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#1
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How did everybody get started with their rose hobby?
Hi group,
Out of curiosity...How did everybody start with their hobby, more like a passion :-) of roses? Did you learn by watching parents plant roses? Is growing roses your occupation, any of you own a nursery? Etc. Etc. As for me, when we bought our first house a couple of years ago, we bought 4 roses. Everytime we went to the nursery, we came home with more and more roses. Final count at our old house was close to 35 rose bushes that I planted from bareroots. So what's everybody story? Emil |
#2
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How did everybody get started with their rose hobby?
"Emil" wrote in
: Hi group, Out of curiosity...How did everybody start with their hobby, more like a passion :-) of roses? Did you learn by watching parents plant roses? Is growing roses your occupation, any of you own a nursery? Etc. Etc. The short version (I hope it's short): My mother always grew roses but they were gangly, raggedy HTs so I never paid much attention to them. In late high school I got the gardening bug (I'm a Capricorn---we like to dig in the dirt anyway); found that seed catalogs could be gotten *for free*, wrote away for about forty of them just because I could afford them (Caps like free stuff too). Found out about one catalog that costs the enormous sum of one dollar, from Roses of Yesterday & Today, decided to spring for it because the subject matter looked antiquy and such. Found out that there were a class of roses that made your mind bend; instead of calm, cool closed buds you had to get used to fully-open blossoms and even (heaven forfend) roses that only bloomed once. Bought a few (Mme. Hardy, Jacques Cartier, etc.) and was blown away by their fragrance and style. Joined the Royal Horticulture Society, went to the Chelsea Flower show, got hooked by Austins in 1979, determined to get 'Perdita' despite that fact that there were no Austins here at the time.... Never really lost the bug, it just grew quietly over time. And now, in full circle, a local rosarian has reintroduced me to HTs and I'm learning to speak their language at last. The end. :-) ---- |
#3
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How did everybody get started with their rose hobby?
Emil wrote:
Hi group, Hello, Emil. Out of curiosity...How did everybody start with their hobby, more like a passion :-) of roses? Did you learn by watching parents plant roses? Bred in the bones :-). Is growing roses your occupation, any of you own a nursery? Etc. Etc. No, never, I am not a Rosarian, but just a person who loves to grow roses. -- Radika California USDA 9 / Sunset 15 |
#4
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How did everybody get started with their rose hobby?
On Tue, 8 Apr 2003, "Emil" wrote:
Hi group, Out of curiosity...How did everybody start with their hobby, more like a passion :-) of roses? Did you learn by watching parents plant roses? Is growing roses your occupation, any of you own a nursery? Etc. Etc. As for me, when we bought our first house a couple of years ago, we bought 4 roses. Everytime we went to the nursery, we came home with more and more roses. Final count at our old house was close to 35 rose bushes that I planted from bareroots. So what's everybody story? Emil Hi Emil, My Dad has always had an incredible green thumb. I can remember when I was a kid the neighbors always complimenting him on his roses. He can dig up wildflowers and transplant them without them showing any signs of shock. He never kills a plant. So I've always been interested in gardening, but I stayed away from the roses at first because I thought they were difficult and demanding. When I moved into this house there was an Oklahoma and a couple minis stuck in the grass right out in front. They were looking pretty sad. I think the realtor had plopped them into the ground because there were no other plantings and she figured having a few blooms out there would help sell the place. Instead of tearing them out, I tried to save them and babied them and they started looking better. I still had the attitude that roses were difficult, though. The second year I was here, the Antique Rose Emporium catalog showed up in the mail and I found out about OGR's and ordered several. I then had my curiosity going about roses and started looking into them. I found out I really liked the OGR's and they weren't so hard to grow. I then ordered several David Austin roses and found out they either liked me or were also not that difficult. I also thought they were so beautiful that I could not live without them. Then I had a brief period of insanity when I would order every rose I saw that appealed to me. I have since found I have much better luck with Austins and OGR's than the hybrid teas. I think I must be on every mailing list related to roses. A large percentage of my bookmarks are websites that are in some way or another related to roses. I don't think I have bought anything new for the garden that wasn't a rose in the last couple years. Nothing beats the satisfaction of growing beautiful roses. I am officially obsessed. Mike z8TX |
#5
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How did everybody get started with their rose hobby?
