Have you ever read The Secret Garden? There's a good description. In my own garden,which is not formal, 20 years of neglect would create Sleeping Beauty's castle. One probably couldn't make it through without a machete.

Find one to visit...nothing like first-hand experience to bring writing to life.

Unless your character is going to relate the story through someone else's eyes, the only way you're going to write it "first hand" is to do as hoovb suggests...wander through one. Kim

Some things would have died. Vines would have gone wild. Maybe a big overgrown tree or two making a shaded dark place near the house. Big tree roots would have cracked walks or walls. Some large branches may have fallen. Weeds in abundance. Garden art or sculpture peering out from the shrubs. Rusty old garden furniture in a pile of leaves and vines. Certainly some wild animals would have taken up residence. Who knows maybe a person living there as well.

Where is this garden? Around here, anything that hasn't been touched in 20 years is going to be an impenetrable mass of shrubbery, with 20 to 30 ft trees. Even paved paths are going to be practically unrecognizable. Surviving garden plants are only going to make it if they are extremely tough and shade tolerant.

Thanks to all! I remember The Secret Garden.:) (Maybe I should watch one of the film versions again...)I LOVE Kittymoonbeam's descriptions.

I'm in Portland, OR, if that helps. And I'm still not sure just how long it was since anybody opened the gates to that garden (the characters haven't told me everything yet, you see.) How might it be different if it were more like 4 and 1/2 to 5 years since it had been touched?

When I first moved here, parts of my yard were wild with brambles and vines. I spent a lot of time trying to get rid of them. The worst is the thorns getting stuck in you and a few times, I almost went into a panic being engulfed in the brambles and not being able to get out. My roses don't get that bad, but sometimes when I'm working on a large climber, I get the same sensation.

Try Barbara Michaels "VANISH WITH THE ROSE" for a description of an abandoned garden of Old Roses. (It's pretty clear from this book, and others, that the author herself knows and loves Old Roses.)

But my friend Lyn reminds me that you might want to read the descriptions of the garden of our dear Miriam Wilkins in her later years, when her garden had become what she called an "Attack Garden." You can find that on the website of the Heritage Roses Group, which Miriam founded.

Jeri

Here is a link that might be useful: Feb. 2010 HRG

Probably a lot more of the roses would have survived than you imagine. They're very tenacious growers. They'd be quite large and overlapping and growing into each other. But there would be a lot of dead wood in them too. And depending on when they were planted they may have been grafted and the grafts might not have survived but the root stock will have taken over and there would be a lot of the red, once blooming Dr. Huey or the white Multiflora growing up through everything. After 20 years it would be one big thorny jungle!

I took a look at the newsletter, and I definitely want to go over it carefully. My family is going to Sacramento next month as part of our vacation... I wonder if there's any way to see the rose garden there? I'll check out that book too.

I talked to my sister in law today about how the overgrown garden might look-- she's been a gardener for a long time-- but she said that she'd never actually been called in to work on anything in that advanced state of decrepitude. ;)Maybe by that point, it would belong to an abandoned house or the person couldn't take care of it at all and wouldn't have the money to pay someone else... One thing she did remind me of is that the Himalayan blackberries would have pretty much taken over!!

You might want to contact some of the people who helped dismantle Miriam's garden after her death. I know I had read an article or a post somewhere that was far more descriptive of her "jungle".

Jeri posted the best link I found on Google, but I think there is more. As we work in our older bodies, many of our gardens are not as well groomed as they once were.

When I purchased my home, the owners were in their nineties. I know the gardens looked more lush a beautiful a couple of decades ago.

Smiles,
Lyn

You can most certainly visit the Sacramento City Cemetery's Historic Rose Garden in December. By January, they may be pruning -- but they don't for the most part prune HARD.

You won't find that place to be a WILD garden -- not at all! But it might give you an idea just how much size some roses can achieve, if they're not whacked back annually. (Be sure to look UP into the trees!)

Anita, who posts on the Antique Roses Forum from time-to-time as "Cemetery Rose" can tell you a bit about what Miriam's garden was like, at the time the roses were removed. She was there.

Jeri

Here is a link that might be useful: Historic Rose Garden, Sacramento City Cemetery

I was thinking about Miriam's garden too. Someone had to go through with a chainsaw to make tunneled paths. When she became elderly she could look at the top of the garden from her deck. From that vantage point it was beautiful. One thing about Portland(you might know this already) many years ago they lined the streets with a rose called Madame Caroline Testout. I think I remember reading that there were thousands of them. I've seen one or two.

