The concerns over the future of our website are quite understandable, and in reading through the comments and suggestions on this thread I think I've gotten some excellent ideas. I hope I can use some of these to forward the cause of keeping all of that information available. There are some factors that no one else will know about why we must close down our website. The key element is that Vintage Gardens is a publicly owned corporation. Many of our customers think that I am the owner, or one of several, but in fact we are owned by shareholders. In order to protect all of the interests involved and to minimize liability the commercial site needs to shut down. Our database is interwoven with our sales system, so we are unable to shut down the appearance of selling roses and still keep the database going. What is critical here is the saving of the data and getting it out to the world as soon as we can. That does require developing a searchable database, and The Friends of Vintage Roses have been looking for some time now for anyone who could help with that on a volunteer basis. For the short term, the Friends have a plan to upload, by class all of the roses from the VG website, and from our own database inherited with the rose collection. Our first effort will be simply to upload, class by class the information about the rose classes which I wrote and have updated many times, and will update again with new insights and challenges to my own past thinking. Along with these will go the class growth habits and the drawings that I developed in 1998-99. Included will be new versions of these growth habit illustrations, a taste of which some of you have found on the blog I recently started as Curator of The Friends of Vintage Roses. It's called "3000 Roses and Counting..." With each class upload we will include a listing of the varieties. More details will need to wait for a searchable format. In the longer term we hope that the Friends will receive enough support to build a searchable database, allowing for the sort of interaction that now exists on the VG site. The development of that database could happen very quickly and we've actively been canvasing donors to help with this, though so far we have not found the money. Kim raises a really good point, which is that the old site should somehow be archived online...at least the data part of it. If anyone has some knowledge about how to do that, we would be very grateful for assistance. Keep in mind however that the sales links would all have to be disabled, and all pages that involve the commercial entity. That old information is about to change to some degree. Though I do not expect that we will lose information that is valuable, there are too many references to "we" which refer to the old business, and so each description will be re-thought and re-written. One element that has not existed in the VG website is the provenance of each rose. This does exist in the VG Book of Roses, and I hope to bring this into The Friends' web database. Any attempt to pirate the information, however legal it may be, could be personally damaging to me, and I hope that folks will refrain from that, especially if they value this thing that I spent so long to create. I would be happy to work with anyone who has workable ideas for making an archived version of the VG website database. I will soon be archiving Vintage Gardens' presence on HMF. Simutaneously The Friends of Vintage Roses will upload their database of roses which will number about 5000 entries. This is the list inherited by the nonprofit, and includes roses that are no longer in the collection, a thing that I believe many of you will find worthwhile, particularly from a historic perspective. I am sorry that I have not been able to find the time to respond to the hundreds of emails I have received over the past year asking what will happen to our website. But, I've had a few things on my hands, and the next 10 weeks may grind me to a pulp. But, please believe that this is a top priority for me, because I know how important it is to so many people. First though, I have a few refunds to issue... Cheerily! Gregg (Vintage Gardens)

Persicaria polymorpha would probably be a good choice. I grow that in both full sun and varying degrees of shade. In full sun it is stiffly upright with lots of upright creamy-white flowers. In shade, it is a bit shorter with a looser, more open habit and fewer flowers - but still well worth growing. It is a perennial that dies to the ground each year but looks like a shrub by the time it blooms! It doesn't seed around and, while the clump will increase in size, it doesn't creep from the roots. It's an outstanding plant. Keep all your shade plants very well watered - I'd bet most of them will survive better than you might expect.

One problem is that it isn't possible to separate the commercial part of it from the rest. What I have heard is that the rose list, possibly along with the size ratings will get uploaded to HMF . Gregg is planning on a blog where he will talk at length about each rose in the collection on The Friends of Vintage Roses site. These things will take time, but will happen eventually. It just can't be kept as it is.

Great topic!! I have just discovered weblogs by two garden architects/designers, Thomas Rainer and Noel Kingsbury.......both a delight to read. But my questions is, how do you keep all these blogs and websites organized?? I have tried using Google Reader with limited success.....was just wondering if there is some better way to organize all the things on the web to do with gardening! thanks.... http://landscapeofmeaning.blogspot.com/ http://noels-garden.blogspot.com/