Yes, How I could forget Sherando. Somehow I was focused on places from where I mail ordered. Sherand was a treat to travel to.
Never ordered from Mike Lowes's, but heard a lot of good things about it.
Olga

I wish they were all still around. Let's hope that the nursuries that are left can make a go of it in these hard times. What will we do without them? I also have a fond, more local, memory of Gail Dayly's Mendocino Heirloom Roses. That's where I saw my first OGRs. She sold beautiful big roses in 2 gallon pots.

Yes, I certainly second that hope!

I'm trying to think of the name of a mail order rose company that published a nice big shiny catalog. Every year the owner put a picture of his family in it. His wife had reddish hair and they had several young sons. I bought Pink Gruss an Aachen from him when they still called it Irene Watts.

I really miss not being able to buy roses on Fortunianna roots from Muncy's and I wish 'spitfire' or whatever his name was (LOL) could have made a go of his nursery offering roses on those roots, but something went wrong with the watering system while he was on vacation and the roses he was propagating all died.

Anyway it seems like we should still be able to pick up those catalogs and order. I sound like my kids when they looked through a reproduction of a 1905 Sears Catalog and said, "Wow Mom, let's order some of this stuff from them!"

Roserie at Bayfields - where I placed my very first rose order. He took the time to talk to me about my choices and their hardiness and gave me some very good advice. I still have every one of those roses, too.
I know you mentioned them to begin with, Olga, but Great Lakes Roses was the best. I do so miss the Lindley's and their wonderful nursery. So sad that they're gone.

I miss Rose Peddler in Macon, GA. They were focused exclusively on antique roses for southern gardens. I ordered my very first OGRs from them. When Pat & Lisa closed the nursery at the end of the 2004 (?) season, their collection was acquired by Ashdown. I assume many of the Rose Peddler roses now live on at RVR.

Also miss Moore's Roses in Harmony, PA. From them, large plants at very reasonable prices, including some hard to find ones that I've not seen listed elsewhere.

A mail order source that I used to get wonderful plants from is Roseland Nursery in NC. I think that Donny, the owner (who infrequently posts here under the 'Sheer Bliss' handle), still grows and sells roses, but no longer ships or maintains a website. I could always trust Donny to make excellent recommendations and to be very honest about her plants. I remember once when I ordered a rare HT from her, she promptly emailed me back to say that she could supply the plant, but she had just come to suspect that it was virused. It's that kind of concern for customer service that one doesn't forget.

When the Antique Rose Emporium opened a branch in Dahlonaga Georgia, it was wonderful. Then it closed.
I wonder if any of the roses have survived the neglect of the new rich owner who wanted it to be his home.

Mike Lowe's place was one of the seeds of our gardening. With the roses around his home, and then a house without roses and then the next vacant lot that Mike had and it was loaded with roses....DH wanted to live in the house of the rose-less neighbor and be surrounded by roses without the work involved. I am so glad we got to visit it during an open garden over a decade ago. Carpe diem.

There was a place up in the mountains above Asheville that I read about often, that sold old roses and other nice things that was called Herb of Grace. It was so close that I kept putting off making a road trip, only to find it had closed due to a tragic death in the owners' family.

Donnie's Carolina Roseland seems to have disappeared, does anybody go to the Raleigh farmer's market and could check if she's there?

Two growers who were trying to become sellers of grown up stentlings on fortuniana rootstock failed because of propagation problems. They were close to where the original Muncy's was.

Near San Antonio, before there was an ARE there, there was another OGR nursery with some interesting found roses that I wish I had ordered. Maybe Peaceful Habitations was its name?

The last I checked Peaceful habitations website was still operational but they'd stopped selling roses. They gave so much more info on their teas, I could tell they loved them.

Then there's that place in Tennessee in the outskirts of Knoxville that last I heard still sold roses but said he wasn't going to sell old roses any more, no demand. That made me sad too, but I hope he's still around.

I seem to remember another one in Texas, too- I think the wife died of cancer and the husband closed the nursery and sold off all his stock, several years ago. I don't remember the name, though. It was a sweet and sad story.

