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Old 09-04-2003, 01:32 AM
Emil
 
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Default 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


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Old 09-04-2003, 01:56 AM
saki
 
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Default 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. :-)

----

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Old 09-04-2003, 02:32 AM
Radika Kesavan
 
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Default 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

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Old 09-04-2003, 03:20 AM
Mike
 
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Default 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


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Old 09-04-2003, 05:08 AM
Gail Futoran
 
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Default 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




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Old 09-04-2003, 05:08 AM
Kirra
 
Posts: n/a
Default 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


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Old 09-04-2003, 07:32 AM
Bob Bauer
 
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Default 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/
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Old 09-04-2003, 02:32 PM
Shiva
 
Posts: n/a
Default 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.

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Old 09-04-2003, 05:08 PM
dave weil
 
Posts: n/a
Default 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
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Old 09-04-2003, 05:44 PM
Cass
 
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Default 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


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Old 09-04-2003, 06:32 PM
Susan H. Simko
 
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Default 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

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Old 09-04-2003, 06:56 PM
Susan Solomon
 
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Default 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




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Old 09-04-2003, 06:56 PM
Heather
 
Posts: n/a
Default 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






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Old 09-04-2003, 08:20 PM
Debabrata Ghosh
 
Posts: n/a
Default 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...
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Old 09-04-2003, 08:20 PM
Jane Lumley
 
Posts: n/a
Default 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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