Dennis, I appreciate this information. No Abe Darby for this spot! Morden, I appreciate your thoughts. About Royal William, I've been noticing that one for a long time. It sounds so good at HMF! It's hard to figure why it's not more widely available someplace that might sell it ownroot here. I'll save the information on Grande Amore too--it sounds wonderful! Thanks so much! I'm not at all decided that we simply must have some HT's, though my huband particularly likes that bloom form. But this year's orders are completely finished now, and the closest to a HT that we will have is one Belinda's Dream. Its bloom form looks to me very much like a HT, and this should make my husband happy. I did see one place mentioning that Belinda's Dream will take a little shade, so we'll see how it does no-spray in its spot. For me, I nearly faint every time I see a picture of "Mrs. Dudley Cross" blooms and I'm expecting my husband to really like that one too, when it gets around to blooming here. (Have one and ordered some more of that one. Its beautiful plant form and foliage are a big plus. Lights go off in my head every time I visualize how beautiful it is going to look in the landscape!) I'll skip a complete discussion of the roses on order but you'd probably be delighted to see the disporportionate number of OGR's, teas, polyanthas, and hybrid musks. I am heavily disposed toward roses that managed to get along reasonably well before the advent of heavy chemical use. ==Skip the following rose society thoughts if you are not into LONG reading!== The decline of rose societies is a huge and complicated topic and one I'm not qualified to spout off about. I do have a few thoughts, just the same... :) I doubt that the decline is the result of one single facet of modern life, but more of a conglomeration of trends. Some of the influences are probably things you can't do anything about. The trend that perhaps you (generic "you") can do something about would be the widespread belief that roses are so difficult to grow. This is going on my second year with roses so I can't holler adamantly that I know differently from experience. However, it makes intuitive sense to me that roses couldn't necessarily be all that difficult to grow, or we wouldn't still have roses around in the world anywhere. After all, it's only in the last century that we've had all those chemicals that seem so necessary nowadays for so many roses. And lots of early rose hybrids that have been found have survived just fine on their own with zero care. To me, the job for a new rose person is to discover those varieties that have not been so hybridized and selected that they need something so unnatural as dangerous chemicals in order to thrive, as well as discovering those varieties suited to the local microclimate and site conditions. I don't expect all rose choices to succeed here in less than perfect conditions, but I'd be surprised if they all failed too. We're having some success, as long as "success" isn't defined as absolute perfection in every leaf and bloom. The perfection standard is more for competition, and nothing that matters to us. So I think local rose societies need to appeal to prospective new rose people to join their ranks by offering friendly help towards those discoveries of good-grower varieties, help that is difficult to come by through any other means. Local societies need to expand the base of local knowledge of varieties that prosper in a no-spray yard, tell what conditions they are thriving under, and make that knowledge easily accessible. Rose show competitions are enjoyable for many but are probably less important in expanding the base of rose growers in general, because there are relatively only a few who are going to get into flower competitions, big time. But the base numbers needed to find enough people interested in joining rose societies are so much greater than that. Downplaying the emphasis on flower competitions as a very important rose society activity might be good idea, as that is not what is on the mind of someone in the initial stages of deciding whether to plant a rose or not and then whether they ought to join a rose society. Not to mean not to have rose competitions... But I'd suggest rethinking those a bit too, maybe by setting up tables at the local shopping mall, with as many tables as possible with a large sign on them that says, "All these roses have been grown without the use of inorganic chemicals." Nevermind that the rose leaves are going to show a few imperfections; the passers-by who might think of growing roses as a result of seeing the displays aren't looking for or expecting something unnaturally perfect. The big sign would update what they think they know about roses and would draw them in for a closer look. In my view, a primary mission for a local rose society, if it really wants to thrive and expand, would be an educational mission so that more people could get started with roses and feel comfortable about it. The public education would not primarily be based on an assumption of the needs of all those HT's that were hybridized before anyone started to think much beyond the goal of the beauty and cutting of the blooms, but based on the assumption of plants that will likely have overall success in the local landscape without becoming a burden to the new rose grower. If you take any gardener who isn't yet into roses, and simply ask them whether they want to take up a hobby that is going to involve spraying around poisonous chemicals, maybe even to the point of having to take a shower in a hurry afterwards, or suiting up, or anything even mildly in that direction... well, it seems obvious to me that you're not going to be attracting a whole lot of flower lovers to keep the ranks of rose societies filled up. If you mainly wanted to get into pesticides, you'd probably be busy holding down a job in a pesticide company instead of getting your hands in the dirt and enjoying nature. I've more than once seen advice relevant to blackspot as to how important it is to pick up every fallen leaf before the new leaves start to come on in the spring. I suppose this is picking up the leaves one-by-one? And if anyone has more than a young rose or two, I suppose this could amount to thousands of fallen leaves to pick up? Does that kind of necessity for success sound like something to attract new rose growers? To put it mildly, we have no intention of doing all those kinds of things here. Of course, it's not a bad thing to share what rose society members know about handling a problem when and if it does arise to an alarming degree, but the most important thing to begin with--if what you want to do is to promote the numbers of persons interested in growing roses--ought to be to share what you know about choosing varieties that will succeed without those kinds of worries. The friendly help that local rose societies ought to be offering in today's fast-moving world ought also to include local society websites that are extraordinarily well-designed and carrying huge amounts of information, from both the local and the national levels. And always, it would be the most helpful to have forums for the participation of those who join, places where a member could post an interest in getting started with, say, the variety "Prosperity", and later see someone else posting that the variety was blooming right now in their yard and to call about coming over to see it. Rose chats nowadays ought not to be waiting until the next Rose Society meeting to take place. I recently joined a camellia society that is maybe 250 miles from my house. They have a very good website. The local chapter effectively had no website and no easy means to quickly answer my questions regarding variety choices as they so frequently come up; as far as I know, their only activity is to host a camellia show once a year. I know that a strong web capability is easy enough to prescribe, and lots more difficult to accomplish, especially given the degree of computer-saavy of most rose society members, who are often not youngsters, not by any means. But this is just my idea of what to try for, not what anyone has a right to expect. Anyway, I do hope that rose societies do manage to keep going, however they might need to update what they do to encourage many flower lovers to try growing roses. As always, thanks very much for all who contribute to the rose information existing right here on the Garden Web. Best wishes, Mary

