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Dear Friends,
Your site is a God-send! I'm in the process of finding the perfect rose to give my wife for her 50th birthday. As a neophyte, I needed a place where I could find out everything about every kind of rose meeting my wife's preferences. Your cite fits the bill almost perfectly.
I say "almost," because I'm still having trouble with rose terminology, especially when it comes to bloom forms. I've seen a term appear frequently in descriptions but not in the glossary, leaving me to pretty much guess at what it means. Hopefully I guess correctly, for example, that "blooms in flushes" means that occasionally there are periods where new bloosoms appear alternating with periods without blossoms. For other terms it's not so easy, such as "high-centered," which I think means that the petals near the center of a bloom vary from vertical relatively less than do central petals in "flat" bloom. Then there's "exhibition," which tells me nothing; I have no idea what the criteria for judging roses are. Some of the color descriptions are hard to fathom at first, e.g. "carmine" and "blush" and "sea shell"
These are only a few of the lacunae I've noticed. Given the limits of my knowledge, I don't know what else I'm missing.
The odd thing is that I see entries in the glossary that don't help me find (!) any particular variety. The two that come to mind have more to do with maintaining roses than with pinning down what I should choose. I mean really, is there a rose called "fish emulsion?" Or "epsom salt?
So my suggestion is to go over the glossary with a view to helping neophytes understand better the various entries on individual cultivars.
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There is much more to choosing a rose than the color and shape of the flower if this is to be the "perfect" rose. If this is to go in her garden and be a successful plant that she will appreciate for years to come, it is much more important to choose a rose that will grow well in your climate under your growing conditions.
Maybe if you tell forum members where you live and what the gardening experience of your wife is, members can offer suggestions of roses that do well under those conditions.
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#3 of 3 posted
20 JUL 09 by
Unregistered Guest
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I did you one better. See, I live in Washington, D.C., home of the Smithsonian Institution. They have an open-air botanical rose garden. I figured that what grows well at one end of town might do well at the other. I talked with Kelly Gaskin, their rose curator, as good an expert as any you'd find, for this area and maybe any other. She recommended a two varieties (neither of which are quite what I am looking for) and gave me other advice as well. So really, I'm not depending only on your site. I'm just using it to help me find a variety to experiment with.
How would you have answered my question if I simply said, "I want to get a sense of all the different qualities a rose might have, but your glossary has these gaps in it and maybe others?" Would you have said that "we're not a rose encyclopedia, so go talk to the experts?" I suppose that would have been fair, since after all, you are not a rose encyclopedia.
But you are a site that styles itself as a tool to help someone find particular roses, and I'm guessing you figured that a glossary is helpful to that mission. You're right about that, as far as it goes. Apparently it was part of your mission to include in the glossary an entry on what "cupped" means. That's a good thing! But if you're defining one type of bloom form, why not others?
Ewen Allison
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#2 of 3 posted
20 JUL 09 by
 Cass
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Thanks for taking the time to pass along your impressions. You have offered constructive suggestions, and they are much appreciated.
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