"Emil" wrote in message
... Hi group, Out of curiosity...How did everybody start with their hobby, more like a passion :-) of roses? Did you learn by watching parents plant roses? Is growing roses your occupation, any of you own a nursery? Etc. Etc. As for me, when we bought our first house a couple of years ago, we bought 4 roses. Everytime we went to the nursery, we came home with more and more roses. Final count at our old house was close to 35 rose bushes that I planted from bareroots. So what's everybody story? Emil That's a fun question, Emil. I suppose I've always liked roses but had avoided them because I heard they were hard to grow. Then we moved into our present home about 8 years ago and it came with a small rose bed. I cared for it, learned about roses, killed a few, but still wasn't "hooked" on roses until I got the idea to create a theme rose bed, based on a TV show I was obsessed with. The "Xena Warrior Princess" rose bed started with 16 roses in a circular pattern. Roses were chosen to represent different characters. E.g., Caesar's rose is Royal Amethyst, Hercules's rose is Peace, Ares's rose is Intrigue. (Others are not historical characters or well-known mythical characters so I won't bore non-Xena fans with their names.) Once that process was completed, I was able to plan beds based on color, and eventually branched out into old garden roses. I now have between 135 and 140 roses and love them all, even the "non-Xena" roses. Gail San Antonio TX Zone 8 |
#6
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How did everybody get started with their rose hobby?
"Emil" wrote in message
... Hi group, Out of curiosity...How did everybody start with their hobby, more like a passion :-) of roses? Did you learn by watching parents plant roses? Is growing roses your occupation, any of you own a nursery? Etc. Etc. As for me, when we bought our first house a couple of years ago, we bought 4 roses. Everytime we went to the nursery, we came home with more and more roses. Final count at our old house was close to 35 rose bushes that I planted from bareroots. So what's everybody story? I guess my story is similar to yours. While my mother had a couple of roses when I was young that I used to love picking, it wasn't until we signed the contract on our first home (just over a year ago) that I became interested in gardening for myself. The house had very little in the way of gardens and what was there was overgrown. In the month and a half wait before we could move into the house, we had already accumulated at least six roses in pots and some other plants for our new garden. Like yourself, it seemed that each time I went to the nursery I came back with a new rose. Our land area is quite small so I only have 13 HT/Floribundas/Climbers and the rest of the crew (14) are miniature/patio roses in pots in the courtyard out the back. I have also found that the more I read of what everyone else has/likes in this newsgroup, the more roses I am sure that I need to find space for Kirra Brisbane, Australia Z10 |
#7
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How did everybody get started with their rose hobby?
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/ |
#8
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How did everybody get started with their rose hobby?
Emil wrote:
Hi group, Out of curiosity...How did everybody start with their hobby, more like a passion :-) of roses? What a neat idea for a thread, Emil. Thanks. A really wonderful friend of mine planned my wedding, and her gift to me (besides that) was the flowers. All of this was wonderful because I wanted a special day (we had all had a lot of sadness that year) for our families, but I am not good at girly stuff like that. When she asked me what I wanted for a bouquet and arrangements, I looked in magazines and chose photos of sorbet colored, full blown, gorgeous roses, with herbs and other greenery. She did this so well--forced the blooms, etc.--I thought I had never seen flowers so gorgeous. It was a great day. So when we bought the house, I decided to try to grow what I thought was most beautiful. And--for my friend, I wanted to find a great purple rose, as they are her favorite. This is why I chose Lagerfeld as my first rose--not purple but the closest to it at the garden center. |
#9
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How did everybody get started with their rose hobby?
