Yes, I forgot to mention that the water here is neutral to slightly acidic, and soft with low TDS. And humidity is high. Thank you, Kim, for adding the info. I'd like to add, about the issue of humidity. Besides misting or covering, perhaps having shorter cuttings put in tall cups might also help if the humidity in your area is not enough. Pictured below, I've tried taking very short cuttings (two leafy nodes) and placing them in 7-inch tall transparent cups. There's a hole drilled an inch from the bottom of each cup for overflow of excess water. I put this batch under full sun, with much success (in December, when the weather is nice and cool in Taiwan, any other time the cuttings would be fried under the subtropical full sun here I guess). As everyone says, hope you'll try different methods and good luck! :-) Hardy

I'm assuming that you might be totally new to roses and to landscaping with this new house. If not, please bear with me some here... I've written a good bit below for what I might do with your new yard, something suited to my own tastes and ideas as to what I like in roses. (Probably too much but I kind of got going in imagining your landscape design.) I'd also like to highly recommend a book that can help hugely in forming your own landscaping ideas with roses. You can buy it cheaply at Amazon.com. If I had to buy it used, I'd do that, even if it were in crummy condition. The book gives ideas, lots and lots of ideas: "Landscape with Roses" by Jeff Cox. And one more: "The House & Garden Book of Country Gardens" by Charles Quest-Ritson. Not so much for specific ideas as really good for helping you to define for yourself your general taste preferences. I got mine used at Amazon, and have enjoyed it hugely; it helped me to figure out what kinds of styles in landscaping I really like best, and which I really don't want to emulate. Regarding your new house, the northwest orientation on the back is something less than ideal for most roses, but the front of your house and yard would likely be easy for growing roses. SHADE TOLERANCE: In general, you can probably plant most roses that are reasonably hardy along the front, and probably many hybrid musks would work for the back just fine too, but some roses that are considered shade tolerant might be less shade tolerant than you might need, with that two-story house creating lots of shade around the back yard. ROSES SUGGESTIONS FOR THE BACK: I'd guess that Ghislaine de Feligonde might work out nicely, if you give her enough time to get where you want her to go. It's fragrant, low in thorns, disease resistant, shade tolerant, and those who have it tend to love it. It blooms a lot. Be sure to attach it to some kind of trellis or wiring to stand the rose out from the bricks a bit to allow for some air circulation behind it. Along the bottom, you could make a whole row of that same variety. Many different hybrid musk varieties ought to work for this job too, though they probably wouldn't reach as far as Ghislaine. Just to name a few: Cornelia, Buff Beauty, Lavender Lassie, Prosperity, Penelope, Will Scarlet. Possibly use a different variety with a contrasting color to accent each end (or possibly make this contrast with a different kind of shrubbery altogether: evergreen hiemalis camellia Kanjiro with thick waxy leaves). Then choose some lower growing shade tolerant polyantha roses to plant in front of those large bushes choosing the color according to what you think would look nice with the color of whatever you've planted against the wall. (Or try the very low growing *wonderful* hiemalis camellia 'Shishigashira' there in front of the large rose bushes.) MORE LANDSCAPING POSSIBILITIES ON THE BACK: Construct a huge heavy wooden wide arch to lead into the back entrance, and grow roses on it, with a beautiful little floor of something like bricks with brick steps going down into the lower area, with room in front with a bit more bricks as a little patio with enough room to sit a huge pot on each side of the arch entrance with some favorite roses growing in the pots. (Mortimer Sackler might have enough shade tolerance for the arch, though I wouldn't guarantee that at all.) Then add a couple of climbers on each side of the house wall too, in a contrasting color (both the same variety) to those on the arch, with some evergreen shrubs along the wall as well. If you don't opt for camellias, then there are a ton of azaleas that would also work quite well (one of the small-leaved Kurumes or Gables would especially look nice, I think). THE FRONT: Almost any rose you want to plant will grow. The problem is going to be in how you tie it in with what you have there already. What you have looks fairly good right now. I can't tell exactly what it is, but it looks good. So I'd assume that you probably would like to keep it? The best I can come up with quickly would be to take a nice short low-thorns rambler like Climbing Pinkie, Annie Laurie McDowell or Renae, and pot her up in a huge pot on each side of your doorway. Then let her send a single cane (or two) up between the door and the window, and pull her other canes over and outward via pegs toward the ground away from the door, just to let her other canes ramble along the underside of the windows. Then at the two far corners on the outside of that line of shubbery, plant another rambler (possibly the same variety) and let it flop over, building up on itself in a huge bushy display. (Gorgeous picture of Rhonda in zone 7 doing that with climbing pinkie: www.helpmefind.com/gardening/l.php?l=21.88187). Then in front of the existing shrubbery, plant a short row of low-growing polyantha roses, something that would look nice with the rest (Marie Daley for a similar color, or Marie Pavie to contrast, perhaps.) These varieties will all tolerate some partial shade too, as might be the case to the far left on the front. Another variety that you might like to do something along these lines with would be the David Austin rose Mortimer Sackler. It's nicely fragrant, beautiful, and easy to grow, though it tends to want more to be more upright like a shrub than to flop over like the above three ramblers. You might want to do these rose additions in stages, and just start with a row of low polyanthas in front of the existing shrubbery. ALTERNATIVE FOR THE FRONT: If you're really ambitious, take two garden hoses and lay out a slightly winding path to the front door. Pave that path with something you like, perhaps something to match or complement the paving in front of the front door. If there's a large enough area in the front, make this walk split around a central focal point with a fountain, birdbath, or some striking shrubbery that you particularly like (Camellia Japonica Nuccio's Jewel or Nuccio's Pearl would do that!), perhaps surrounded by small roses. It would likely be a round focal point, but doesn't necessarily have to be round, especially if you decide to make a part of the walkway veer off to one side to, say, another planting area, another parking area, or a side yard's garden. Then figure on your front landscaping as a whole, taking that walkway into account, and trying for an informal balance. To give you some online inspiration for figuring out what kind of looks you might like, I've attached a link to Philip Oliver's website. It takes a good while to look at all his pictures, but you can see how he started with an open non-landscaped yard and has ended up a mere ten years later with something gorgeous. You have a zillion different good options! These are just my own leanings showing up now in this response. I hope you enjoy your new house and working on your new yard. :) Best wishes, Mary Here is a link that might be useful: Phillip Oliver's pictures offer lots of landscaping ideas

