Yes, GatorRose, after having my share with 15 water-hogs Austin I finally wake up and plant roses appropriate for our hot and humid summer, rather than roses bred in cool and rainy England. Most roses can take dry heat, but humid heat is intolerable. For example, Sheila's perfume rose bred in England in 1982: folks in humid summer have problems with BS and shutting down, but folks in dry heat are happy, like this comment in HMF "It must have been the humidity, because it does great in the 90's and 100's in San Jose, CA" The last time Tammy posted a picture of receiving a leafless Basyes Blueberry from Rose Petals Nursery - I also received a 100% healthy lush green band from Burlington Nursery in Visalia, CA in mid-March. Within 3 day, Basyes Blueberry lost all its leaves. Mine was naked just like Tammy's. It's NOT THE PROBLEM WITH THE NURSERY, it's because Basyes Bluberry doesn't like to be in the shade with wet standing water. Once I took her to full sun and drilled extra holes in the pot, she regained her leaves. This is to clear Rose Petals' reputation of sending a leafless gallon-size. Basyes Blueberry is in the Texas drought-tolerant list. I went to Rose Petal Nursery and checked their selection, and I'm excited that they have what I always want: Thomas Affleck, Carefree Beauty, and Apothecary Rose (great scent for potpourri). What I like about Rose Petal Nursery is they have many drought-resistant and earthkind roses, no spray, and demands less water in U.S.'s drought. I'm in zone 5a with cool/wet spring and fall, with only 3 days at 100 degrees this July, and our very short drought ended with hail storm in July, and early August with cool and rainy days .... BUT I don't want to spend my time taking care for water-hogs. Burlington in CA has many drought-tolerant roses at $11 per band, shipping is cheap four roses for $11 to my Chicagoland. Tiny Petals have lots of drought-tolerant roses at $10 per gallon, great prices! LongAgoRoses in North Carolina is also $10 per band, cheap shipping. Linda carries older Austins, OGR's, and many of Kim Rupert's thornless creations. Below is a link to drought-tolerant roses. Here is a link that might be useful: Water-wise drought-resistant roses

trends and fashions, mariannese. At the moment, everything here is 'grow your own' with a sideshow of tropicals, prairie planting and ornamental grasses. A quick look in any bookstore will illuminate where the money is going in gardening - design is god. Not only nurseries, the horticultural trade as a whole is going through one of those reinvention moments. many colleges have downsized, teaching fewer modules in plant husbandry, nursey stock, even basic gardening, in favour of quick, money-spinning design courses. Everyone wants to be a bloody designer (We are....and we have seen some absolute cowboys who know NOTHING about plants). There are less apprenticeships. less facillities and many councils, parks and colleges no longer grow their own plants - they merely buy them in cheaply, two or three times a year, from massive greenhouses in the Netherlands. Therefore, the perceived need for knowledge and experience is receding while the nursey trade is vastly over-capitalised - almost impossible to get a small start-up going now. In the UK, the rose trade has largely been fairly steady although Beales, our foremost old rose grower, was in financial difficulties last year and have been forced to look at new ways to generate revenue (teaching courses, expanding the product range, taking on franchises selling garden structures and so on). However, I cannot help but feel quite optimistic for the longer term since roses have been around for hundreds of years while the same cannot be said about restios, bananas, echinacea and miscanthus and the rest of the fashionable plants. Moreover, in a time of anxiety and fear, people invariably fall back into nostalgia and conservative thinking....and there is nothing so redolent of english gardening as a rose. Individuals, sadly, will fall by the wayside and it may be that, for a time, we are dependent on amateurs and a few larger firms to supply us. However, these plants are out there - they are not going away and if the gardening world seriously addressed the issue of failing sales, they would be forced to engage in some imaginative thinking and address some of the many issues which troublwe people who would grow roses if they did not use so much water, pesticides and fertilisers...a matter of education and breaking down artificial barriers to full understanding. Not only that, breeders are also keen to address these troubling problems such as health and vigour, the way roses are planted within a larger scheme and the general good value of planting long-flowering shrubs - we will see a lot more ground-covering/landscape roses which, to my mind, will be a good thing as I am heartily sick of hebes and lonicera, aucuba and bloody skimmia - our usual municipal plantings. The rose industry is not dead or even slightly ill - it is just changing...and a good thing too.

I'm with Ingrid on this one - with over 700 roses and the need for replacements each year, there's no way I could disguise rose purchases even if I wanted to, and I'm glad I don't want or need to. Like a lot of other people posting, he has his hobbies and I have mine, and the monthly storage fees alone for his classic cars balances out a fair bit of my rose purchases anyway. At the same time, most of my rose purchases aren't obviously roses to a non-gardener, since band plants just look like random perennials, and I tend to plant them pretty quickly after arrival so they don't sit around and get annoying. The only time I can recall he was a bit frustrated by rose purchases was when Eurodesert went out of business and I bought over 100 of Cliff's mother plants. You really notice how many roses are arriving when each comes in its own 3' X 5' heavy box, but bless his heart his main comment was a heavy sigh and a bemused question, "More roses?" As tightly as I pack my garden beds, you don't realize how many roses are in a given bed till you actually count. The one request he made was that I not add any new rose beds to accommodate any purchases, which seems quite reasonable to me (not to mention I've run out of good spots anyway). He's been really very supportive of my gardening, even though he still can only tell a rose from a peony from phlox because I tend to have more roses than anything. He'll frequently comment how nice the flowers in the front yard look, and mentions when he can see roses blooming from standing at the kitchen window. He even commented that he was able to trim the front hedges relatively pain free that have roses backed up right to the edge of the yew bush. Last week I cut some roses to give to friends, but they forgot to take them home. I was taking them up to go give to a neighbor when my DH interrupted and said, "But I like them too. Let's keep them, I really like these." Just when you think he doesn't notice he surprises you with appreciation. Yep, he's a keeper. He's probably rather not see so many roses, but he likes the effect as an end result. Cynthia

Seil, I always see your posts on the rose forums, I rarely post, but I've been lurking around for years. Posted a bit last year. But, I am really surprised that you haven't been able to cross, you seem like a rose genius! :) I put tin foil over them after I take the pollen, then the next day, I add the father pollen, and put the tin foil back over until I'm ready to harvest. My setup is nothing special. I use a peat/perlite mix to start the seeds after they have stratified in the fridge for 3-4 months in either a wet paper towel, or the peat/perlite mixture. I sometimes mist with a spray bottle, water with a bit of super-thrive. Here is my setup, it is just a grow light with a garbage bag over it, and a camera set up to take a picture ever 4 minutes for the time lapse. :)