I greatly miss Uncommon Rose. Unbelievable selection, great customer service, reasonable prices. Convenience of no-minimal-order terms.
Moore's Roses from PA was superb. Ones of the best own-root roses, outstanding communications.
Marina

Harborrose, The nursery in TN you mentioned may be Ron and Sandy Johnston's Appalachian Rose Nursery. I checked their list early this year, then when I went back a few weeks later to make some selections, I found that the website had been taken down. So, Appalachian may be the most recent closing of a small rose nursery. Small but superb. They offered several varieties that aren't listed by any other vendor.

jaxondel, yes, that's it. I couldn't remember the name. I think he had a sport of Topaz Jewel that he named for one of his grandchildren?

Harborrose, Yes, the name of the TJ sport that Ron named for his granddaughter is 'Sweet Cecelia'. If anyone is looking for that one, check with Connie at Hartwood. Looks like the responsibility for keeping that one in commerce on Planet Earth is entrusted solely to her now. A rather awesome and intimidating responsibility, I must say. :-)

I live farly close to Sebastopol CA which is where Vintage Gardens is located. They are only mail order now but I really miss their retail store. It was always such a treat to go there and pick out the plants myself and get a chance to discuss my choices with Gregg Lowery. So sorry they had to close that part of the operation.

I also very much miss Joyce Demits and Virginia Hopper's Heritage Rose Gardens. They always had an interesting selection and sent LARGE plants. They were my first introduction to the old roses. Joyce of course was the person who discovered Secret Garden Noisette and Musk Climber.

Diane

Diane

Lots of good nurseries are no longer. Rose-Equus was one I loved from long ago. I think that Joyce Demits ran that after Heritage Rose Gardens. White Rabbit roses was another one I liked that discontinued mail order business.

Heritage Rosarium in Brookville used to have a great selection of rare roses.

I also miss ones already mentioned -- Sam Kedem, Michael's Premier Roses, Sequoia, Ashdown, and Sherando.

Historical Roses run by Mr. Vash in northern ohio.
Forevergreen Farm-Royall River Roses in Maine, which were predecessors of North Creek Farm.

I loved Roseraie at Bayfields. The owner was always available for phone conference, talked me out of some that were not appropriate for my location, supported me in others. The epitome of the hands-on owner with a passion.

ARENA ROSES! I finally thought of the name of the mail order nursery from which I purchased Pink Gruss among other roses. It's been driving me crazy ... LOL!

Thanks for this thread. It's been a nice stroll down memory lane, as they say.

How about these from some years back? Stocking Rose Nursery in California, Melvin Wyant's Nursery and Joseph Kern Nursery both in Mentor, Ohio where the great Toro/Uncle Joe controversy originated, the original Wayside Gardens when it was also in Mentor, Ohio and had some varieties no longer available, Edmunds Roses when they were in Oregon, and J&P before all the corporate swallow-ups, and Donovan's Roses in Shreveport, Louisiana? I used to get some plants from all of these places.

I guess it is reasonable that if gardens die with gardeners, then the small rose companies whose owner-gardeners pass on or who change passions or occupations will be lost.

Corporations last forever or until the stock is worthless. Small companies live or die with the owner's life or passion. What do you think?

Not a rose supplier, but Hortus in Pasadena--it was like Disneyland for gardeners. They tried to expand, ran out of cash and had to close. A local tragedy.

I'm really going to miss Laguna Hills Nursery & hope they reopen somewhere before bareroot season. When they got their bareroots in, if you asked, they'd pick out the very best ones for pre-orders, I'd get them right off the truck, so fresh and perfect and ready to grow.

Wall Street "investment" bankers strategy: find a profitable company, get someone to buy it. Finance the purchase by loading the company up with debt, take a huge profit on both the sale and the debt financing, and leave the company to founder because it can't make the debt payments. Repeat. It happens over and over and over. "Investment": ha! looting is more like it. And more people who once worked at a profitable company lose their jobs.

I think it's sickening, that's what I think!

