Thanks for your kind comment. My garden continues to decrease in size each year, I'm afraid. It's become more and more difficult to maintain a large rose gardens as the years advance (in terms of my age) and as the long, hot desert summers continue to get worse year after year.

I've just returned from a few weeks in Boston visiting my mother, whose health has been in a steady decline for quite some time and found your message,Carolyn.

At first I didn't recognize the name of the rose, as I bought and grew it as Welwyn Garden Glory, which is its ARS Approved Exhibition name and I hadn't heard the name Welsh Gold. In any event, I did import this rose and grew it in my garden in the high desert when I owned EuroDesert Roses. I do not have it in my current garden in the low desert, so I am unable to give you any information on how it might do for you in this climate.

It was an attractive rose in the high desert, but in all honesty wasn't a standout. I would imagine that its blooms would be smaller in this warmer environment. I have absolutely no specific recollections about it. I had roughly 5,000 roses in the ground in my display garden in the high desert, in addition to the 10,000 roses I usually had in inventory at the nursery, so I had precious little free time. This meant that a rose really had to have something exceptional that caught my attention, and this rose didn't rise to that level.

I'm sorry that I can't offer you more encouragement, I don't know how many roses you now grow, but I saw that you had 22 roses in 2008. Even if you now have several times that number in your garden, I would think that there are many, many roses which will do far better for you than Welwyn Garden Glory (Welsh Gold).

Best of luck to you,

Cliff

Carolyn,

I hope the response I just wrote was sent successfully. Please let me know if you didn't receive it.

Cliff