Emil asked:
Out of curiosity...How did everybody start with their hobby, more like a
passion :-) of roses?
I wouldn't call it a hobby..... more like a sickness..... heh heh
(Long) Downward slide story follows:
I have always been a gardener since I was a little kid (I'm 51 now),
but mostly what I would grow would be lots of veggies and annual
flowers and maybe bulbs.
Never had much of a yard living in the city as I do, but I always grew
something. Fast Forward to 1994. I bought an old corner drugstore
building and a year later the vacant lot next door. Then I decided I
wanted a real garden so I rented a large Front End loader and dug up
the large parking lot and put in a couple of veggie beds and 6 foot
cedar fences. The veggie beds only took up one corner of the property
(The building and land is about 1/2 acre). So during the winter of
1996/7 I decided to put in a large perennial garden.
I knew nothing of perennials, so I went to the garden centers and home
stores and bought 3 to 5 of every single thing I could get my hands
on. I built a bunch of raised beds and put in the perennials. Among
the perennials were 4 rose bushes. I new little of roses, so I chose
the varieties as follows: A red one, a yellow one, an orange one and
a red and white one with good scent. Later in mid summer I added a
creamy white and pink blend one, a yellow pink and white one that
smelled great and a purple one.
As the season wore on, I kept finding myself going back and checking
on each rose every day. I learned their names. I gave a couple of
them nicknames. (My first seven: Gypsy, Golden Fantasie, Arizona,
Double Delight, Charles Aznavour, Summer Fashion and Lagerfeld). I
quickly learned that if you deadhead them they will bloom again and I
religiously did so. By the end of the season I knew I wanted more. I
needed RESEARCH!
I checked the web, and the newsgroups and discovered an earlier
incarnation of this very newsgroup that was quite a bit more active
than it is now. Fall of 97 through Spring of 98 was spent reading all
messages on this group plus a few rose books. The instant the 'bare
root in a bag's showed up I was there, and no rose was too lousy for
me to want. But I did show some restraint and while meaning only to
get at most 20 more that year I ended up with like.....60.
I needed more beds so I expanded into my vacant lot area...... but
there was plenty more room for......next year's roses '99
season.....when I bought another 70 and then got another 25 when a big
public garden was pulled out here.
The course of events was set... one year led to another and by the
time the dust settles in mid summer here in '03 I will have about 380
or more varieties. And yes I have run out of space.
I now have a library of about 40 rose books and have read more,
(including some older and obscure tomes) .....I've looked at hundreds
of rose web sites and spent thousands of hours growing, reading about,
photographing, writing about, building web sites and talking about
Roses, roses and more roses.
I consider my rose education to have started beginning that first year
on rec.gardens.roses in the winter of 1997/98.......my freshman year
of rose college. I now consider myself to be in rose graduate school
just finishing up my Master's this season. And next year to start
working on my PhD in roses.... (Piled higher and Deeper)......... heh
heh
Bob Bauer
Zone 6 in Salt Lake City
http://www.rose-roses.com/