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roseseek

What REAL rose nurseries used to be like...

7 years ago
last modified: 7 years ago

If you're a bit later to the game and were never able to order from Joseph Kern Nursery in Mentor, Ohio, you have a treat in store for you! I have just uploaded their1970-71 Old and New Roses catalog to Help Me Find. Four hundred and forty-four roses of all types were available budded and for remarkably low prices viewed through today's eyes. Plus two roses for which there is nothing in the database... "Big Piccadilly, a larger flowered version of Piccadilly" and "Marblehead, a red and white striped, very fragrant HT" which was sold into the mid 1980s by Ernest Vash at Historical Roses, also in Mentor. The eleven page catalog mailed for a whopping six cents postage!




Pickering was a bit like them. Vintage, at its heyday was a bit like them. Hortico has approached them. No one else in this part of the world around these days comes close.

Comments (46)

  • 7 years ago

    Thank you for taking the time to post this here and at HMF I'm off to read the whole thing. Seems like I'm too late for everything sometimes.

    roseseek thanked Vaporvac Z6-OhioRiverValley
  • 7 years ago

    Thanks for posting this and a short trip down memory lane. There were others in Mentor as well. Anyone else remember the old Melvin Wyant rose nursery? How about Wayside Gardens being there also at first?

    roseseek thanked the_bustopher z6 MO
  • 7 years ago
    Thank you , Kim.
    Wow, look at those prices, time really changes but it is nice to see prices that low.

    jin
    roseseek thanked Plumeria Girl (Florida ,9b)
  • 7 years ago

    Fabulous! Thank you!

    roseseek thanked mustbnuts zone 9 sunset 9
  • 7 years ago

    Thanks Kim! What happened to the nursery? I could drive down there if there is anything left after all this years. Maybe the local nurseries still have some of those lovely old roses. I may drive down there to do some rose hunting this year.......

    roseseek thanked summersrhythm_z6a
  • 7 years ago
    Must be, that is a beautiful rose. Love the colour too.
    I did the same thing but some roses I recognize like Peace, crimson Glory, butterscotch.
    I did look into a few like Piccadilly , Peter frankenfield. Peter is very pretty colour remind me so much of All American beauty. I meant the colour wise. Hortico offers it.
    But I know I try to find Marblehead but I can't find it then I wrote another which is called Modern Times. I was tired of searching so I called it a day.
    jin
    roseseek thanked Plumeria Girl (Florida ,9b)
  • 7 years ago

    I love seeing all these illustrations and reading about new-to-me roses (thank you SO much Kim!) but it also makes me a little sad to think we don’t have very many places like this with these roses anymore.

    The prices make me a little sad too, lol!

    I can‘t tell just yet if gardening is going to come back or not. My high school students are very keen to learn all they can, so maybe there’s some hope! :-)

    roseseek thanked Perma n’ Posies/9A FL
  • 7 years ago

    Joseph Kern donated many roses to the Wooster Rose Garden of Legend and Romance. I tried to obtain a modern link to the garden. It appears that the garden is no more. The link below states the following:

    "Garden of Roses of Legend and Romance is recorded closed at this location. If it's incorrectly closed, please report it."

    https://www.google.com/search?newwindow=1&source=hp&ei=STx3XO3SCeLJjwTy-ZmoAg&q=Wooster+Rose+Garden+of+Legend+and+Romance.&btnK=Google+Search&oq=Wooster+Rose+Garden+of+Legend+and+Romance.&gs_l=psy-ab.3..33i160.12014.12014..14804...2.0..0.166.275.0j2......0....2j1..gws-wiz.....6..35i39.htkBUAadR-Y#btnK=Google%20Search

    Can anyone verify?

    roseseek thanked henry_kuska
  • 7 years ago

    I was there 2017 so I'm not sure about that information. I'll check in on it. There are people taking care of it quite well at the time.

    roseseek thanked Vaporvac Z6-OhioRiverValley
  • 7 years ago
    last modified: 7 years ago

    Henry, Glad to see your post again! Getting a little worried there.

    Someone could call College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences during business hours, and find out what happened to the garden. The garden belongs to that college. When the weather is warmer I could drive down there to take a look, hopefully the roses are still there.

