| Valerie, (Really, I DID, TRY to make this response short. Alas......) If you haven't been to the rose forums, hie thyself over there, post haste. Maybe also to the NC forum, if there is one. Ashdown Roses is in your part of the world --well, semi-close. They're in Campobello, SC. They have a luscious catalog & website, and specialize in antiques, hybrid teas, many others, including lots of very fragrant ones. The owner and his staff are very friendly & helpful and I'm sure would respond well to emails or actual phone calls. They can give you advice on best varieties for cuts, which are the most disease resistant, etc. Generally speaking, I've had to forego many antiques (went through that phase of being ONLY an antique rose aficianado---aka "snob"! LOL!), and am gravitating more towards hybrid teas. Antiques & David Austins have that lush look many of us adore, but the petal substance on many of those isn't strong enough to last on the walk from bush to house. Again, that's a general statement that certainly doesn't apply to ALL Antiques or David Austins. (I've heard that David Austin has developed a new line of "cuttable roses", and that they should be available in the US, MAYBE this year, 05, or next, or by 07. LONNNNG wait, but worth it, I'm sure. Ashdown & Chamblee's may be the primary vendor's for those cuttable David Austins. Ask.) I've had very good luck w/ New Dawn, climber, lots of thorns, very little spraying needed, if any. Pretty heavy spring bloom, very scant re-bloom. Also love my Mrs. B. R. Cant, a tea (predecessor class of the Hybrid Teas). She has gorgeous mauve-pink blooms, gets big and sprawly 8'x8', again, very little if any spraying. Semi-thorny. I'm falling in love w/ my David Austin Graham Thomas, beautiful yellow blooms in spring, not much repeat. All of these (and many other roses), may take up to 3 years in your garden to become their "best", but you should have some roses each year. A must have you should probably get is Belinda's Dream. Technically NOT an antique, but classed with them for some reason. It's on the list of Earth Kind Roses Dr. Steve George of Texas A & M Extention Offices has researched. His "Earth Kind" roses aren't IMMUNE to diseases and pests, but get so little that they might as well be, or what little disease they get they bounce right back from. Anyway, Belinda's Dream gets big also, say, 6' x 6', lots of BIG fragrant pink blooms. Last well on bush & vase. If it can handle Texas' heat & humidity, it should do well in NC. Ashdown has several roses on my big wish list; you could/should also check w/ the Antique Rose Emporium in Brenham, TX, The David Austin websites, and Chamblee's Roses in Tyler, Texas. Other wishlist rose catalog companies are Heirloom Roses in Oregon?, Arena Roses in Ca or Oregon, (somewhere on the West Coast), and The Uncommon Rose, also out of the West Coast. Edmund's is also good,(west coast again!) but they cater primarily to Hybrid Tea lovers, and those who exhibit those hybrid teas. Not a fault, just not the Antiques or Austins. Heirloom and The Uncommon Rose both send small, own-root roses in what they call "tree bands". Good, rooted roses, just small. You'll have to pot them up in a gallon container for a year or so before they can go in the garden. I've ordered from The Uncommon Rose, but not from Heirloom. Heirloom has one of those luscious catalogs too! Edmund's & David Austin & Arena send primarily bare-roots; Ashdown, Chamblee's, and The Antique Rose Emporium will send usually own-root one or two gallon roses. Chamblee's is close, so I usually drive down there; I've ordered from The Antique Rose Emporium and got GREAT packaging, and, I've been to their store in San Antonio. Both good experiences. Haven't yet ordered from Ashdowns, but am longing too; haven't ordered from Arena in a few years, but got good service when I did. Carlton's is a good source for florist/show quality roses, and they also send small roses, some VERY small, but low price. Johnny Becnel (sp?) is a florist/show rose vendor, but I'm not sure how to get hold of him. Think he's in Louisiana. I haven't ordered from Carlton's or Becnel, but they too, will one day be on my lists! A couple of years ago I was trying to tell a knowledgeable rosarian at a