True Dirt

smelling like a rose

The rose obsession continues...until the last petal drops in my soon-to-be-a-memory spring garden. A friend invited me to join her on an expedition this last Saturday to El Cerrito where the annual "Celebration of Old Roses" event is held in the community center. I have heard about this event for years from fellow gardeners and rose enthusiasts and both me and Sally were expecting something rather grand. In reality, it looks like a neighborhood BBQ held at the community pool (which is next door and was on this sunny Saturday emiting the happy shrieks of children frolicking in chlorinated bliss). There were two aisles of folding tables covered in white cloth inside the center's main room - a utilitarian hall with sliding glass doors opening to a small patio and lawn where an actual BBQ was producing grilled items for the free lunch. There were also some vendors of roses, geraniums, and arts and crafts for garden decoration. Inside, the vendors included the Mt. Diablo Porcelain Painters and sellers of rose jelly and jam products--which I realize now I was crazy not to sample. But I was preoccupied with my camera trying to capture the roses themselves in their jelly and Mason jars laid out on the tables in their major groups: Floribundas, Teas, Chinas, Gallicas, Portlands, Bourbons, species, musks and "miscellaneous". And with pausing to sniff and admire the celebrities up close. It's one thing to peruse gorgeous photos of these fragile beauties and quite another to meet them in the rose flesh. The colors are not always describable in pixels or pigments, and the scents certainly are not even the same from one sniffer to another.

The event was the brainchild of Miriam Wilkins who also founded a breakaway sect of rosarians in 1975, The Heritage Roses Group. Not finding particularly interested company in the national American Rose Society, Miriam felt a new society was needed that would focus on the preservation, history, re-introduction, and identification of roses which were rarely grown commercially and are now lost to the memory of most modern gardeners. Miriam was honored in 2003 as a Great Rosarian of the World (GROW) for her championing of forgotten heritage roses at the annual lecture series hosted by the Manhattan Rose Society. Other honorees of GROW include names any rose enthusiast would recognize - like Peter Harkness of the British rose growing house (Just Joey, Ballerina, Buff Beauty). Ann Raver, columnist for the New York Times, wrote about attending the illustrious event which this year honored William Kordes III, of the famous German rose breeding family (Alchemist, Dortmund, Erfurt).

Back to El Cerrito....I stopped at the table for the Heritage Roses Group and realized that without a check book (and, as usual, short of cash) I would be unable to pay the $12 membership fee which includes four paper issues of The Rose Letter (or $10 for the pdf version). The group's website is beginning to feature an archive of scanned back issues but there are only two available now (of 120 issues). I chatted awhile with the two women at the table after they answered my question about a very prolific "Indigo" that was sprouting up in unexpected places in my garden. They confirmed my suspicion that the rose was "suckering" and not reproducing from seed. A natty gentleman in blazer and tie joined in to wax prolific on the necessity of mulching roses in the East Bay and also encouraged me to visit Miriam Wilkin's fabulous rose garden just a few blocks up the hill from the community center. I had been hoping to see Miriam at her signature event but she was not there, nor does she appear to be writing her personal newsletter, The Old Roser's Digest. But then the rose group itself is pretty free-floating, choosing to neither meet regularly, elect officers, nor have a constitution. Perhaps Miriam preferred the company of her own roses that day.

Back at home (Sally got snared by a couple of 2-gallon "Cherokee" roses, and a collection of pelargoniums but my cash-less strategy saved me) I went looking for Miriam Wilkin's rose group on the web and printed out the November 1999 quarterly letter. On the first page the editor apologizes for late delivery citing "writer's block and the onset of holiday madness", and I felt immediately at home. There were gems abundant in the 17-page "letter", including a long article on fragrance in old roses and a sceptical piece on the very English David Austin's (then) new rose growing operation in Tyler, Texas. In response to an inquiry by the Rose Letter editors as to whether the Texas Austin roses were "budded" (i.e. grafted) rather than grown on their own roots, they replied that the rootstock was coming from "...a well known large scale producer, under our control, and is all from virus free Davis stock." The editors assumed they were talking not about a virus-free individual but the agricultural research powerhouse University of California campus in Davis. Having never heard that Davis produced rootstocks of old rose budwood (they are reknowned for wine grape rootstock), The Rose Letter editors inquired after the name of the "well known large scale producer" and Texas Austin replied that it would not be "constructive" for them to disclose the producer "at this time." The White House press secretary could not have done better.

Under "Plants/Information Wanted" Jim Donovan of W. Bruces Place, Canyon Country, CA (I have no idea where this is) makes a plea for someone with "Louis van Houtte, the 1886-or 69 hybrid perpetual from LaCharme" to share one with him. I wonder if anyone did.


I leave you with the "Old Roses For Fragrance" author Lily Shohan's advice for purchasing fragrant roses: "Ignore those described as having "light fragrance"; in Catalog Speak, that generally means none or very little...look for a description where the seller especially notes the fragrance. And, "remember that it is truly said, 'a rose without fragrance is a flower without a soul."

Posted by briggs at May 23, 2007 1:52 PM