I'm excited about a lot of roses this Spring: I'm finally allowing myself to acquire Lady Hillingon...we'll see if there is enough heat for her here. Even if it's a failure, I'm going to try. Jenny Duval: I don't care if she has a terrible reputation for suckering- the color of the flowers is worth it, and maybe my clay soil will slow her down a little. I can't wait to see what my band of Gruss an Coburg does: it's putting out all kinds of new growth! In October, I rescued two beat up and abandoned 5-gallon pots of 'New Zealand'. The color and scent are lovely, and I think it's the kind of "Modern" hybrid tea that should make some people think twice about "no moderns" snobbery. I'm also VERY excited to see the Spring behavior of the 5-gallon plant of Zephirine Drouhin which I was given to me last summer. I've never grown her before, and I've read a lot of complaints about stingy re-bloom, but mine had flowers on it all through August, September and October. Basically, I'm just excited about all roses, all year long.

I used to purchase from Wells Mid South Roses, operated and owned by Verlie Wells (breeder of many mini's and mini-floras such as Memphis Cajun and Angelica Renae). I believe For Love of Roses bought the rights and assets to everything Wells Mid South had owned, and has in turn added quite a variety to the website. I haven't bought from For Love of Roses yet, but Wells Mid South used to have really nice plants and great prices! Tammy Here is a link that might be useful: For Love of Roses / Wells Mid South Roses

There's not a gallery for miniatures because honestly there's just not enough people posting pictures of them. Some people do post them here though and some post them on the regular rose gallery. You may want to go there and request pictures of minis. For some reason it drives me crazy when I don't know the names of my minis. I have been able to I.D. some of them through this website: http://www.kordes-rosen.com/englisch/index.html Sometime they will put the name of the rose on the inside or outside of the pot that it comes in so check before you throw the pot away. The bigger minis are called Mini-floras. I don't have any recent pictures right now but as soon as mine start blooming again I'll post some. Laurie