Dallas nursery that I wanted to grow my roses organically; he may be more pro synthetic chemicals in general, and/or, he just had good advice: "You can grow them any way you want to for your own use, but if you are growing them as a crop, for bouquets, as a BUSINESS (!!!), you MUST spray, so your flowers will be perfect!" That was somewhat eye-opening to me. Reassuring? Practical? some of all. Not long after that, I DID start doing some black spot and/or powdery mildew sprayings, and as I did, I came across my New Dawn and Mrs. B. R. Cant who did not need ANY spray at all, thank you very much! I'm very irregular w/ any spray program (organic or synthetic), and even forget to fertilize the poor things often enough. Still, most of mine survive. I have an outbreak of Whiteflies this summer, and they've hit some of the roses and other plants fairly hard, plus, I'm in the beginning-middle stages of the annual grasshopper invasion, so I've been spraying w/ one of the Bayer products the last few days. The whiteflies have had plenty of time to build up numbers enough to be somewhat of a damaging threat, and no friendly organic natural predators are in the vicinity, so synthetic chemical spraying I do. OF course I've gone way too long. The key word I'm looking for in flower catalog copy nowadays is "incredible petal substance" , and/ or, "great on the show bench" whether it's for a rose/tulip/daffodil or other flower. I've found that that "petal substance/show bench" phrasology rings true w/ daffs and some of my roses. The thinner petalled cousins are still pretty, but may be too fragile for bouquet work. Don't forget, there ARE a lot of Hybrid Tea roses that DO have good fragrance in them. For a long while, fragrance was bred out of hybrid teas, but in recent decades the hybridizers are putting it back in. However, one of the women on the rose forums specifically raises the hybrid tea roses used by florists; she has a list of at least a 100 that she grows. She swears that the ones w/ fragrance have the shortest vase life. The ones w/ NO fragrance have the longest vase life. Something to do w/ the genetics, and maybe pollination. Once the flower attracts a bee by fragrance, the flower declines. I think her name is Deborah, she was in NC I think but has recently moved to Texas. Check for her name on the general (main) rose forum page of threads, then email her privately. She probably could give you a LOT of good info. Also, someone is always generating a question: "Which roses (hybrid teas, antiques, David Austins, etc) are best for vase life?" so you might find some of those questions fairly current. Enjoy your journey into rose catalogs! Even the poor ones are good, and the ones w/ knock-your-socks-off photography will make you swoon! Susi. PS: Of the three or four roses I mentioned, I like Mrs. B. R. Cant the best for buds & blooms. New Dawn has pretty blooms, but they shatter quickly (makes a GREAT "magazine cover rose" in bloom tho! LOL!), and my Belinda's Dream isn't old/big enough to give me consistant blooms. Graham Thomas does well, I think, but this was his 2nd year of starting to be great (#4 in the ground? can't remember), and his blooms may have happened when I didn't have use for yellow roses, or didn't have a customer, or whatever. Smells divine! You should also try to get Valencia, from Arena Roses. It's a great beautiful butterscotch/yellow hybrid tea rose. A co-worker of my daughter's raises a LOT of roses, and had provided each person in the office w/ home bouquets of Valencia the day I visited. It's gorgeous! Fragrance wasn't strong that day, but the roses were starting to fade. One more bit of advice: I'm learning this from my iris buying spree(s): if you have space and money, get your roses (or iris, daffs, lilies, etc) in 3's or more. Three of each variety you "must have". The David Austin people used to recommend buying & planting their roses in 3 of a kind. For the longest time "we all" thought that that was "just" a marketing ploy for them. Well, it is! But, it's also helpful for the cut flower grower to have 3 rose bushes producing multitudes of flowers, instead of one rose bush (or iris plant, or whatever!). Might be a "duh", but it took "me" a LONG while to figure out! NOW I'm done! |