    College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences
    100 Agricultural Administration Building
    2120 Fyffe Road, Columbus, OH 43210

    Phone: 614-292-6891

    roseseek thanked summersrhythm_z6a
  • 7 years ago
    last modified: 7 years ago

    Thanks, Henry. I'm glad you all enjoyed the listing. I knew Wayside and Wyant were there. Ernest Vash was a gentleman who lived there, too, and who budded his own selection of roses, offering them off a mimeographed list he would send for a SASE. He had many single HTs; old floribundas and even Marblehead. I bought from him for several years before he closed. He was difficult to obtain roses from as he would send his list and I would digest it immediately upon receipt, mailing my order by the next day's mail, only to find out he had sold out most of the varieties. He would accept phone calls to discuss the roses, two nights a week, during a two or three hour window. I never phoned him as I had Modern Roses 8, the latest edition at the time and figured I could come up with the information I found most useful. I would love to find some more of the old Armstrong Nurseries catalogs from the fifties, sixties and seventies to put on HMF. Barney Gardner gave me a large box full of catalogs he had collected over the decades, which I passed along to Bob Edberg of Limberlost Roses as, at the time, there wasn't a HMF and I hadn't the room to store boxes of such things. Most of us would find it remarkable what USED to be commonly, easily available. If the retail catalog offered these things, you can bet the wholesale one did, too. Imagine walking into a nursery to find bud and bloom, budded Teas, Chinas, Noisettes, Damasks, Centifolias, etc. !

  • 7 years ago

    So I called OARDC, but the people in charge of Seacrest Arboretum of the the Rose Garden is a part are gone until Monday. I'll report what they say then. However, I did speak to someone in a related department and she said she didn't think it was permanent, but until they could get some sort of blight under control! I asked if that might be RRD and she said that sounded familiar. Ugh! What a tragedy if they haven't been propagating some of these roses prior. I know they are floating around that area as they often have pruning and plant sales of their cuttings, but who knows if people can be reached that have them now. They are the only repository for some of these roses.

    roseseek thanked Vaporvac Z6-OhioRiverValley
  • 7 years ago

    Bad news. Due to RRV they have dug up ALL the roses. They said they'd been removing some every year for the past couple of years and planting other flowers in their place. However, people kept inquiring why they weren't keeping up the rose garden and they got tired of it. I find that a weird explanation, but anyway. They were not all infected, but two weeks ago, they removed them all. So that's that. They may use it as a plant and rose test garden which I can't even comment on. I'm devastated as it was one of my favourite places to visit for many years. They stopped the plant salesmaybe two years ago as they were afraid of spreading it via cuttings. i still have to call the fellow in charge of the "new" garden to see if they preserved anything..

    roseseek thanked Vaporvac Z6-OhioRiverValley
  • 7 years ago
    last modified: 7 years ago

    How sad is that? Very sad.

  • 7 years ago

    Thank you vaporvac. I think that the removing roses and putting in other flowers started more than a few years ago. Before that they were removing the original old roses and putting in Austins (because someone liked Austins!). It appeared that whoever was in charge did not understand the original purpose of the garden.

  • 7 years ago

    I think you're right Henry. When an old one would die for whatever reason, they wouldn't necessarily replace with something old. However, they did have some older no longer easily available Austins, so they're gone, as well. I just can't believe they removed the gorgeous mosses and Roxburghii. They had an impressive collection of mosses. I think they were too cold for the Hybrid Musks. Either that or they didn't prune them properly. Peter Schneider thought it was a pruning issue and only a few looked great. Those are the ones I bought. And I'll never forger the arbor with Viking Queen covering it and Nearly Wild at her feet, or the magnificent Red Ribbons co-mingling with Chevy Chase on the split-rail. Oh yes, and New Dawn surrounding the entrance and Veilchenbleu next to White Dawn. Heartbreaking. I feel like maybe they were just looking for an excuse, but, of course, I'm not the one faced with the upkeep etc.

  • 7 years ago

    So sad to hear that wonderful garden in Wooster is gone. They had a wonderful collection of shrubs; early Kordes, Tantau etc. in addition to the wonderful old mosses. How lucky I was, just getting my start in old and shrub roses, to have lived just a few hours south.

    They also had a wonderful conifer planting and many varieties of flowering crabapples. Hard to know what is still there, as it was many decades ago when I was there.


    As they found out-- you cannot plant a new rose where an old rose has succumbed to RRD. That became obvious to me, having dealt with RRD in a public garden, that root to root transmission is a FACT. If I had a rose grown from one of theirs I would dispatch it, pronto, and seal it in a trash bag.

  • 7 years ago

    Oops, that was OT. Sorry!


    I had a wonderful correspondence with Ernest Vash back then (early 70's, I think it was). I planted some of his wonderful grafted plants by flashlight in my SE Ohio garden.


    The only plants I've ever seen that came close were from (what is now) Palatine..My rose club put together a club order and people drove all the way to Canada to pick them up.


    No one in my rose club shared my crazy enthusiasm for shrub and old garden roses, so I never learned about Joseph Kern. I think Pat Wiley told me about Ernest Vash. A long time ago..


    roseseek thanked barbarag_happy
  • 7 years ago

    my understanding is that Once they dug a rose out it was only replaced with perennials of some sort.

    roseseek thanked Vaporvac Z6-OhioRiverValley
  • 7 years ago

    I wonder if they actually had rose rosette virus or just had weedkiller symptoms.

