May 15, 2017 - I'm posting this as many places as I can to warn people. Apparently RVR is under new management and they just stole $32 of my money. Details follow. AVOID ROGUE VALLEY ROSES, NEW MANAGEMENT DISHONEST. I've had excellent experiences with Rogue Valley Roses in the past. However, they are under new management and they just stole $32 of my money. To be precise, I ordered two roses this spring, they were healthy and grew well, but when they bloomed, it became obvious that one of them had been mislabelled - they accidentally sent the wrong rose. No big deal, just send me the right rose or refund my money. I sent three emails, got no response whatsoever, so I went to phone calls. Got a man who never gave me his name and wasn't particularly polite, made it clear he didn't really want to be bothered. He told me the company was under new management, they'd been backlogged and were struggling to catch up and would get to my issues as soon as they could. I waited a week, nothing, so I called back. Same again. Last week, after three emails and three phone calls, I told the guy I wanted my money and I wanted it within three days, no more postponements. He said, "Okay, I'll use PayPal and send you an instantaneous transfer so you can have it right this minute." I said fine. But, it's been three days and the money isn't in my account. So I called back and he said, very self righteous, "I refunded your money last week." But he didn't. I don't have the money. I even logged into PayPal to see if anything was being held in PayPal rather than put in my bank account. Looks like Rogue Valley Roses has stolen $32 of my money.

Sorry for the late reply to your query Joe. I haven't been on the forum much over winter, busy with other things. I did go up to the Summerland Ornamental Gardens yesterday to do a quick check on the roses. We had a very difficult winter with a warm November and December, and in early January a sudden flash freeze with temperatures as low as -27 C for a week or so. It is still late winter here and the soil is yet frozen to a degree. Summerland is rated as zone 6b, but we had 5a temeratures with strong arctic catabatic winds and wind chill during the cold snap. So, on to the roses. Most of them will be going into their 3rd growing season this summer, and so are still immature plants. I am happy to report that all of them survived. Many have quite a bit of cane damage, but they all have live cane close to the ground and some have swelling buds already. The collection at the Gardens consists of the following: Marianne, Gallicandy, Oshun, Jerry Jennings and Treasure Trail. We also have Allegra, Janet Inada, Mel's Heritage and Won Fang Yon in the greenhouse at Fraser Valley Rose Farm in Deroche. I will continue to look for viable opportunities to acquire more varieties if feasible, but won't be actively seeking them out. We imported six cuttings of each, along with many more early Austin varieties and a few other hard to find varieties last spring. Jason stuck the cuttings and has been growing them on over winter. I have not spoken with Jason for a month or so, but he is doing an inventory and I will know in a few weeks what took. As well as putting Paul's Plants into the collection at Summerland, Jason will be growing Barden varieties as well and will no doubt have some for sale in Canada in a few years. We too will propagate from the plants in the Summerland collection when the mother plants are mature enough. We will sell our resulting plants at our spring plant sale and our annual Rose Tour held in June. The proceeds will go to help support the Ornamental Gardens. So by my count, we have nine of Paul's varieties in the two Canadian collections. They should be secure for a long time in our Public Garden, which is now 110 years old. We of course were unable to get all of the varieties that we might have liked, but we did pretty well in my books. Because the whole idea of the project was to secure and currate some of Paul's varieties in a safe place, I guess we have a success. An additional intent was to allow us to propagate and share these lovely plants with others. Jason will be able to do that better than we can at the Gardens in the next few years and may in fact eventually begin shipping to the US as his new nursery grows. But again, that will be a few years down the road. Even propagating plants for sale here in Canada is still a year or two away. But then this project started in 2019 and we are now entering year six, but we are on the road to reaching our long term goals. I know many on the forums are familiar with Jason through his You Tube Videos and website. he is young, energetic and a cutting edge nurseryman and Rosarian who shares my passion for preserving rare, garden worthy varieties. For those of you in Canada, check out his website and support him if you can.

Pulease...you guys. I am laughing so hard. I can think of so many forum members who make much better bouquets than I ever could. The thing about RR and Ascot is you just need a lot of blooms to stuff in a vase--the blooms do it all for you--plonks for the lazy. I just looked up Jude a while ago to see his parentage, if possible. No, it can't be...Abe Darby is a parent. My little runt Abe which grows next to my 8+ft tall Jude. Something is wrong here. Diane

I spoke with Janet (I believe that’s her name?) from RVR about a month ago regarding my Rouge Royale order. I was told the same as Ryan, that RR hadnt grown well that year and my plant needed time to grow more. She offered to wither refund my order or hold my plant until late summer when it was large enough to ship and send it then. I opted to wait until the end of summer to receive it. I did have to be the one to initiate contact but strangely she called about a week after that to discuss the same situation with RR. Maybe she forgot that we had already made arrangements? I know business has been CRAZY for these nurseries and I can see how my one order may get overlooked. It’s tough waiting though!