What a massacre, more than one named here I didn't even know were gone.

Wall Street piracy or loss of interest from the buying public? I remember a time when very few non-bedding roses were to be had at local outlets, then a period until recently when we actually had more than one local garden center with a specialty in big lines of roses of all classes. Now I am noticing there seems not to be the selection I was seeing even a short time ago. Could this be a return to "moderns" only, or even the development of not that many roses being offered at all?

Of course, these days all woody plants are not going out the door with the usual ease, what garden center plant sales there are being in Depression-style mode with it appears to me small cheap herbaceous plants being the focus.

Very sad thread, but I'm glad for the remembrance. Gardening is hard work, and so is the nursery business. Let's hope and pray that the economic climate becomes more favorable to small business - SOON! And big business, too. Jobs, jobs, jobs!

Sherry

I know some of the nurseries here closed because the owners retired ... Sherando and Great Lakes, off the top of my head.

The majority of them went away because the customers didn't come buy roses. The nursery business is hard. Selling roses (especially 'antique' roses) is especially hard. The public has been conditioned by mass marketing to want 'This' Knock Out, or Carefree 'Whatever', or 'This' Flower Carpet. It's what they find in the places they shop.

It's up to all of us to help the nurseries that remain.

If there's anyone who doesn't need more roses, it's me. I have 300+ roses in pots that MUST find a place in the ground. I'm working at this as fast as I can, but there are other things pulling my attention right now (like running my own nursery).

What's in the mail right now for me? Eight new roses from Vintage. I ordered from Eurodesert earlier this year, and will do so again before the end of the month.

Each of us make up a small portion of the health of the market for roses. Instead of wishing that there was a larger selection of places from which to buy your roses, support the places who are still here ... and probably barely hanging on. Don't have room in your own garden? Tell a friend. The loss of still more nurseries is a very real possibility.

Connie

Boy, this thread brings back memories. I wonder if the heirloom rose craze was just a fad for most people, except for diehards like us?

I recall there were several small "cottage industry" rose sellers - there was a woman who lived in an antebellum home the Northern Neck of Virginia, and a woman named Erin who sold rooted cuttings under the tradename "Roses of Erin."

And of course, the various eBay vendors ...

Let's keep the propagating and trading going!

I had the wonderful pleasure yesterday of spending a sunny day wandering around Bloedel's Reserve, a garden that is maintained not to look liked it's being maintained, on Bainbridge Island. I spent some time in the library of the house and came across this in a book called Family of Roses by Sam McGredy, IV. It made me think of this thread, so here it is. It made me think about how hard the work is to breed, sell and maintain roses as a business - and that he built his business developing roses that people wanted to buy. Or that he thought they did, I don't know. I think right about this time he moved his rose business to New Zealand, about 1972, I think. Gean

Sam McGredy and Sean Jennett
A family of roses, page 147
1972

There are other possibilities, endless possibilities, but I do not think that I am going to start anything completely new now, to begin from scratch to produce something that does not yet exist. I am thirty-nine and it might be fifteen or twenty years, or longer, if I begin now, before anything new came from that new line; so I shall keep to things the useful fruition of which I am likely to see in my working life. I shall be lucky if I see the full development of the groundcover line, though I am ten years ahead and Sunday Times is on sale in 1971. There must come a time when I shall prefer to putter, to be a dilettante. Running a successful large scale rose breeding organization needs a lot of money, a lot of capital, and to be viable it has to be linked with a big commercial propagating and marketing department. It would be delightful if there were some efficient person to run the commercial side so that from now on I could concentrate on breeding roses. As it is I have to be a salesman as well as a rose breeder. If I am to escape ulcers, high blood pressure and other diseases of businessmen, I cannot go on for a lot longer leading the kind of life I have led these last twenty years. I have spent I do not know how many hours racing about in aeroplanes, travelled I do not know how many thousands of air miles, lived an unconscionable part of my life in hotels, and I have seen too little of my wife and my two children. I grow old -- not yet, praise God, but none of us can escape at last, and one day there must come an end to the frenzy of this life of roses.

