My family always had roses -- after all, I was born in Portland, Oregon: the Rose City!

When we moved to Colorado in 2001, things became a little more challenging. For one thing, for the first time I really had to pay attention to those pesky zone numbers. For another thing, the growing season is a good deal shorter. I went from sometimes being able to cut a rose for a Christmas Day bouquet (Old Blush) to being glad if a few rose hips wintered over.

Now it matters a great deal to grow own root roses. It is not unusual for some marginal-zone roses (Welsh Gold, for instance) to die all the way back to the ground and then come back in the Spring. Own root roses account for almost everything I grow now.

It's also better to grow roses that have many petals (Souvenir de Malmaison does very well here); these would have balled in Oregon's cooler, often rainy summers.

Finally, instead of blackspot and aphids it's a matter of contending with the nutritional problems of strongly alkaline soil. Some roses adapt just fine; some -- the Dorothy climber, for instance -- really seem to struggle. I'm not sentimental about roses, for the most part (although I was sorry to see Abbaye de Cluny succumb), so it's a matter of hoicking out the ones that don't do well and getting on to something that uses the space better, after completely replacing the soil, of course.

The little public rose garden here in Longmont is a great inspiration to me. They grow a wide variety of roses and it's instructive to see which ones look good in our high altitude bright light and also which ones do well that really aren't supposed to make it here.

It's impossible to choose favorites. But of the many I grew in Oregon, Old Blush, Abbaye de Cluny, Wife of Bath, and Corpus Christi were very special to me. Here, I especially like Pride of Tryon (duh! *smile*), Alice Pat, Joseph's Coat, and Souvenir de Malmaison. Both places I have grown and simply love the very floriferous Cupcake miniature.

I love prints of and stories about roses. The story of the Peace rose inspires me and Redouté's work I admire very much. I have a blog that features botanical prints, many of roses: http://www.picturingplants.com

And most of all, I simply love roses.

Very experienced (41 years)

Last visit: More than a year ago