On Tue, 8 Apr 2003 16:23:36 -0700, "Emil" wrote:
Hi group, Out of curiosity...How did everybody start with their hobby, more like a passion :-) of roses? Did you learn by watching parents plant roses? Is growing roses your occupation, any of you own a nursery? Etc. Etc. As for me, when we bought our first house a couple of years ago, we bought 4 roses. Everytime we went to the nursery, we came home with more and more roses. Final count at our old house was close to 35 rose bushes that I planted from bareroots. So what's everybody story? Emil My story begins 2 1/2 years ago when I bought my current house. There was a big impressive rose bush in the front yard, and several other roses next to the house. When the big bush (my Aloha) bloomed for the first time, I was hooked. The other roses looked pretty good as well... So, I decided to continue the theme as well as try to learn about the ones that I already had. I'm only up to about 25 roses, which I think is just about appropriate for my lot, and I think that 25 -30 is a good comfort zone for me. I used to be into orchids but I just couldn't provide the proper environment for them... dave |
#10
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How did everybody get started with their rose hobby?
Emil wrote:
Out of curiosity...How did everybody start with their hobby, more like a passion :-) of roses? Did you learn by watching parents plant roses? Is growing roses your occupation, any of you own a nursery? Etc. Etc. My family have been gardeners for many generations, with stories going back to my grandmother gardening with *her* grandfather. I had my own garden from the time I was 5 YO. We bought this home 9 years ago on a sunny, windy knoll, completely unlandscaped. That's when the rose thing struck, around the same time I retired. My landscaper suggested there was a good location for a rose garden, and I started buying books and asking questions here. Heh heh. That was 214 roses ago. Because of the rigors of my site, I started out looking for bomb proof, wind proof roses, and I've never changed that objective. I was irretrievably hooked when the first roses I planted, a hybrid musk, Iceberg, an Austin and a rugosa, took off and grew like weeds. -- -=- Cass Zone 9 San Francisco Bay Area http://home.attbi.com/~cassbernstein/index.html |
#11
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How did everybody get started with their rose hobby?
Emil wrote:
So what's everybody story? Great idea! Thanks! My paternal grandmother and maternal great grandmother were avid gardeners and i used to help in their gardens. After my parents divorce, we never owned another home again when I lived at home so I never had the opportunity for a garden until I loved out on my home. I indulged in my first rose then - a chicago peace - and she bloomed beautifully in southwest PA. However, I knew *nothing* about gardening or plants. I think I simply believed that if you planted something, it would *just* grow but roses were always the Queen of Plants to me. After I moved down here and my ex-husband and I bought a house, I tried to plant roses again. Silly me, put the roses under the trees next to my pond. Dead roses *real* quick. Then, I bought some houseplants - dead houseplants real quick again. At this point the belief that I was born to kill plants happened. Never did the thought cross my mind that it was a totally tree lined lot with a completely shaded house and *just* perhaps the full sun plants I was buying were inappropriate for the area. Fast forward to six years ago - my stepfather who raised me and I adored died after a long bout with leukemia. Fuqua sent a peace lily to the funeral and my mother gave it to me to take home. I was terrified but became determined that I *had* to keep this plant alive. Research mode finally set in. *grin* When my s.o. and I bought our house two years ago, one of the reasons we bought it was for the lot placement and the amount of light in the house. Gardening passion set its hooks into me as soon as we finished the interior of the house and I've not looked back since. Gardening is my therapy these days. My family is going through an incredibly tough time the last couple of months and nothing makes me feel better than to be able to get out into the garden for the day. Susan s h simko at duke dot edu |
#12
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How did everybody get started with their rose hobby?