Sunday Times is now nowhere to be found, acc to HMF.

I dearly miss UNCOMMON ROSES. They were the best place to find that rare or "uncommon" rose. Beautiful and knowledgeable website, good customer service ... just a joy to deal with. Thank heavens VINTAGE was able to take up the slack. If they ever close, that will the day I stop growing roses.

BTW, I always buy my roses from places like COUNTRYSIDE, THE ANTIQUE ROSE EMPORIUM & VINTAGE. I want to support the privately owned rose nurseries as much as I can, especially since I prefer own root to grafted.

Molineux touches on a fairly important issue.

If a rose is not in commerce, I am happy to share it.
DH propagates any number of roses yearly, for fund-raisers, and for the most part we try to make those roses not easily-obtainable in commerce.
If a rose is not in commerce, and we have it, we're happy to bundle up cuttings, and send them to any nursery that wants to offer it.

But if a rose IS in commerce, whether from Vintage, Countryside, ARE, or any of the many small, independent nurseries, we avoid propagating it, and we don't share cuttings.

We want people to buy those roses from the vendors who carry it. How else will those vendors stay "alive"?
We have lost a sad number of vendors, and we don't want to lose more. We know what it was like when they didn't exist, and we don't want to see that day come around again no more.

"Hard times, hard times come again no more
Many days you have lingered
Around my cabin door
Oh hard times come again no more."

Jeri

>>If a rose is not in commerce, I am happy to share it.

Jeri, perhaps you could get Vintage to offer Benny Lopez. I would dearly love to have that beautiful rose.

Diane

I wish they were taking on more roses, Diane, but they seem not to yet.
We've got two more 1-G Benny Lopez sitting here -- both donations from Ingrid Wapelhorst.
I think one will go to the Cemetery in the spring.
One might go to the San Jose Heritage Rose Garden, if they want it -- or to their event in October.

Our plant is still pretty young, but we can take cuttings probably next year. And the one in the cemetery might be big enough by then.

But that's the thing -- there are so many worthy roses, and so few nurseries with the ability to offer them. And fewer nurseries all the time.

Jeri

Edmunds roses, when it was owned and operated by the Phil Edmunds family! I've not seen bare roots that even approach theirs since they sold the business. If anybody knows where I can buy bare roots that compare to the old Edmunds' bare roots please let me know where that is!

I was just going to mention Edmunds. Sadly, they did not seem to have that many antique or heirloom roses, but they certainly sent strong stock of what they did sell.

Sammy

I bought my Buff Beauty form Mendocino Rose at the SJHRG's April event some years ago.

I miss Heirloom selling lots and lots and lots of OGRs. What they sell now is a fraction of what they once had. Still, they survive.

My very first OGRs came from Tillotson's Roses of Yesterday and Today back in the 1970's. I was a mere child (really). Well, under the age of consent. I think they are still around, but I'm not sure.

And I remember when Andrew Schulman opened a rose nursery, but unfortunately it got wiped out by some rose disease or other. I don't know the details. For some years before he opened his nursery he had the most gorgeous rose website, all about Austins and OGRs. I spent hours and hours studying that site. You can still find it on the Wayback Machine.

Rosefolly

Here in Michigan we sure miss GREAT LAKES ROSES. They were such a great supplier of a huge range of own-root roses, and such great folks to work with. But we're glad Nancy and Roger are enjoying their retirement in Thailand! And we're glad we still have so many of the roses in our gardens that we purchased from them in the 'good old days'.

I Miss Ashdowns & Arena & Sequoia,

Rosefolly, what is the Wayback Machine?

Sam Kedem's is still in business, he just doesn't mail order anymore. I buy roses there every year.

Campanula, the Wayback Machine (named, I believe, after Rocky and Bullwinkle), is a searchable internet archive. It doesn't have everything, but it does preserve many websites no longer in existence.

