An Extraordinary Year

5 years ago

In the fifteen years I have been raising roses, I have never seen a season like this. Almost every once bloomer and OGR is in bloom at the same time along with five different Noisettes and a single musk I raised from seed of the double musk. While some like Indica Major, which was the first to bloom, have nearly finished their flushes, any overlap at all between Indica and the Musk is remarkable. Until this week, with the exception of April 28th when the temperature reached 90 degrees, the days have been cool and the nights chilly, with freezing or near freezing temperatures on the nights of April 30th and May 1st. Winter here was the wettest since 1970, with ice and snow from late January, after a mild start. Several varieties did lose buds, probably from the cold in late April and early May, but otherwise conditions must have been almost ideal.

Even today as the early bloomers begin to fade, the view from the summer house across the fence into the European section presents a spectacle of colors and contrasts--the whites and pinks of various shades flanked by brilliant reds and purples and the more subtle tones of mauve of the OGRs

against massive displays of New Dawn, Awakening, and Blossomtime on another fence in the distance. I wish I had a camera capable of capturing the panorama in high resolution just as I saw it this afternoon.

Lindsey

Featured Answer

lplantagenet7AVA
Original Author

5 years ago

RedBird-- I appreciate your kind comments about my roses. I wish I could get a good picture of the whole garden, but here are a few pictures of individual roses.

Starting at the top--

1 & 2 are La Tourterelle

3 & 4 are Hickory Hill Noisette

5 & 6 are Pink Moss

7 & 8 are a purple cemetery shrub rose that looks like Russell's Cottage rose

9 & 10 are a seedling I raised

Lindsey

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Comments (7)

slumgullion in southern OR
5 years ago
last modified: 5 years ago
It sounds amazing!!
lplantagenet7AVA thanked slumgullion in southern OR
Melissa Northern Italy zone 8
5 years ago
Lucky gardeners, we, that such a year comes along every now and then. Enjoy it. It's been a good year for rose blooms here, too, though prolonged humidity and coolish temperatures have brought a good deal of fungus disease as well as abundant large, full, shapely flowers. Rust, once rare, seems to be settling in as a regular phenomenon, though it's not yet causing a lot of damage.

I get weather reports from family in north Florida, and there do often seem to be parallels between conditions there and conditions here. Recently mentions of "cool, crisp" mornings made me prick up my ears: in Florida? in MAY?

Make sure you spend a lot of time out in your garden! It sounds wonderful!
lplantagenet7AVA thanked Melissa Northern Italy zone 8
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RedBird_7a EastTN
5 years ago
Thanks for sharing your description of this beautiful image, Lindsey. I would love to see photos of any of your roses :) Which part of Virginia are you in?

Your weather patterns have been very similar to mine. (I'm in east Tennessee.) Many of my plants seem the most vibrant and full-flowering than I've ever seen them. I should say that my most of my roses, though blooming fine, are getting hit with a significantly more amount of blackspot than usual. (The exceptions are Penelope and Safrano.) I also have a rose that seems to have powdery mildew. I've certainly got experience with powdery mildew on other plants, but not I've never had it show up on a rose before.
lplantagenet7AVA thanked RedBird_7a EastTN
lplantagenet7AVA
Original Author
5 years ago
I'm in central Virginia--near Richmond--and I'm having trouble with blackspot, too, not on European roses, but on Chinas. Noisettes, and hybrids with China-type foliage. I have only a few teas ( small Safrano, Devoniensis, Rosette Delizy, Spice, and Mme Lombard) and they are cleaner, but not spotless. Even New Dawn has spots this year. I've had powdery mildew on Cl. Devoniensis in the past.

Lindsey
kittymoonbeam
5 years ago
Enjoy it while it lasts! These are the times that make the difficult years worth hanging in there for.
lplantagenet7AVA
Original Author
5 years ago
You are right. This is the 7th week for once-bloomers here and will be the last (excepting Setigera which doesn't start until a week or two after the other once-bloomers stop blooming) and only a few varieties are still blooming.

Lindsey