My sincere apologies for not surfacing earlier, but I've been digging out from under a mountain of email messages and orders since the sale began and only now am starting to see some daylight. A few answers to your questions. These are not the bare root roses you're used to ordering, which are usually dormant plants that have been stored at cool temperatures. These are mature roses, dug from the garden while actively growing. They're cut back, soaked, the roots are washed and then they're carefully packed for shipping. Total labor from start to finish has been averaging nearly an hour per plant. Reports from all over the country are that these roses start to grow as soon as they're planted in pots or in the ground. For those of you who might be worried about it being too hot in your area, in 2006 I moved my entire garden from the low desert to the new location in the high desert. We started the move in August, with daytime high temperatures above 110 and often above 115 degrees. Roses were dug from the garden and planted in pots (we weren't ready to plant them in the ground), and out of 5,000 roses, we lost very, very few. Don't worry about payment. Invoices are prepared after I know the actual shipping costs. I'm preparing invoices when I can grab a minute or two and have set up a mechanism to pay by credit card via the website -- or by check. Are there great roses left? For sure! While the response has been terrific, with 1000 roses already in new homes in 37 states, that means that there are still 4000 roses in the garden, and many (most?) are truly incredible, and a significant number of them are quite rare. I'm now sending out updates with the names of the varieties still available, by type of rose. The first of these updates, on hybrid perpetuals, went out a few hours ago. Please know that this is not, nor was it intended to be a source of great income. In fact, given how labor and time intensive this is, we lost money on all of the potted roses we sold and we just about break even on the minis and minifloras from the garden. The overriding purpose of this sale is to save these roses and to ensure that they will have good homes. I'm maintaining a database that includes the name of each rose shipped along with contact information. This way, should there be an interest in commercializing any of the roses in the future, hopefully the new owners will be willing to provide cuttings. Thank you all most sincerely for your patience and understanding, and for your support. Cliff

Cupshaped, We lived just south of Daytona for over 20 years. We hadn't discovered OGRs, but gave up on the HTs that were sold at garden centers because they were too much work--the constant spraying required was a nightmare. Especially in the heat of summer, when you'd come in needing a blood transfusion from all the mosquito bites. We were on a barrier island, so the "soil" was almost pure sand with a thin layer of leaf litter and pine straw on top. Water & nutrients ran right through it. We found gardening with Florida natives to be a very satisfying, enviromentally friendly way to go. If you want a Florida native that will attract butterflies, get a firebush (Hamelia patens). Wonderful red-orange tube-shaped flowers are great nectar sources for most butterflies, and hummingbirds like them, too. Being a native, it should perform well--there may be a little freeze damage once in a while in Daytona, but it's good to whack the bushes back once in a while, anyway. Another great Florida native for butterflies is Wild Coffee (Psychotria nervosa). Makes a beautiful rounded bush with shiny leaves, small white flowers, and red berries. Zebra longwing butterflies LOVE it. Citrus trees act as larval food for Eastern Swallowtails (the caterpillars look like bird poop, and put out scary red antennae-type things when alarmed, but the butterflies are GORGEOUS.) The caterpillars don't eat that much, so just ignore the few chewed on leaves and wait for them to emerge in all their flying glory. And you can eat the citrus, too. Passionflower vines are larval food for zebra longwings, and have great flowers. Muhly grass is a lovely ornamental native grass that has pinkish blooms. And some of the spartina grasses are also great native ornamentals. Green Images in Christmas, Florida is a WONDERFUL native plant nursery that's not too far from Daytona. Worth a trip over there, and they should have a bunch of natives that will perform well and bring in the butterflies. Depending on your friends' soil, amendments can be tricky. If they're in a real sandy area, the soil is so coarse that it has tons of air & oxygen in it, and organics burn up so fast that you almost can't add them quickly enough to make a difference. Other places are muck (basically swamp bottom) and have much richer soil. The Florida Native Plant Society is a wonderful organization and a great source of information if you want to "go native". Natives are so much easier to grow, provide food and cover for birds and butterflies, and low maintenance to boot. Water rationing is becoming pretty common in Florida, and planting things that will deal with normal rainfall is a way to have a beautiful garden in spite of water restrictions.

I have a poor nose. A rose has to have an overwhelming scent to get noticed by me. The list of OGRÂs that are fragrant is nearly endless. Just to mention a few that I have, The Apothecary, Hippolyte and Jacques Cartier. An old rose that is also fragrant but not I think classified as an OGR despite being old is Baltimore Belle. Its flowers indivdually are not that fragrant but enmasse become overpowering. It has literally hundreds of flowers each cluster with 10 or more buds. As IÂm in Zone 5 I no longer grow HTÂs of which many are bred for fragrance so that gang is not on my list. I notice that an alleged legendarly fragrant HT, Crimson Glory is not mentioned. Probably too old. I once tried to grow it but it tanked early.

I am not at deep south , but here is my experience. My favorite HM is Buff Beauty. I have two in different locations. One is blooming almost non stop and another gives me two very good flushes in spring and fall with just a moderate repeat in between. Will get significant BS if grown no spray here, but can be kept almost completely clean with just occasional spraying once in 5-6 week or even less. Fragrance fills the entire area. I grow them as big (huge)shrubs and prune every spring taking approx. 1/2 off to fit my space. My two plants came from different nurseries. Felicia has the be best fragrance and repeat but it has to be sprayed religiously here to keeep leaves on. One missed spray and it gets BS badly. I gave it away. Lavender Lassie has also wonderful fragrance, but repeat is moderate. It improves with time, but still it is mostly two flushes, spring and fall. As BS prone here as Felicia. Darlows Enigma is very healthy and blooms nonstop if in full sun. It can tolerate some shade but shade grately affects bloom production. I even had to move my in different location. Lyda, beautiful and fragrant, excellent repeat. Needs spraying. Still love it a lot. Cornelia is great, but to me it was very little fragrance. It also required regular spraying, not with me anymore. Olga