Sorry! MARCH MARCH MARCH!!! (But I DID get your attention!!!) Yes Jackie, I am ECSTATIC about the Web Site. In a few days,it will be completely different. Carol -- You are correct. The Heritage Roses GROUP is older, and different from The Heritage Rose FOUNDATION. Though our goals are similar, our approaches are quite different. HRG is an informal alliance of local groups and individuals, strung together by a quarterly "Rose Letter." We are the ORIGINAL organization dedicated to old, rare, and endangered roses -- and our approach to them leans in the direction of Rose Collection, Preservation, and Propagation. We're the folks most likely to rassle up a Rose Rustle, or participate in an Open Garden. Our Seminars are likewise somewhat informal, and allow lots of time to schmooze. HRF, a few years younger, is more formally organized. It publishes, nowadays, a Bi-Annual Newsletter (tho that changes). And this is the group which is most likely to put on more formal Seminars. Many of us are members of both organizations, and feel that they compliment each other. Jeri

The concerns over the future of our website are quite understandable, and in reading through the comments and suggestions on this thread I think I've gotten some excellent ideas. I hope I can use some of these to forward the cause of keeping all of that information available. There are some factors that no one else will know about why we must close down our website. The key element is that Vintage Gardens is a publicly owned corporation. Many of our customers think that I am the owner, or one of several, but in fact we are owned by shareholders. In order to protect all of the interests involved and to minimize liability the commercial site needs to shut down. Our database is interwoven with our sales system, so we are unable to shut down the appearance of selling roses and still keep the database going. What is critical here is the saving of the data and getting it out to the world as soon as we can. That does require developing a searchable database, and The Friends of Vintage Roses have been looking for some time now for anyone who could help with that on a volunteer basis. For the short term, the Friends have a plan to upload, by class all of the roses from the VG website, and from our own database inherited with the rose collection. Our first effort will be simply to upload, class by class the information about the rose classes which I wrote and have updated many times, and will update again with new insights and challenges to my own past thinking. Along with these will go the class growth habits and the drawings that I developed in 1998-99. Included will be new versions of these growth habit illustrations, a taste of which some of you have found on the blog I recently started as Curator of The Friends of Vintage Roses. It's called "3000 Roses and Counting..." With each class upload we will include a listing of the varieties. More details will need to wait for a searchable format. In the longer term we hope that the Friends will receive enough support to build a searchable database, allowing for the sort of interaction that now exists on the VG site. The development of that database could happen very quickly and we've actively been canvasing donors to help with this, though so far we have not found the money. Kim raises a really good point, which is that the old site should somehow be archived online...at least the data part of it. If anyone has some knowledge about how to do that, we would be very grateful for assistance. Keep in mind however that the sales links would all have to be disabled, and all pages that involve the commercial entity. That old information is about to change to some degree. Though I do not expect that we will lose information that is valuable, there are too many references to "we" which refer to the old business, and so each description will be re-thought and re-written. One element that has not existed in the VG website is the provenance of each rose. This does exist in the VG Book of Roses, and I hope to bring this into The Friends' web database. Any attempt to pirate the information, however legal it may be, could be personally damaging to me, and I hope that folks will refrain from that, especially if they value this thing that I spent so long to create. I would be happy to work with anyone who has workable ideas for making an archived version of the VG website database. I will soon be archiving Vintage Gardens' presence on HMF. Simutaneously The Friends of Vintage Roses will upload their database of roses which will number about 5000 entries. This is the list inherited by the nonprofit, and includes roses that are no longer in the collection, a thing that I believe many of you will find worthwhile, particularly from a historic perspective. I am sorry that I have not been able to find the time to respond to the hundreds of emails I have received over the past year asking what will happen to our website. But, I've had a few things on my hands, and the next 10 weeks may grind me to a pulp. But, please believe that this is a top priority for me, because I know how important it is to so many people. First though, I have a few refunds to issue... Cheerily! Gregg (Vintage Gardens)

I think there's valid points on both sides here. Gardenweb is by far the most civil and informational forum I have personally encountered on the internet, and if it had gone away had Houzz not picked it up earlier this year then I think that would have been a tremendous loss. That said, there were some changes that occurred which possibly devalued GW as a source of information exchange a bit. If this was a forum about computers and newbies were constantly asking questions that omitted some very basic piece of information like, say, the type of operating system they have or something, I can see how that would be irritating for the computer experts, especially if until very recently it hadn't been an issue. Houzz could include a sticky "Please read before posting" thread at the top of the page that had some helpful tips newbies could consider. Not everyone would read it, but many would and it might be a win/win for those who do and those who respond to them. As far as warm welcomes go, I did have negative experience when I first started posting last year when I asked a question about the mature size of a plant I just acquired and the first response I got from an established poster was literally, "You know...there is this thing called a search engine where you can probably find lots of information...this was the first result I found, and as it's St Louis Botanical Garden, should be a good reference." Which I thought was a wee bit sarcastic and uncalled for. The link that poster provided was also unhelpful as my question clearly had to do with conflicting information on the plant tag and what I had already found researching online. I chalked it up to the responder writing me off just because I was a newbie and I did thankfully get some very helpful responses from others who did have direct experience with the plant in question. I'm glad that the polite and helpful responses on here seem to outnumber the others by a large margin.

In defense of Breck's: I have actually had very good experiences with them. They always send good specimens to me and the rosebush package of four that I ordered this year came in a large box with all of them every bit as big as average store-bought although they were bare-root. I potted them up immediately. They sent the two phlox I ordered separately but those were very healthy as well. On the other hand: I do usually place my order extremely early and I think they fill the orders in the sequence they receive them. But there are companies out there who send potted-up leafier specimens such as Annie's Annuals and Perennials. Although those are medium. To get giant plants you usually have to go local. Something to consider: Some species are slow growers and some are fast. Fast growers are generally worth buying via mail-order even if you do want instant color. My point being that it is worth looking into whether a plant will rocket skyward or take its sweet time before you dive into the purchase.