So we found ourselves back in the land of good iced tea and permanent air conditioning. This is part one of a two part series; part two is about the rose garden at Riverbanks Botanical Gardens. This part is about Roses Unlimited and Park Seed. Roses Unlimited is about 70 miles away from Columbia, but not far as the crow flies from Park Seed Display Gardens in Greenwood, South Carolina. Now, when I say as the crow flies, I mean within reasonable driving distance; however, when you are talking county and country roads, it could be in the next dimension.

We visited Park Seed and its display gardens after we had made a pilgrimage to Roses Unlimited. Actually, it was a shorter visit than we planned because the temperatures were hovering around 98 and there was insufficient shade to wander for more than a half hour. Hovering doesn't mean the temperature lightly touched upon that number and receded; hovering means the needle would hit that number and fall back to 97.9 exhausted with the effort. In any case, Park Seed has a Gift Shop close by the display gardens. The visit to the Gift Shop was highlighted by a telephone conversation that the manager was having with a caller; the caller could not conceive of having a telephone number and a distribution center for Wayside Gardens without having a real live place where people grew things. The manager explained this anomaly in terms that rapidly moved from the polysyllabic to the guttural 'There is no Wayside Gardens, just a phone number.' Ah, well, presumably he mailed her another catalog to slake her thirst for the real thing. I have a limited time span for Gift Shops with scented candles because they give me a blinding headache, so I wandered off to the display gardens.

The display gardens for Park Seed demonstrate the products listed in the Park Seed Catalog. Clear labels indicate what the page reference is in the catalog and wandering about with the catalog is a utile way of doing the scene. The shade gardens were of more interest than usual given the heat. An obvious but devastating combination juxtaposed Celosia 'Mahogany Red', a low lying plant with velvety dark maroon heads nestled in purple foliage with red veins and greenish undertones with an artemisia stelleriana, a silver ground cover of no more than six inches high. My guess is that they prevent the yellow flowers of the artemisia from blooming, much the same as one would do with the santimers. An even more provocative bed showed the same celosia but with a coleus called 'Fairway Mosaic'; this coleus has an almost paisley like swirl of cream, green and red. It is so far out of the ordinary that it qualifies as being too ugly to be ugly. And with the dark maroon celosia, it riveted the eyes to that bed. There were also some interesting baptisias (false indigos that I cannot grow), buddleias, and rudbeckias of every kind.

The other eye-catching exhibit was an enormous line of tomatoes including one type not included in this year's catalog: 'Daiquiri' --a medium sized tomato with the shape of a bell pepper; it looked to be ideal for stuffing.... The only roses in the display garden were 'The Fairy' and 'Old Blush'.

But we went to Roses Unlimited. The display gardens there had wilted under an onslaught of summer heat not alleviated by rain. The grounds were suffering from a three month drought and the plants were in the mode where they conserve their strength and produce limited bloom. However, we were given permission to wander through the greenhouses. And we did. Naturally, we were unable to resist purchasing something: There were a few--ever so few roses that demanded to be taken home, if not now then later: 'Wee Butterflies': a polyantha from Paul Jerabek, a white eyed medium pink single flower in clusters almost resembling a geranium in its lush bloom.... 'Ideal': a 1921 sport of 'Miss Edith Cavell' but a medium red with lighter contrasting foliage than the parent... 'The Gift': a 1991 found seedling polyantha that is even more attractive in person than in the great picture in the Arena Catalog... 'Ellen's Joy': a shell pink Buck rose whose main virtue was the name since it solved the wedding gift problem for Jane's sister.