Deborah, Yes, all the roses you have listed are eligible to be exhibited. You are correct none of the roses listed appeared in past or present ARS publications. The six you mention are but a few of (by a rough estimate) of thousands of roses missing from the 2004 official "AEN" publication. The problem is that the CRL contains Roses in Commerce and Rose Registration updates. When a rose is listed, it may have a "NR" (not registered with "IRAR") or the new CRL notation, indicating rose introductions have not appeared in any ARS publications. When a rose first appears in the "CRL" with the "NR" notation, the following year it generally has an approved exhibition name "AEN". The problem is ARS does not post these "NR" changes in the next AEN publication, in the "Rose Registration" column of the American Rose or the handbook. This is preciously one reason why ARS should reinstate the Combined Rose List "CRL", as an official recognized publication to verify an "AEN" as the ARS Board approved in 1999. (Not a "temporary AEN" until the name is listed in one of the ARS publications). As it is stated, if there is a difference between what is in the "CRL" and the ARS "AEN" publication, ARS publication will prevail. Posted on the GW on 5-12-04 was a listing of all roses in the 2004 "Combined Rose List" having the new CRL notation, indicating these roses have not appeared in any publications of the American Rose Society. This only covers roses with the CRL notation. There are roses in all the back issues of the "CRL" with "NR" notation that need researching, to find out if the "NR" listing have been changed and now have a "AEN" designation, like all the roses Deborah had on her list. All of Deborahs roses started out with this "NR" notation, but were changed the following year having an "AEN". In the meantime her roses will be included in the next monthly posting on the GW of new or any corrections to the new 2004 "AEN". It may be to everyone benefit, if judges and exhibitors check their rose against what is in the 2004 "AEN" for missing or incorrect information. E-mail this information to me, and it will be on the next GW post. Waiting until the new 2005 "AEN" is published to share this valuable information, is doing an injustice to all exhibitors. The Combined Rose List is not a source for verifying AENs; it is only to be used as a reference if a rose is not listed in an ARS publication, but considered having a temporary "AEN". And as ARS stated, the handbook is no longer a reliable ARS publication as it previously was for verifying AENs. (See the post on new judges manual arrives). 5-13-04 Ronald Schwerdt

Zuzu I totally agree about the Hortico bare roots being among the smallest in the business. The main canes are somewhat larger than pencil thick and the root systems look like strings (but there are plenty of them). At least they haven't artificially pruned the roots back like another bare root company I order from, but they're still quite small. If you put a lovely richly rooted Palatine bare root against the Hortico bare roots, it's like an elephant vs a mouse. Still, the canes look healthy enough. There still are some problems in their Hortico website though, BTW. I ordered their climber collection because I really wanted to replace my Nahema and no one else had it in stock. Also, there were 5 climbers for $75 listed, none of which did I have (never happens usually). Well when the website rang up the $75 collection for $81, I figured there were some hidden shipping costs and didn't think any more about it. When I got the roses, the climbers were a totally random collection most of which I already had. Turns out the website linked to their "random collection" page rather than the special listed without telling you. Their service representative says she's been working on what to do about this (um, maybe send me what I ordered?), and so far no word yet all this week. At least she acknowledged that it was a website glitch and not my error. Good job making use of the discount for $6 each Zuzu - how did you manage that one? That makes a big difference in deciding to add to your 500+ roses. Hope they do well for you this time around. Cynthia

Mcnastarana – I totally agree. Beth, I picked up two Roberto Capucci, St. Patrick, Belle Rouge, Bella di Todi and a Calm Composure which isn’t in HMF, but it’s similar to RC, but a paler pink with a moderate fragrance. Sherbet definitely caught my eye. I didn’t get one because I have quite a lot of mid-range pinks. You should order it! Diane, are you SURE you don’t have room for one more little o’rose bush? Lynn, something “a-rose?” Lol I thought that was cute. If there are specific roses you’re interested in, I’d call first and I also think they could ship to you since that’s a drive for sure unless you have other fun things to do in PHX. Moroseaz, interesting. That makes sense with the way the nursery is set up. I don’t know PHX land values, but it’s too bad it can’t remain sort of a plant co-op maybe even with the City’s help (parks and rec/some kind of grant) and become part co-op, part parking, part park. You must live or work around there to be interested in parking. :-) We had dinner at Hulu’s just up the street from Ludwig’s the night before and it was really good food. Thanks everyone for taking part in the "field trip."

So far this year Golden Zest has survived yet another winter (its third) and that alone is enough to recommend the rose to me own root as opposed to grafted. Having said that though, it seems to be slow to regrow from the ground. Like most of my HT and floribunda roses it dies to the ground each winter and this one seems to rebound slower than some. It also means the bush is shorter than advertised (around 3'). Still, I like the rose and I can wait till late summer/fall for blooms when it's this short. I'm pretty tolerant of BS Dave but I recall this bush being pretty good at avoiding the worst of BS. I'll attach a photo from August last year and you can see that not only are the leaves at the bottom of the photo absolutely clean in BS-heaven time of late summer, the color is still the dark golden that we're looking for. I've had poor luck overwintering Golden Celebration and you're right that most of Austin's yellow fade to cream pretty quickly in the hot sun. Better ones to stay yellow are HTs or floris such as Ch-Ching or Henry Fonda, but they don't have that great Austin shape. Bottom line is that this falls into the "very nice when it blooms but not a powerhouse" category of roses in my zone. I suspect that even a zone warmer she'd keep canes over the winter and be a much more impressive rose. I'm tempted to get a second plant to try in my protected area because the blooms are so lovely. Cynthia