I grow Barbara's Pasture Rose at home. I agree about the fragrance - I love to cut a stem for the windowsill over my kitchen sink, so that I can catch a delicious raspberry scent as I walk into the room. The cemetery BPR is bigger than Jeri described, but I have one at home that is about five high by four wide. I cut it back harder than we do a lot of the cemetery roses, to about 3 1/2 feet, and keep cutting stray canes off that are blocking the pathways or crowding other plants. Each cane removed becomes a cutting, of course, which is where all of those BPRs in the sale came from! Anita

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

The main cemetery gate is at Broadway and 10th St. We prefer that people coming to the event not drive into the cemetery. If you are driving east on Broadway, there is a parking lot opposite the cemetery where you can park. You can also park along 10th St, or one of the side streets. There is also a Target parking lot just a little further east, at the corner of Broadway and Riverside. We plan to have someone at the gate directing traffic. Should not be a problem (easy for me to say, who will be there at 8 am setting up). The rose sale will begin at 930. My first tour will be at 10 - there will also be a tour on an electric cart at that time, for people who have trouble walking the paths, and a history-focused tour. Lots of activities, lots of roses, lots of rose lovers. Weather is supposed to be mid-80s and sunny - wear a hat, bring sunscreen, drink water! 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