I think the test fields are moving to Ohio simply because Gardens Alive is located there and that is where their other R&D facilities are. Makes sense to have it all in one place - and saves money. Gardens Alive bid for J&P and even though their offer was, I believe, more than Blackstreet it was not accepted because they would not guarantee they would keep the all the jobs in South Carolina where Parks Seed and Wayside are. Too bad as I think they would have been better owners. Personally I think Weeks is in good hands. Garden's Alive have good people there who actually know something about the plant industry. Keith Zary is a good example. I don't know if Tom Carruth is staying with Weeks but hopefully he is. Christian Bedard also knows his stuff. IMO California mainly grows large roses because of Dr. Huey. It simply pushes larger plants. But Dr. Huey does not do well in my area (or most areas this side of the country) and keep in mind since it cannot be grown from seed RMV is a result of it being used. Personally I'd be happy to see it vanish as a rootstock. There is a lot of growing in Arizona these days and I suspect we'll see more there. And don't count out Tyler, TX. But I think in the end that won't matter. The trend is heavily towards own-root and towards liners finished in pots. Much of the public and quite a few garden centers don't want to deal with bareroots. At best I think we'll see one year field grown own-root crops for wholesale use but I'm not holding my breath on that continuing either. As to retail I think you'll see more and more 2 quart pots being used for mail order - even from the big boys. The traditional bareroot budded crop takes two years from planting to harvest. That means you are attempting to guess what the rose market will be in two years. Think of all those growers who planted crops in the winter spring of 2007/2008 for fall 2009 harvest and spring 2010 sales only to see the bottom fall out in September of 2008. By then the planting of the understock and budding (read the most expenses) were spent for a crop that was now likely going to never sell. With liner production you are almost producing on demand and that means you can react to the market far more quickly and keep losses under control. And conversely bring in larger profits if a rose, or the rose market, heats up. I think the changes in nursery ownership and nurseries closing aren�t the only big changes we are in the midst of. Paul

Suzy, by the way, I hope your shipping container DOES turn out to be robbery proof! Are you growing other Chinas in your woods? I admit I find it hard to reconcile those sun-loving plants with the mental image I have of your property. Well, to continue: the pleasures aren't necessarily what we thought they'd be. There's the expectancy: seeing that the seeds did sprout, that the plant did survive that hideous freeze, that the cutting stuck in the ground the fall before did start to leaf out. I love the new foliage of the once-blooming old roses, so fresh and tender. It starts to get disease right around the start of flowering time, so you have this window, once the roses have leafed out and are forming their buds, where there's just beautiful living green. I've thought about the difference between what my garden is to me and to my rare visitors. The guest sees what's there at the moment; they haven't lived the history. They're not thrilled at the little Daphne laureola, which was dug up in the hills nearby and successfully transplanted; they don't get excited that the Cyclamen cilicium is seeding around. They enjoy the handsome Daphne odora 'Aureomarginata', but don't share my triumph at having figured out that it was exactly the right plant for that spot. My sister the horticulturalist, a wonderful plant person, saw more than the guest would who just wants a sea of flowers, but even she was there only at one point in time. I'm in my garden through the year, living the succession of flowers and all the various beauties, but experiencing also the soil--lots of soil--the weeds and little herbs, the change of the weather and the seasons. And even though I'm not very observant, still I see quite a lot, sooner or later, simply by being there month after month and year after year. What is most beautiful in the garden is serendipitous. I can never wholly plan for it, though I do a great deal of serious planning. Some combination of plant and moment and light and my mood do it. There are moments of delight, sometimes with seemingly slight causes: I love oak leaves and acorns and buds, and have been tickled pink by clematis stems and foliage. Scent will do it too, of course. Titian, that's exactly it.