This year is wierd. Primula started a week ago. Usually it's mid April. But I'd guess that my garden had a subtle but bud nipping freeze sometime in March that reset bloom time. Primula is wonderful, but be careful if you have a mole/vole problem. Mine is where the voles have a convention and it barely hangs on from the damage they do. Thirty feet away, before we moved it, it was doing much better, but the voles didn't like the really sandy soil there. I'd guess that the roots of primula are especially tasty. (This year a centifolia bloomed before primula/hugonis/Canary Bird. Old Blush came out after some teas. Captain Kidd is blooming now; if it's really got setigera in its genes, that's totally out of sync, but it's KC's first bloom. )

Eric, and whomever else can't come on the 14th, this garden is always open to the public, so you can come any time. It's well worth the trip. I saw it only once before, two years ago, and have talked and thought about it ever since. It's especially a revelation for a California gardener, since there are OGRs growing there so much better than we can do in our warm climates, including many that I'd never seen before. For you zone 5/6 folks, here's a collection that's survived for thirty-five years, with bushes of magnificent, mature size. Anita

Oh my. What is a passionate rose lover like you doing in that glacial hell hole? Reading about your endeavors has exhausted me and I haven't even lifted a shovel. I admire your grit and determination, but would love to see you rewarded with thousands of blooms on your rose bushes for all your hard work. I bet they could use engineers in zones 7 to 10!

Melissa wrote: "Climate in my garden is similar to Kim's but my care is different. I'm not nearly as nice to my roses in general.;) I water less, and feed differently I think. No chemical fertilizers at all." I think your "winter cold" is deeper than mine. (9b v. 10a, Sunset Zones probably between 18 and 19 for you, 20 to 21 for me) It seems your soil is quite a bit different in origin from what I've seen on line, being more of a deeper alluvium. Mine is the white shale layer of the Santa Monica Mountain formations. I water enough to keep plants alive, but not "thriving", particularly during the worst of the heat. I don't fertilize with anything other than prunings I shred and throw back on the soil surface as "mulch". I don't amend using anything, period. I avoid "organic" fertilizers due to the legions of moles, gophers, skunks, opossums, raccoons, coyotes, rabbits, rats, etc., all of which are either attracted by the organics themselves or to those which they attract. I don't need, nor wish to encounter any more "wildlife" that close to the house. Sometimes, it's a "witch" living this close to the "urban wilderness". I don't fertilize those in the ground with inorganic fertilizers, either. The soil is quite 'salty', as is the irrigation water. There has been no rain to flush the accumulated salts from the soil. Adding inorganics would only serve to intensify the "salts". I do use light, infrequent applications of inorganic fertilizer (always water soluble) to newly propagated, potted plants to replace the nitrogen they lose to watering. Being in an "extreme heat, extreme fire danger" area, I am allotted a relatively high level of "Tier 1" water use. I use, and have been using a quarter of that allotment, both to conserve the resource itself as well as to conserve the ever increasing cost of it. The areas I would normally irrigate show the reduced water consumption. I recently removed sixty feet of forty-plus year old escalonia hedge which had begun dying at one end and continued crisping and browning by the foot from the southern toward the northern end. Increasing the water to it had little positive effect, so eliminating the need, as I have done with all other plantings proving themselves "too needy", helps reduce the danger of combustion as well as need to increase the water bill. You might find this seedling of interest. Kim Here is a link that might be useful: Puzzlement