What got me started originally ... When I was a child, my family and I lived
in a 100-yr old farmhouse on the southwestern Iowa plains (zone 5 - ends of the earth). The previous owners had a number of tough flowering shrubs and trees around the house; one of them was a little sulfur-yellow semidouble rose with tiny leaves and twiggy branches and a rather unpleasant smell that became covered in golden yellow blooms in spring. That became "my" rose; it was just about as tall as me. Sometimes I couldn't wait for the buds to open, so I "helped" them by prying them open! That little rose bloomed faithfully with no protection, no fertilizer, nothing - and had probably survived for nearly 100 years. But when my parents decided to build a new house, my rose was bulldozed one day when I was at school. I was heartbroken. (My first heartbreak with roses! Many more to come!) Now, even though I love and grow contemporary HTs and some Austins, I'd still like to find that little old yellow rose ... Sue in SoCal "Emil" wrote in message ... Hi group, Out of curiosity...How did everybody start with their hobby, more like a passion :-) of roses? Did you learn by watching parents plant roses? Is growing roses your occupation, any of you own a nursery? Etc. Etc. As for me, when we bought our first house a couple of years ago, we bought 4 roses. Everytime we went to the nursery, we came home with more and more roses. Final count at our old house was close to 35 rose bushes that I planted from bareroots. So what's everybody story? Emil |
#13
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How did everybody get started with their rose hobby?
My great grandmother had about 50 in a very large farm garden (Her name was
Rose) and I loved the way the garden smelled and looked. Ever since I was a small child I can remeber running and playing through the garden with my siblings and cousins and would like to create something like that for my future generations to enjoy. Really I have been hooked on roses since I was a small child. Heather "Emil" wrote in message ... Hi group, Out of curiosity...How did everybody start with their hobby, more like a passion :-) of roses? Did you learn by watching parents plant roses? Is growing roses your occupation, any of you own a nursery? Etc. Etc. As for me, when we bought our first house a couple of years ago, we bought 4 roses. Everytime we went to the nursery, we came home with more and more roses. Final count at our old house was close to 35 rose bushes that I planted from bareroots. So what's everybody story? Emil -----------== Posted via Newsfeed.Com - Uncensored Usenet News ==---------- http://www.newsfeed.com The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! -----= Over 100,000 Newsgroups - Unlimited Fast Downloads - 19 Servers =----- |
#14
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How did everybody get started with their rose hobby?
"Emil" wrote in message ...
Hi group, Out of curiosity...How did everybody start with their hobby, more like a passion :-) of roses? Did you learn by watching parents plant roses? Is growing roses your occupation, any of you own a nursery? Etc. Etc. As for me, when we bought our first house a couple of years ago, we bought 4 roses. Everytime we went to the nursery, we came home with more and more roses. Final count at our old house was close to 35 rose bushes that I planted from bareroots. So what's everybody story? Emil When I was a kid, my uncle bought me a couple of roses. I followed his instructions about fertilizing etc. religiously, and, boy, that first bloom was something! Alas, when the summer came (back home in India, the mild winter is the time whne you grow roses), the grafted variety died, and the suckers was all that was left. I did not pursue the hobby any more after that. So, when I moved into Portland, the Rose City, I thought it was time to get back a part of my childhood... Debu. P.S. Last year, I took 5 roses (Double Delight, Mr. Lincoln, New Zealand, Dolly Parton, Secret) for that uncle of mine. So far they have been doing great. I also gave him some water-absorbing polymer so that the plants don't get dry in the summer. Just keeping my fingers crossed... |
#15
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How did everybody get started with their rose hobby?
My grandfather grew roses and they were HTs, though I remember folloiwng him aroudn while he sprayed them with a brass sprayer; and my parents never dreamed of growing anything so high-maintenance. Then (because I like the Bloomsberries) someone gave me a collection of Vita Sackville West's garden writings, illustrated, and I thought 'what are these amazing flowers that look like something in a Dutch still life?'' For a while I just looked at other people's at Hidcote and Sissinghurst and the like, but eventually I bought my first one - 'Roseraie de L'Hay', and to my amazement, it didn't die (though in fact I didn't water it enough, didn't mulch it, and never fed it, so it's odd that it didn't.) From then I was hooked, and now I have sixty-five roses, nearly all pre 1945, though like you I've lately accepted the odd modern rose - of good family, of course! - into my paradise. I still like HTs only in very formal gardens, though, and mine is all cottagey-mixed. -- Jane Lumley |
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