We had to miss Open Garden last year, so doing the catalog is really making me "itchy" for the day, and the roses, and the rose people. And, if you've not seen it, here is "Old Town Novato," grown here at the Coast. Jeri

We looked at that rose yesterday and think the tree is probably "only" 50-60 feet high,and the rose is going up 40 feet or a bit more. There's still room at the top for the rose to climb, and we believe that it will reach the top, and cascade down once it has no more place to grow. Ann, I think you are right about the microclimate. The cemetery was originally a sand hill, created from the Sacramento river. Its high ground, in a city second only to New Orleans in risk of flooding, is why the cemetery was established there in 1850. Up at the top of the hill, where the banksiae is planted, is the sandiest soil of all. The curator has always suspected that the water table is pretty high. When we have removed roses, we are sometimes astonished at how big and deep the roses grow. I told some of the sheriff's crew to remove an Alberic Barbier, and went to lunch. When I checked on them, they were standing chest-high in the hole, still digging! It is a cemetery, for heaven's sake - we don't want to dig TOO deep! - so I had them stop, even though there were still substantial roots to be seen. Many of our roses grow bigger in the cemetery than elsewhere. We don't prune hard, we rarely feed, and we do usually provide regular, weekly water. But it must be something about the microclimate/microsoil. A funny thing about that banksiae - it's only been there a dozen years, and I'm told that a volunteer cut it off a few years after it was planted. All of that growth is from the last eight or nine years. Anita

That is "Tamalpais Homestead Tea," a Tea-or-Old-HT collected in the Mt. Tam area of Mill Valley. Pretty delicious, I think. Kippy -- 18 April is a little early for most of the roses up in the Sierra Foothills. Late May might be more like it. Maybe even very early June -- depending upon the weather. But other lowland roses would be blooming, and the Heritage could be pretty spectacular then. Here's what it looked like in the Heritage, the day after the Cemetery's Open Garden. Jeri

I went to the Sacramento Cemetery for the first time on Saturday. The tour given by Barbara was great and the roses were breathtaking. I think I need a return trip to see roses I misses. We also wandered down to the perennial gardens. Such a joy. Thanks for bringing the open garden to our attention. BettyN