I do not think that is Madame Caroline Testout - I have grown MCT for 30 years, and have 2 bushes of it, and the bloom form and color are completely wrong IMO. Here are some pics of mine -

Jackie

ElfRosa,

If you get those beds mulched with a good layer of a knitting type mulch such as cypress mulch, so that it will not slide down the sloping grade in the rose garden, but stay in place, it will go a long way to addressing your watering dilemma.

Moses.

Mulch is wonderful, Moses, and I think your suggestion is perfect. However, personally I would first put down a 3 inch layer of compost in a large circle around every rose and at least that thick of a layer of horse manure. I have horrible soil here on my property and those two ingredients get the credit for transforming my soil from hydrophobic concrete clay and grit to something that holds water and grows plants. Healthy soil is the absolute first consideration for me when starting a garden. If it doesn’t exist, create it by heavily amending with organic matter. I know one forum member ridiculed me once for this method, calling it my
“Yee-haw pile on the poop approach” and I laughed and said to come look at my garden. It’s actually one of my favorite things to tell people about my garden philosophy. :) I don’t care what anyone wants to call it, I just know it works well for me. Your soil needs to be rehydrated and adding organic matter will help with this. It’s obvious, ElfRosa, that you are making headway in that poor neglected plot and I am excited to see it come to life again! It’s a bit like the story of the Secret Garden all over again.

@jacqueline9CA thank you for the gorgeous photos of MCT! That photo I found appears to have a filter, so I'm not even sure the color is true. Hopefully we'll be able to ID these roses when they bloom next spring.

@Moses, Pitt PA, cold W & hot-humid S, z6 this is in progress, but the slope is definitely pretty challenging. Each rose now has a large water catchment basin around it. The trick is filling the basin with mulch while also still being able to fill the basin with water without the mulch floating away out of the basin and down the slope. I'll have to take some photos of what this looks like when I'm there later today.

Another complication has been the wind! This site is right along the river, and I had no idea how windy it could get down there until I started spending so much time in this garden. Not only does it blow the automatic sprinkler water away from the roses, it blows away the mulch, so it has to stay damp, or be contained, or be in larger pieces that will stay in place. It even blows away the weeds, my empty water jugs, and can create a little dust storm at times, especially when I'm pulling weeds out of some of the unwatered areas, big cloud of dust.

@judijunebugarizonazn8 I would love to be able to layer this awful soil with compost and manure - but there are the complications I just listed, plus, I'm trying to not give these roses excessive nitrogen until they are showing better signs of recovery - I'm now thinking that won't happen until spring. Organic materials are absolutely essential for healthy soil, and this is the most unhealthy soil I think I've ever seen.

It's like the not-so-secret really public but ignored Secret Garden :-) Tourism season will be upon us soon, which is going to be interesting - not only with the massive number of people who will be walking though here to the port-a-potties, but also for me figuring out how to find parking to keep up my work!

1. @jacqueline9CA, I also don't think it's MCT. I guess I didn't explain myself well. I grow that rose myself for many years and it's quite distinctive, But sometimes Roses can look different with my camera and the time of year. Maybe not that different though!
2. What I meant to say was that it reminds me of roses from that time early hybrid teas. I feel that I have seen this rose before With its large leaves. Yours looks so beautiful! Mine do not do so well here being prone to black spot and winter kill. However, I adore the fragrance and I have another rose That covers The naked bottoms
3. I do not know why this is numbering things!

Manure may be helpful at keeping tourists from trampling where they should not...

There also a spray on mulch “glue” to keep mulch in place. I’ve never used it and it might not be cost efficient. Just thought I’d throw it out there.

Vaporvac - I must confess that I think of MCT and other "HT" roses from the 19th century as being from "before they ruined the HTs". Not a popular opinion, I know. However, when my DH and I moved in to our 1905 house, the garden had old tea roses, chinas, polyanthas, hybrid musks, and the most "modern" roses were a selection of HTs from the 1950s and 60s. Those were the ONLY roses in the entire garden which were NOT healthy, and were also not doing well regarding blooming & growing. Oh - they were also throwing up loads of Dr. Huey canes.

I eventually got rid of them all except Cl Peace, which I kept because it was an early clone from the 1940s and the blooms are spectacular (all of the previous gardeners of our garden were my DH's father, grandfather & grandmother, and great grandfather and great grandmother, so the info has trickled down the family about who was gardening in which decade. They tended to plant whatever roses were "new and popular", at the local nursery (which started in business in 1909, and is still in business) but since they started doing that before 1910, we inherited a garden full of lovely old roses.

