|
Madrone Garden
The large tree of buff colored limbs covered with creamy yellow flowers against a darker line of Coastal Redwoods is our native tree, Arbutus menziesii, called Madrone or Madroño by the Spanish. The California gold-rush author, Bret Harte wrote a poem about it which inspired the name for this section of my rose garden:
Madroño
by Bret Harte
Captain of the Western wood,
Thou that apest Robin Hood !
Green above thy scarlet hose,
How thy velvet mantle shows !
Never tree like thee arrayed,
O thou gallant of the glade!
When the fervid August sun
Scorches all it looks upon,
And the balsam of the pine
Drips from stem to needle fine,
Round thy compact shade arranged, Madroño
Not a leaf of thee is changed!
When the yellow autumn sun
Saddens all it looks upon,
Spreads its sackcloth on the hills,
Strews its ashes in the rills,
Thou thy scarlet hose dost doff,
And in limbs of purest buff
Challengest the sombre glade
For a sylvan masquerade.
Where, oh, where, shall he begin
Who would paint thee, Harlequin ?
With thy waxen burnished leaf,
With thy branches' red relief,
With thy polytinted fruit,—
In thy spring or autumn suit,—
Where begin, and oh, where end,
Thou whose charms all art transcend.
In 2015 here at the foot of this handsome tree I decided to begin consolidating my far flung collection of species roses with specimen trees and other old roses. Roses blooming in this photo taken on May 4, 2021 are ‘Mutabilis’, Rosa foetida, ‘Austrian Copper’, “General Vallejo’s Yellow Banksiae”, ‘Heart’s Desire?”, Rosa helenae, ‘Purezza’, ‘Golden Chersonese’, Rosa primula, and Rosa watsoniana. Specimen trees visible are Mexican bigleaf magnolia (Magnolia macrophylla), Mexican Fan Palm (Washingtonian robusta), and Hickories (Carya sp.).
Uploaded 11 DEC |
Roses growing in the Tennessee Allée section of my garden
Uploaded 10 DEC |
|
The old timer who originally owned the land and all the surrounding acreage liked us and offered to clear the future vineyard of stumps after we cut the trees. So we selected the levelest piece about 6 acres. Mostly covered with trees and ignorant of their names we selected a few to save but our neighbor intervened: “OK guys, what are you doing here, growing grapes or trees?” So everything on the 6 acres was cut except a single massive fir and a large oak because it was adjacent to our new well. The firewood amounted to 36 cords.
Uploaded 10 DEC |
Garden: Tennessee Allée
My Tennessee Allée garden is a broad passageway separating a northern hillside native oak garden from the larger southern meadow Madrone rose garden. It is lined with trees, shrubs and wild roses I collected in Tennessee. I spent summers on the farm of an aunt and uncle where I was free to roam the woods and fields and explored everything. So wild roses from Tennessee are planted beneath Hickory and Sassafras trees with other Tennessee shrubs like Sumac along the sides of the allée. These are Rosa setigera and its variety tomentosa, Rosa carolina, and Rosa palustris with many other Rosa species intermixed.
Uploaded 10 DEC |
|
Rose Woods in the Mayacmas Mtns. near Petrified Forest, California. Our 60 acres in 1975, the year we bought it.
As I take you on this tour through “Rose Woods” and the various sections of my rose garden I’ll intersperse the story of how it came to be.
Until I was thirty years old I lived a city life, renting, commuting and on vacations and holidays, backpacking or gold panning in the Sierra Nevada mountains. But that changed in 1975 when my friend, Michael and I bought 24 hectares (60 acres) of land north of San Francisco Bay in the Mayacmas Mtns. of eastern Sonoma County just a couple of miles east of the historic Petrified Forest.
We were looking for 4 hectares (10 acres) of flat land but everything we saw was either straight up or down, logged or shaped like a landing strip. Then we stumbled on 60 acres nearly within our price range but remote up a 4-wheel drive road at 488 meters (1600 feet). With fir and chaparral on steeper slopes, oak and grass on gentler, our goal was to plant a vineyard to pay for the land and give us income in our later years.
Uploaded 10 DEC |
Rosa hirtula showing a leaflet on the left with 19! leaflets, possibly the most leaflets per leaf of any Rosa species in the world, and covered with hairs on the upper surface, too. My plant was given to me by Miriam Wilkins in 1984 but unfortunately I never learned her source. In 1983 it was reported the Arnold Arboretum at Harvard had a hirtula 10 inches [25.4 cm] in diameter but whether it still exists I would certainly like to know.
Uploaded 30 APR 24 |
