Going back there was once a great neighborhood in New Jersey, with Mr and Mrs Lovett and their three lovely daughters, and their neighbors were Dr and Mrs Van Fleet. Dr. Van Fleet names the roses for the daughters.
There are some line drawings in one of the catalogs inthe collection at the Library in Beltsville MD.

While double checking my memory, I stumbled on something newly digitized. Miss Baines who lived in Ohio had a nursery and would sell you two year old climbing roses for twenty cents each. She also had a really well done description of how to grow roses as well as this poem.

"To dig and delve in nice clean dirt

Can do a mortal little hurt.

To live 'mongst lush and growing things

Is like to give the spirit wings.

Who works 'mongst roses soon will find

Their fragrance budding in his mind,

And minds that sprout with roses free ��"

Well, that's the sort of mind for me."

Here is a link that might be useful: Miss Ella Baines had a nursery

The poem, in spite of its simplicity and "country" feeling, says it all for me.

Ingrid

Ann, Thank you for the link. Not onlky is it fun, but it is also a relief to see that rose nurseries do come and go. We have lost so many recently. It is hopeful to believe
"ours" have replaced those that have gone before and others will replace ours.

You might also find "The Garden of the Commuter's Wife" and the other "Barbara" books quite interesting for their discussions of roses, society, gardening, etc. around New York at the change of the Nineteenth to Twentieth Centuries. Barbara was Mabel Osgood Wright, a contemporary of J. Horace McFarland and an amazing author. She writes of the Tea and early HTs available in the area in the first decade of the Twentieth Century as well as how they are sold as "cheap, tiny, own root" plants. It isn't a discussion of them as we would have, but what she has been able to include in her mother's garden and how she was able to obtain them. The entire series of the "Barbara" books is well worth your time finding and reading them for similar reasons. They also contain glimpses of how the area and society changed during the period. Kim

Here is a link that might be useful: The Garden of the Commuter's Wife

Catsrose, it is such fun to find a good old book like that. Fashion and philosophy may change through the years, but the love of gardening shines through no matter how many dusty years pass.
Thank you Ann, for the link to Miss Ella Baines nursery listing - what a delight to read. I especially loved her thoughts on own root roses.
And Kim, many thanks for introducing me to the "Barbara" books. I was hooked from the very first pages of The Garden of the Commuter's Wife. Ms Wright was indeed an amazing author.

Anne

You're welcome, Anne. She also wrote several ARS annual articles in the twenties. You should really enjoy her autobiography, My New York. I think you will love seeing what she wrote. Really quite a remarkable lady! Kim

Here is a link that might be useful: Book list

What a lovely poem, it describes how I feel perfectly.

I collected a rose in the early 1980s at a Beltsville plot that had been used to develop disease resistant roses ( Look possibly for Peter Semeniuk and Robert Stewart in ARS Annual 1978 for information on the program) in a program there in the 1960s and 70s. In the acre plot at Beltsville I found a climbing rose described as Pink Van Fleet. I have shared it with a couple of friends and from descriptions I believe it to be Alida Lovett. It is a once blooming wichuriana based rambler (shiny leaved, but more upright than most wichurianas) with hot pink blooms (something between pink and red). I hope to get it confirmed someday. In the meantime, I have a few others like a semi-double once blooming, slightly speckled hot pink, setigera, small climber that wows me each Spring as well along with a monstrous single white rambler collected at Mrs. Keays home site in Calvert Co. MD. that readily climbed a 50' pear tree in 3 or 4 seasons (the pear tree bloomed twice each Spring). It is not believed to be a species, but what is it - Shepard's Multiflora Grandiflora or something else? Best, Nick

Ah, Nick, that rose you shared with me is how we met! Makes me all misty eyed just thinking about it. (Bess Lovett we think it is, not Alida, tho.)

Anyone who wants to get serious about old roses should read up on them in the context of when they were new/popular. No place better than the old rose books and articles. Now I'm gonna have to go look up the book that catsrose is talking about. Never a better time than now to add a new book to the collection. :)