One of my neighbors purchased a house that had been vacant for 7 years, and the garden not tended for many more. What she found was:

A large area of blackberry thicket, out of which was growing and blooming 2 very old Madame Caroline Testout roses. They had climbed up a nearby plum tree to get light, and were also growing over the fence and onto the next door neighbor's roof of their one story house.

A mature apricot tree right in the middle of the back yard - it was twisted and very old, but still bloomed and bore fruit.

LOTS of volunteer trees - plums, eugenie, privet, and eucalyptus, to name a few. Also some huge pine trees on the perimeter, which had been there for ages.

My garden was not abandoned, but little had been done to it for 20 years when we moved into our house. It had at least 50 surviving roses - most of the survivors were teas, hybrid wichuranas, or other really old roses. A couple of the teas had gotten huge - maybe 15 feet wide, and 8-9 feet tall. There were 5 surviving hybrid teas, but they had dwindled, and did not bloom (except for Cl La France, as noted below). The old old roses had gotten bigger, and bloomed a huge amount. Thornless (thank heavens!) blackberry had taken over an area at the back of the property about 20 ft square, and there was another area where volunteer fig and plum trees had made a sort of forest. That's where Cl La France had climbed up the trees, and was blooming and disporting itself in the canopy. Old bulbs were still coming up in the Spring, all over the garden.

Jackie

my wood has been neglected for over 2 decades and is basically a dense thicket of bramble and nettle (which at least indicates good soil fertility). Pioneer shrubs such as hawthorn, elder and dogroses would be colonising any areas which are not under too dense a tree canopy (which would also be pioneers such as birch and sycamore). There is usually a clear trajectory of land changes, from a garden, turning into scrub and finally going back to full tree cover as seedlings fight for any available light. In general, movem,ent will be upward as the canopy closes over, causing etiolation and elongation - various vines will have done their utmost so honeysuckles and ivy will be rampantm reaching skywards. If the tree canopy is light (aspens, larch), then the effect will be cathedral-like with tall, tall trees and a dappled light falling on ferns, brackens and fungi. Old ramblers such as Kiftsgate and Paul's Himalayan musk will have stretched to quite ridiculous heights - can be over 20metres - expect to see a preponderance of the wilder roses rather than garden hybrid teas - blooms will be in panicles and clusters rather than individual large blossoms.

I took a look at the newsletter, and I definitely want to go over it carefully. My family is going to Sacramento next month as part of our vacation... I wonder if there's any way to see the rose garden there? I'll check out that book too.

I talked to my sister in law today about how the overgrown garden might look-- she's been a gardener for a long time-- but she said that she'd never actually been called in to work on anything in that advanced state of decrepitude. ;)Maybe by that point, it would belong to an abandoned house or the person couldn't take care of it at all and wouldn't have the money to pay someone else... One thing she did remind me of is that the Himalayan blackberries would have pretty much taken over!!

Maia -- The rose garden is just -- part of the cemetery. Walk through the gates at 1000 Broadway, and you're in the rose garden. There ARE days when the gates are locked, but that's all on the website.

There is, as well, a DVD of the garden, with information on its history.

I should also say -- Truly "Forgotten" roses might NOT look so much like the jungle you're picturing. What they looked like would, realistically, depend upon where they were -- climate -- conditions.

"Forgotten" roses in California look like this.

Jeri

I can take some phone pictures if you like :) Message me.

I started moving my ramblers out here with a natural woodland backing up to my lawn almost a decade ago. I didn't live here yet; it's where my father grew up. I had a little garden backed by ramblers that are known to get huge. I wanted them to climb into the trees.

The trees mostly climbed into them ;) But they fight it out, along with the Virginia creeper and the wild black raspberries and a Wisteria that appeared from out of the blue.

I once found a family of rabbits living in the base of one of the roses! I leave the area for the wildlife now.

In the winter, I can easily see a crazy old yew that is normally now in near-complete shade. The shade makes it contort and reach for the light. It's like my snowman for winter, just a bit creepier-looking :)

The deer come and go out of this line of woods that stole my little garden, and I enjoy that they eat those roses, not my fancy ones near the house!

(edit - My Felicite et Perpetue must be twenty feet high back there. She's the one that sprouted a wisteria that I didn't notice until it peeked through her/the tree canopy.)

Here is a link that might be useful: Click on the 'photos' tab to see lots of pictures of F et P.

This post was edited by meredith_e on Wed, Dec 19, 12 at 22:50

Here is a picture of a wilder part of my garden where you can see Madame Alfred Carriere growing up the trees - I planted it, but all of the care it gets now is a handful of time release food once a year. It has been growing there about 15 years.

Jackie