Rosefolly

Here is a link that might be useful: Wayback Machine

Here in Los Angeles we had a singular experience. Bob Edberg began a small OGR nursery, Limberlost Roses, at his home in Van Nuys, eventually moving it to a vacant lot by the Van Nuys Airport. It was always muddy and there were always weeds. Sometimes you couldn't hear due to the plane noise. When it was hot, it was Hades. When it was windy, the tall chain link fence leaned and all the plants were on the ground, but it was the ONLY place in Los Angeles where (if you could catch him open) you could walk in and find over grown specimen of Noisettes, Teas, HPs (his favorite no matter how bad they were here), odd, unknown and obscure old roses from all over. He began them in five gallons then up sized them to tree boxes, if they didn't sell along the way. There was no telling who you'd run into at that nursery! After he retired, I had the "pleasure" of running it for the landscape company who bought it from him. It was a fun year!

Sherando brought back memories - I used to swim in Sherando Lake when I was a kid :)
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Rosefolly, I too remember Tillotson's Roses, although I never went there. The art director I was working for at the time brought in a catalog from Tillotson's, and I was enchanted - partly by the names and partly just the idea. That boss later brought in two blooms, Konegin von Danemark and Reine Victoria. I had never seen roses like that! And I have never forgotten, either. That nursery must have been a wonderful place!

You're dating yourselves...LOL! Tillotsons became Roses of Yesterday and Today and operated under that name for MANY years!

Thanks for a great thread! I know most of these nurseries, ordered from many of them. Back then....I assumed they would always be in business. Then, when one by one they started falling by the wayside, it was like losing a friend. Roses of Yesterday & Tomorrow was the first one I ordered from and I recall reading the catalog over and over - trying to decide which to order. It got me hooked on ordering roses.....a passion I continue to this day. I hope the ones we have can continue....Sad to realize, but all things seem to change......I remember having so many mail order companies that it was staggering to contemplate and try to decide who to order from.
Judith

There were many miniature nurseries all over the country back in the early 80s. So many old minis, historic minis, and as difficult to figure out what to order from whom. At that time, there weren't as many specialty OGR nurseries as there were toward the late 80s and into the 90s. As the world changed and money began to tighten, more and more began disappearing. Quite a few were due to the owners aging, retiring or dying.

There weren't nearly as many sources for OGRs and older modern roses then. There were a few, but the selection was quite limited compared to a few years later. OGR and specialty nurseries swelled and life was good!

There is a cycle to it. Lean times followed by a flush time where virtually anything you want there is a source for. It was thrilling watching more and more old, rare and obscure roses begin to fill the pages of the established and new sources. It's been quite scary watching valued sources dry up. It's even scarier thinking of the "Dark Ages" we face before us.

Yep, but when the light comes back on we can spend another twenty years trying to work out their names :)

Best wishes
Jon

and arguing amongst ourselves.

Oh, please, no! LOL! I am as OCD about identifications as the next guy, but there comes a point where it just doesn't matter. Fortunately, we now have HMF to document what is what and post botanical photos of them so people in the future will have much better tools than "double, fragrant, pink" to help figure out what is what!

For Ann and Jaxondel, thanks for the good comments. I'm still in business in Raleigh, NC at the Farmer's Market. I have changed my nursery to stay in business with our current market. I've had to expand into other areas of plants. I still have a huge collection of roses that we care for, over 1000 different varieties. But roses are not our biggest sellers. It's a tough market out there today and small nurseries of all kinds have trouble staying in business. I'm very appreciative of my local customers and continue to provide them with any roses they request. I'm hoping in the future our economy will pick up and I can once again concentrate fully on just roses. Until then, we will supply a full line of plants for the people of Raliegh and those occassional visitors from out of state who drop in and want to buy and talk about roses!
Donny
Roseland Nursery

Donny, I didn't know about your nursery and don't get back east for anything, but I am happy to hear you've been able to evolve to survive. Good sources for good plants are too few and far between. They deserve our support. We have a neat one here in the San Fernando Valley who grows all manner of odd and unusual tropicals and water wise plants called World Wide Exotics. Neat people and wonderful plants. No roses, but odd succulents and other drought tolerant and exotic plants.

Here is a link that might be useful: World Wide Exotics Nursery