  • 7 years ago

    Who knows? I certainly didn't see any when I was there 2017 and I looked pretty closely. Perhaps they took them out earlier in Spring as I was there in June. I talked with someone who was doing maintenance to the gardens mulching Etc and they didn't mention it. I was asking them about the hybrid musk's which looks pretty ratty at the time. Might have thought a dedicated worker would have known. I just can't believe they took them all out. Especially given the purpose of this Garden Etc.

  • 7 years ago

    This is from a 6/26/2010 e-mail that I sent to another rose hybridizer:


    "I have utilized it extensively over many years. Their list of roses is out

    of date as recent care takers have not taken the job
    seriously (my opinion).

    As examples: 1) many roses were removed and replaced with
    annuals and 2)

    when a rose was replaced with a different variety, wooden
    name stakes were

    used. Needless to say
    many/most of these are now unknown roses."

    Henry Kuska

    --------------------------------------------

    H. Kuska 2019 comment: I am trying to find a place to post the original names of the roses. The list is too long for this forum.


  • 7 years ago

    Henry, perhaps you could make a new entry for the garden on HMF and then there would be links to the roses as well. I've done that for a couple of gardens that I visit. There is an entry already, but I'm not sure if you can add to it. I have a list of some from when I visited 2017.

  • 7 years ago

    If you would like to send me a file with the names, I can add to the entries or create new ones.

  • 7 years ago

    vaporvac and roseseek, I sent both of you the list. Actually I sent 2 lists. The first is only the second half of the full list. The second is the full list. I also have the garden map as to where each plant was located. However, it may be of too low a resolution to be useful. I am looking for a higher resolution copy.

  • 7 years ago

    I have the map in high enough resolution to send as a jpg attachment. I will need your e-mail addresses to send.

  • 7 years ago
    last modified: 7 years ago

    Thank you, Henry. I received your private messages. I will retype the names into an Excel file to be saved as a CSV file which is the form to be uploaded.

  • 7 years ago

    I used to collect old rose information and I had one of the largest collections in the U.S. (I was on the National ARS Old Rose Committee.) I gave most of it away to be sold at rose society meetings (and or to other collectors) but every once in a while I come across something that I missed. In looking for the above map I found the Fall 1964-Spring 1965 Kern Rose Nursery catalog (16 pages). It looks similar to the one posted in this thread. Does anyone know of a good use of this catalog?

  • 7 years ago

    Henry, the one message containing the moss roses ends with Alfred de Dalmas, so if there are more mosses or other roses in that list, they didn't send.

  • 7 years ago

    Would you like the names of any of the roses that I observed in my last visit?

  • 7 years ago

    Thanks, vaporvac, putting them in the database is best if done to document a particular date. The list Henry sent is for 1969. Henry, I can message you my address if you'd like to send the catalog to me so I can upload it as a snapshot of what once was.

  • 7 years ago

    roseseek, yes send me your post office address and I will send it. I sent you the 35 moss roses. I do not know why you did not get them.

    vaporvac, did you get the moss roses?

  • 7 years ago

    roseseek, one of the messages that you sent me contained what I had sent you. It appears that you did not receive many parts of my message. Possibly your e-mail service cut them off. I can send the complete list with the catalog by post office mail.

  • 7 years ago

    No, I also did not get the Moss roses it cut off at the same point.

  • 7 years ago

    Rose seek, my roses would be from 2017. I am not seeing them on the list Henry sent us. There aren't that many but they were quite prominently displayed.

  • 7 years ago
    last modified: 7 years ago

    OK, Henry, thank you. Every rose you sent in your three messages are listed here, except K-15JeannetteLight Red3 as there is no Gallica of that name, nor anything I find close enough. Anyone else wish to make a stab at it?


    Vaporvac, there is also thislisting of that same garden from another year.

  • roseseek thanked Vaporvac Z6-OhioRiverValley
  • 7 years ago

    Thank you. Searching that didn't bring up the Gallica the several times I put it through. But after all the matching and cross referencing I've done with the database tonight, I'm surprised I can see to type!

  • 7 years ago

    Henry, thank you. Your package arrived. I am wading through all the information to see what else might be added.


  • 7 years ago

    It’s so sad that people keep dragging KOs into RRD problem. Any rose could get RRD, KO is just the #1 seller in the world. Jason Veil should know better than that.

  • 7 years ago
    last modified: 7 years ago

    They still blame Dr. Huey for RMV.

  • 7 years ago

    I'm trying not to comment!

  • 6 years ago

    very important: does anybody know whether the rose 'Archduchess Charlotte' from Joseph Kern still exists and in which garden. Please let me known.

  • 6 years ago

    You could drop Peter Schneider a line. If anyone would know, it would be him. Worth a shot anyway. Freedom Gardens