Curiously - I think you said you are interested in very old HTs like MCT - what others of that kind do you grow? I have Cl Crimson Glory, which I found in a neglected garden 3 blocks from my house, but that is it.

Jackie

@Vaporvac Z6-OhioRiverValley and @jacqueline9CA it's so interesting that you see this, even with poor photos and minimal information! I don't have documentation yet, but the local historian recently did confirm that this garden was planted by Peterson & Dering, which leads us to their hybridizer, Gordon von Abrams.

Take a look at that first photo I posted with this initial post - there are two here, a light peach/pink and a darker pink, that I think are among the oldest roses in the garden. Any thoughts? I know there are several people who post here who really know their von Abrams roses.

I just erased my whole post Ofvon a Bb.

Photos of some of the challenges - this one illustrates just how bad it is. Pale dry soil, torn landscape cloth and a mole or gopher hole :-(

This photo shows the mulched and watered roses in their current state. They still look terrible, but there is a lot of new growth happening now.

And these last two photos show the slope - it's really difficult to capture this, but it's more sloped than it appears here. Water runs right down and everything else blows away.

@Vaporvac Z6-OhioRiverValley ? I'm not sure what you mean?

That's an interesting clue, @ElfRosa. I just did an advanced search on HMF of von Abrams roses. Just for a start, take at look at his 'Ebb Tide' (nothing like the more current variety with that name!), which is said to have glossy foliage (like in your photo). Take a look also at 'Pink Favorite', which seems to have been one of his more popular roses. (Edit to add that these are, respectively, a light peach/pink and a darker pink variety.)

Vaporvac - how frustrating! I have done that more than once - I hope you can re-do it after you recuperate from the annoyance!

ElfRosa - thank you for explaining and showing the problems you have at that site with the slope, and horrendous winds! Despite all of that, I can tell that the roses you have been tending are recuperating well - it might take them a season or two, but they WILL get better. Re the slope - if you ever get any funding for your project, I have a thought. My DH gets some poured concrete sort of large brick like-things (see pic below) which he said were intended to be used as tree rings. You can get curved ones, and straight ones. I think he gets them someplace like Home Depot. He uses them sometimes in our garden around roses - they fit against each other, and you can stack them one or two or three layers high. He uses them to make sort of raised beds around the roses. Here is a pic of one he built around Grandmother's Hat. I thought it might help the "washing away" problem of the soil.

Jackie

I forgot to mention that these things come in several different colors.

Jackie

My pad went crazy. I linked to various von abrams roses on HMF. Heres a general link.

@catspa_zone9sunset14 I think you're right - I believe Pink Favorite and its sport, Honey Favorite are some of the older roses here. Ebb Tide I hadn't considered yet, but it looks very similar also! I hope I can find some local documentation of the varieties that were originally planted.

Here is a post I wrote about one of these roses a few years ago, when they were in better shape and before I was their caretaker. https://www.houzz.com/discussions/6380397/a-magnificent-but-mysterious-public-garden-rose 

(Incidentally, I was dragged over the coals for these same photos in another rose group, no roses could look like this, some really nasty comments basically calling me stupid. I realize these lush photos seem almost unreal, but yikes, not cool.)

@jacqueline9CA thank you for the idea - it's like a hardscape version of what I'm doing with soil (infiltration basins). It almost seems like this would also be useful under the soil, like a giant pot to hold water rather than letting it disappear into this horrid dry berm! It was really windy when I arrived today, literally blowing the soil and compost out of my shovel. I've quickly learned to wet everything down and always stand on the upwind side :-)

@Vaporvac Z6-OhioRiverValley ah ha! Thank you for the link.

ElfRosa - please keep us informed about the Fall bloom of these roses (I am assuming you will get some, after all of that water and then feeding in Sept). Then please do send us pics of next Spring!

Question - how much rain or snow does that area get in the Winter? I hope you get enough to help all of that mulch deteriorate and feed the roses. Oh, just occured to me -will you have to cover them for Winter? (I always forget about that - it does not even snow here, and if the temp gets down to freezing, it makes the headlines of the local paper!

Jackie

@jacqueline9CA I definitely will! I feel like I'm starting to see a turning point - the foliage coming from the new growth is starting to look pretty lush, like new spring growth does. We'll have a bit more hot weather this week, but it's definitely starting to cool down for the season.

