architectural Review Board ... don't want to jinx it, I hope you understand.