Thursday, April 21, 2011

One Comes, One Goes

Look what arrived last week in my garden: This is the incredible beautiful Tea rose 'Souvenir d'un Ami'. I am trying to get a hold of this rose for at least two years now, with no luck. It is rarely offered even by the online specialty rose vendors and was sold out everywhere where I tried to order it from last spring. I have to admit I tried only at rose vendors located at the West coast, because of the shipping costs, but still. Then my good friend Ingrid decided to pass one of her two gorgeous 'Souvenir d'un Ami' roses on to me (see photo below). I could not believe and I still can not that she was willing to give this rose to me. I am so happy to get it. Thank you very much Ingrid! Her husband was even so nice to drop the rose off at my house!

(you can click on the photos to enlarge)



Here is a close-up of the one and only open flower the rose had at the time when it arrived. As with many Tea roses the blooms nod, which I find quite charming, but it makes it hard to see the beauty of the flower in this picture. Imagine the rose will be tall and the flowers will look down on you so you can admire their full beauty even better. From the photo you can get an idea about the subtle coloration that this rose has. It also comes with a very special bloom form, which is almost star-like, which the photo does not get across, unfortunately.



Since it was one of these unusual hot days (of course it has to be a very hot day when you get a rose, that needs to be transplanted to make it even harder for the rose to survive), I dropped everything that I was busy with and ran out to pot up the rose. When I removed the plastic bag I was shocked to see how small the root ball was and there were almost no feather roots, either.



Below is a close-up of the root ball, so that you can see it a little bit better. It is actually scarily small! But I have gotten already a couple of roses from Ingrid and some of them just come with very little roots. One which was close to the size of the root ball of 'Souvernir d'un Ami' was 'Mme. Melanie Willermoz' and this rose is doing just fine in her container now. All the new growth of 'Mme. Melanie Willermoz' wilted and dried of after transplanting, but it did not take long and she was leaving out and even started to flower, again. So I am prepared to see the same happen to 'Souvernir d'un Ami'.



Here I have potted 'Souvenir d'un Ami' up into a five gallon plastic pot using E.B. Stone organic potting soil. When you get a container for a rose make sure that it is deeper than wide, because roses like to make long tap roots and they need room to grow downwards.  I had to put bamboo sticks around the base of the rose to stabilize her and keep her in the pot otherwise she would have toppled over.



When I was done planting the rose into the container, I put her in a shady area by the side of the house where I grow my orchids. Normally I would never place a rose in this location, because roses need sun to do well, but this is an exceptional situation. I did not want to put the rose through the additional stress of loosing water because the sun hit her hard. She will stay in this place until I see that she starts to actively grow, again. If you look closely you can see already on the picture below that the blooms and the buds are wilting. I have to say I am worried about this rose, but try to stay positive and keep my fingers crossed. Besides I am watching her closely to make sure that she is not drying out, but I also do not drown her in water. Please, wish me luck that I get this rose through!



Since it became pretty clear to me lately, that I own more roses than I can comfortably take care of, I decided to reduce the number of roses that I am growing from currently approximately seventy five down to around fifty. At least that is my aim. In general I am having a very hard time to part with my roses and honestly I do like them all! But some roses do not turn out as satisfactory as expected (for example they are very disease prone in my climate, get too tall or do not fit into the existing color scheme in the garden etc.) and these are the roses that have to go first.

'Purple Pavement' is a Rugosa rose and is one of the roses that simply do not do that well in my garden. Rugosas are known not to like alkaline soil or water, which is exactly what we have here. They also do not seem to agree with very hot climates either. After I have gotten a few lovely blooms this spring 'Purple Pavement' deteriorated when the weather became hot and looked very unhappy. Even the buds dried up and the leaves became an unhealthy yellow color and it shedded quite a few of them. Exactly the same happened last year at this time of the season. So I decided to part with this rose and give it to someone, who loves it. I was so happy when my friend Stephanie wanted to take this rose out of my hands. I felt bad to hand a rose over to her that is not looking very good, but I know that Stephanie has a green thumb and can make roses thrive that are in much worse condition than my little 'Purple Pavement'. So I just hope that she can work her magic on this one, too. Interestingly Stephanie's garden is located just a few miles from mine, but she is growing some Rugosas already, which do very well for her.

Bye-bye little 'Purple Pavement', I hope you do better in your new home and I can visit you there from time to time!

 


See you in the garden!

Christina



7 comments:

  1. I wish you good luck with your new rose ! Next spring she will be a wonderful rose, I am sure.

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  2. What a generous, beautiful gift! How hard it is to part with plants one loves. I know your garden will be still lovely minus the 25 or so that you prune from your gardens. Gardening is time consuming and sometimes we just have to stop and think about what we really can handle comfortably.

    Enjoy your new rose and the beauty that is surrounding you.

    FlowerLady

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  3. DANI, thanks for your comment. I hope you are right about the rose!

    FlowerLady, thanks for your kind words. Yes, in terms of my roses I know that "less is more". Especially when the roses grow taller the deadheading and hand watering will become just overwhelming, if I don't cut down on the number of roses that I am growing our the garden.

    Christina

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  4. Yes, but we both know that one coming and one going doesn't reduce the numbers, does it? I'm in the same boat with you, Christina, but fortunately, no one is giving me roses. lol I hope Souv d'un Ami perks up and does well for you. I bet you won't have any problem squeezing her in. She's lovely.

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  5. Sherry, thanks for leaving a comment! No, your are right, "one coming, one going" isn't decreasing the number of my roses, but at least it is not increasing them either, which is already progress for me :-)! I am not sure if you can squeeze Souvenir d'un Ami in somewhere. I expect this rose to be at least 6' x 6', maybe even 8' x 8' when it matures, but luckily I have still the space for one more rose of this size.

    Christina

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  6. Christina, I am glad you got Souv. d'un Ami, and I am sorry to see your PP leaving. It is great to have a friend to share roses with. I hope to see pictures of your SdUA blooming.

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  7. Hi Masha, thanks for stopping by. Giving 'Purple Pavement' away was a difficult decision to make for me, but since the rose was not doing well since the temperatures warmed up the second year in a row, I felt it is an appropriate one. I just hope that it will grow in Stephanie's garden, which is much cooler than mine. Believe me, I also hope to see 'Souvenir d'un Ami' flowering and of course I will post pictures of it!
    Christina

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