This is Pacific NW and we get a lot of rain, very little snow. The roses are all acclimated to this climate and need no covering. My concern is that this sloped dry berm isn't even getting hydrated in the winter! The way that water runs off it must be changed, so I'm hoping to reshape it this winter in a way that helps it captures maximum rainwater.

A couple of photos from yesterday - maybe Pink Favorite here?

I'm thinking this might be a Knockout - it says a lot about the conditions when a Knockout struggles to survive

Does that rose really have matte foliage, or is it a trick of the camera?

ElfRosa - yay for the blooms - those roses must be feeling better!

Another thought - I just got a vocabulary lesson from my DH about the concrete thingies I showed you a pic of around Grandmother's Hat (above). He is a retired contractor, so knows the proper thing to call things. He said the light grey things around GH are "retaining wall blocks". There is another thing that he has put around many of our roses to make small raised beds (pic below) - these are called "tree surrounds". He gets both of them at Home Depot. The brick colored tree surrounds make a circle using 3 of them - the pieces are curved. They can be stacked easily to make the bed tall or shorter, and don't come apart as easily. You can put them upside down to stack better. He has even used them on slopes, digging the bottom one into the slope more, so that its surface ends up being more or less level.

Since you said you were going to try to reshape the berm a bit make it retain more water, I thought I would make sure to mention both kinds. I asked him if he knew what the current prices for this stuff were, and he said he was at Home Depot the other day, and they were selling one complete level of tree surround (3 curved pieces that make a circle) for about $25. I thought maybe you could try that on one one rose as you prepared for Winter, as a test, and see how it worked compared to roses which just had shaped dirt around them. Just a thought -

@mad_gallica (z5 Eastern NY) the foliage does look somewhat matte, which I think is because all of it is brand new foliage, which hasn't really matured yet. It's got that soft sort of springtime look!

@jacqueline9CA thanks for the ideas! I have seen those products at Home Depot and other big box stores. I would have to go through an approval process to add something like this, though - an organization tried to add hardscape a few years back, I'm not sure what they had in mind, but it fell through.

What about logs as a berm? That is not hardscape, would it need approval?

@Sherry8aNorthAL it would definitely still need approval - it's a moderately high-traffic pedestrian area, about to become an extremely heavy-traffic pedestrian area. So anything that could interfere with that or be a trip hazard could be problematic.

Well I was thinking of the logs on the berm.

The thin top layer of soil looks like ash from its color. Is an ash layer from recent wildfires plausible?

@Sherry8aNorthAL even though it's sort of partitioned off with concrete posts and a chain, people can easily step over it and they walk on the berm quite a bit, as do the deer. That will get a lot worse during tourist season, especially since there will be a big row of portapotties along the entire back side of it. I think the lawn space inside the roses is where the main music stage will be set up for at least a month, and that will likely mean even more people walking on the berm.

@apple_pie_order it's just bad clay soil that's extremely dry - no nearby wildfires or ash here, thankfully! It's really grey, and hard as a rock, but the top layer seems to loosen a bit when it's walked on - the deer scuff it up quite a bit and then it's dusty and blowing around. I can't get a shovel into it at without soaking it in water first.

ElfRosa, can I just say how much I love your tenacious spirit when it comes to seeing this garden through until it becomes what it’s meant to be!

Great project - well done!

I haven't much to add except that I suspect the yellow rose with the gorgeous reddish stamens may be Golden Showers, rather than Golden Wings. But look it up and see what you think. They do have quite a few features in common but all those muddled inner petals/ petaloids and the shiny dark foliage seen in your photo seem to me to be more characteristic of GS.

GS is a wonderful rose, deservedly popular and one of the few modern roses I'm really fond of. <3

https://www.helpmefind.com/gardening/l.php?l=21.270881

[ETA: Sorry, the links I've tried to insert with HelpMe Find don't seem to be working!)

@judijunebugarizonazn8 you are very kind, thank you so much!

@comtessedelacouche (10b S.Australia: hotdryMedclimate) thank you! And I appreciate your thoughts on the ID - the flowers are still few and far between, but they are now a brighter shade of yellow, which also lines up with this being Golden Showers instead of Golden Wings. I appreciate the information, and when we have more flowers and better foliage hopefully we can confirm it!

A couple photos from today, it's nice to see a little color!

ElfRosa -- I've been following this thread, and I don't think rose buds have ever looked as sweet as the ones you've jost posted, considering everything you've done to conjure them into existence. I've been very inspired by your work to bring beauty back into your community.

@windowsill_gardener that's very lovely, thank you! I was pretty excited to see these almost normal-looking buds :-)

A woman yelled at me tonight "Every time I walk by, I see you out here working! I just want you to know that someone is noticing" or something to that effect.

