It was beautiful in Newhall. Of course, the 6" fiowers appear in cooler weather, those in hotter periods being smaller, but still decent sized. You'll find those with larger flowers enjoy more water to produce them. I think you'll enjoy her. Nice older HT. Kim

Ingrid

I have not grown Emily, but I have heard very good things about her. ARE always seems to sell out. I believe the shrub is on the mid-large side (4'-6'), so the flowers and plant should be well-proportioned. ARE describes the shrub form as tea-like. I'll be very curious to hear what you think of her. I believe Liz Druitt recommended Emily in The Organic Rose Garden. Emily's photos on the internet are lovely!

I have a weakness for midcentury and earlier HTs...as you probably gathered from the Too Easy Roses thread. Thank you for your compliments on my rather ruminative approach to gardening/writing!

Please keep us updated on Emily. I am considering jackhammering part of my driveway in the next couple of years. If so, I'll be adding some HTs as well as OGRs. I've been thinking of planting Emily for over a decade, and I may just do it!

Carol

I grow it, Ingrid, a lovely rose. It has only slight sweet fragrance to my nose.

The blooms are not six inches in my garden setting, but it's two feet tall here, and on a larger plant the blooms could get larger.

It's a very nice rose, and repeats well. The blooms have an elegant look to them, like a fancy silk bloom.

Thank you, Carol, Krista and Kim for the positive comments. I'm looking forward to growing Emily and will let you know how she does in my delicate and nurturing garden setting. (Even the weeds are dead now!)

Ingrid

They're just "playing possum', Ingrid. Spit on them and see how fast they grow! Kim

So true, Kim. You should see what happens here after a wet winter. It ain't purty!

Ingrid

I know! I have many of the same here. Want some prickly cucumber? Evil! Kim

Here is a link that might be useful: Prickly Cucumber

I don't grow it but have admired it for years at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens where it reached about 5 ft by about 4 ft.
It had a lot of variations in form & color sometimes after bud it looked like laFrance. at other times it had more of the Mrs' Henry Bowles coloration.

{{gwi:291878}}
A nice rose that should be preserved

There are weeds and then there are WEEDS, with the latter usually being natives like the prickly cucumber, that are better-adapted to your grounds than what you are hoping to grow. Worse than almost any exotic, honestly. Most of those ultra-maddening prostrate spurges are actually natives, for example.

Here, along with the loathsome spurges, it's the purple needlegrass (Nassella pulchra -- state grass of California!) that migrates out of the native part of the garden into the rose garden, en masse. It may be drought-adapted and all that, but in its heart-of-hearts it wants the cushy garden life. And do not even THINK of planting the native Aster chilensis (now Symphyotrichum chilense) in any civilized place. I don't care how cute those little dwarf selections in the native plant nursery look; the species is a total thug, garden-wise.

I don't grow Emily, but its photos are lovely -- has the "Cant" look all about it, which commends it to me, right there.

Thanks so much, labrea, for that lovely picture and your comments about Emily. This rose was a substitute for Pretty Jessica, of which I already have one bush, and I'm happy now that I have this lovely lady instead.

Kim, thank you for identifying for me the vine that's growing in a far corner of our property where it's doing its best to strangle some trees. I've gotten rid of the vine part several times but obviously the only solution is to find the root and dig it out. I haven't checked it since it's been so hot, but the trees shade it and I have a feeling it's one of the few things flourishing here.

Ingrid

You're welcome Ingrid. I wish it wasn't prickly cucumber! I wouldn't wish that evil on anyone. Even though the seeds are poisonous to humans, squirrels and rats ADORE them, planting them all over. Digging those tubers is a REAL chore! I've honestly unearthed some the size of an American V-8 engine! Fortunately, this hill has VERY loose soil. In tougher situations, the ONLY way to eliminate a large, well established plant is to mix up a bucket of the strongest Round Up concentration the label suggests. I know, none of us WANTS to use it, but for this purpose it is absolutely necessary. Untangle a good length of the tendrils. Carefully wind them around inside the bucket, taking caution not to kink or break the stems. Leave the foliage it to provide as much surface absorption area as possible. Fill the bucket with the Round Up to cover all of the plant growth wound inside it. Place the bucket securely where it won't fall or easily be knocked over. You may cover it with Saran Wrap or a plastic bag if you wish to keep critters out of it. After a day or so, the cucumber will have really absorbed quite a bit of the Round Up. Leave it there as long as you want. There were several coming up through the large, established Banksiae banksiae growing under and at the western edge of our rear deck. Both the Banksiae and the cucumber were growing up through the slatted deck flooring. Between the density of the Banksiae and the slippery slope I'd have to work on, there was no other way to get the cucumbers out of the Banksiae. I set old three pound coffee cans of Round Up on the deck with them wound up inside them, covered loosely with Saran until the danged things were obviously dead. It worked! Compared to trying to dig the tubers out of the Banksiae, it was MUCH easier removing the dead cucumber vines from the Banksiae. Kim

Wow, Kim, interesting to hear of a method that works on Marah (and might work, too, on some ridiculously resilient exotics). Anything with an underground tuber or such is close to immortal. Exotic weeds are tough, natives can be tougher...

Fortunately, with this invasive monster, once you can uproot the tuber and leave it out in the air, detached from the ground, it dries out and turns to dust! I've enjoyed uprooting and rolling many down hill to dry up in a pile of 'corpses'. Sometimes, though, you can't dig where they are growing. In those cases, Round Up is the only recourse. Kim