I really appreciate all supportive words!

Isn't it great when random strangers give you encouragement or praise for your efforts at gardening? So happy that happened for you - you deserve it! I am sure more other people are noticing too!

Our property is almost triangular, and the longest part of it is at the street, so the street facing part of our garden is about a half a block long. It is a busy pedestrian sidewalk, going to a nearby college and the downtown of our town. When I am out in the garden, I frequently get admiring comments from pedestrians walking by. Each time it makes me very happy.

Change of topic - I grew Golden Showers for years, and I also think your photo is probably that rose. In our climate (Med, zone 9/10) the blooms did open and finish and fall apart in about 1-2 days, resulting in an actual "golden shower" of petals. I always thought that is how it got its name. Lots more buds came behind the falling petals, so I did not mind how fast the blooms proceded. Looking forward to hearing about how yours does in that regard next Spring.

Jackie

@jacqueline9CA thank you! It's so interesting that your garden's unusual shape puts you into a busy pedestrian space. My own garden is extremely secluded, so this is a different kind of experience for me. I tend to avoid the busiest times so I can find super close parking and work uninterrupted, but it's also pretty fun to have conversations with people. I'm often working right in the middle of interesting activity - concerts, vintage car cruises, mural painting, dance rehearsals - it's random enough that I never know quite what to expect!

I didn't see any new flowers on the suspected Golden Showers this week, but I think there are some buds forming, if the deer don't get them. I don't grow this variety, it's new to me, thank you for the info!

If I was you, I would spray that "rotten egg" deer go away stuff on those buds, just to save them. It doesn't hurt the deer or anybody or animals.

Jackie

@jacqueline9CA that might be an option for next year - we're getting some rain already (yay!) and I know that's not a good mix with deer repellent.

Congrats for the rain!

Jackie

ElfRosa,

This is a delicate question, but needs to be said. How are you financing your renovation, which progress that you have made gladdens my heart? How can we (III), your fellow Roses Forum friends help?

Moses.

@Moses, Pitt PA, cold W & hot-humid S, z6 that's very thoughtful, thank you! So far the cost is minimal since it's mostly been water hauling, but since that is not sustainable or practical, I do have some thoughts about what could be done long term. But for now I'm going to wait until spring to see if it's even possible to get these roses properly hydrated over winter and looking normal again.

There is also community, tourist, and historical interest and there might be funds or fundraising abilities there, I don't know. I've been focusing on keeping the plants watered and alive but once the rains take over I'll start asking those questions!

ElfRosa,

That's good to know. You can't bear the financial burden on your back alone. Once a good thing starts taking form the right people come along to help lighten the burden. Many hands make a project of epic proportions come down to size.

Moses.

Can't wait to see your pictures on here of those roses next Spring!

Jackie

Me too, Jacquiline. A lot of pleasant surprises, variety wise, are in store for us. Fortunately, winter damage does not appear to be an issue at all. With ElfRosa's capable care, the garden should thrive. It could be that the among the unique varieties there, some may be the only representative left.

Moses.

@Moses, Pitt PA, cold W & hot-humid S, z6 @jacqueline9CA thank you, and I hope it will look very different next year! I was going through old street view images and the year they looked their best was also a year when it appears they went unpruned and unweeded (2023) but I think they had adequate water and were tall enough to avoid deer damage. Here's a series of comparison photos in case it is of interest!

October 2012

June 2016

July 2018

May 2023

May 2026

That's really fabulous!Where did you find those pictures ? I like the 2012 trellis look.

@Vaporvac Z6-OhioRiverValley those are just historical streetview photos from Google Earth- there are others from another angle but they don't cover as many years as this view does. They looked pretty well cared for back in 2012! There are also historical satellite photos and I've been able to dig up a few random internet/tourist photos too.

Elfrosa, so to find these on Google Earth, there's a way to search for historical streetviews? can you specify a year or decade? I think the first one I ever saw of our (old) house must have been in the 90s. Sweet memory. I'd love to find that image.

Sylvia, I've found old Google Earth views of our house by entering our address in Google. Sometimes you need to go down the pages a bit.

@sylviaww 10a, hot dry inland Socal the historical satellite views are a little harder to find, but the streetviews are pretty easy - when you are in streetview, look for "See more dates" and it will give you the options. Most views only go back to around 2007, though. Satellite images go back decades, but the older ones are really low quality.

This is how it looks in Google Maps:

And in Google Earth: