Beautiful!

I think that first photo belongs in the dictionary under "sumptuous"...

It's beautiful in every picture, but the last one is wow! The color is luscious.

Not only is the rose over the top gorgeous, but look at that perfect long straight stem! Lisa

Jeri...I want you to know that because of you and your championing of this rose (as well as some major enabling by Jerome's beautiful full bush shots) I bought a band of it for my new rose garden.

I planted it out and I thought it wasn't going to make it...but now it's putting on a ton of new growth and looking quite lusty for such a small little plant. I'm excited to see how it does in my PNW garden!

What a beauty! Has anyone grown it successfully up north (5a-b)? I have a few HP that do well here, and this one is different than the four I have in the garden.

Sunny

I love this one too Jeri. My young (first summer) Old Town Novato. I better cut this bloom today otherwise it will shrivel in the heat we have been having!

I decided to try training it as a semi-climber, or a "lanky" rose with support to take advantage of its arching growth habit. :-)

I have it weaving in and out of Nahema and WWII Memorial. It's the tall rose in the corner here, the one with lighter green foliage, weaving into the tall peony cage. The blooms seem to like the shade of being tucked into the surrounding roses.

Anyone know any ideas on who this rose actually is? Or are we going to just keep the study name of Old Town Novato?

Cori Ann...is that Nahema to the right in your pic? It's absolutely beautiful!

I would love to see more full bush shots of this rose if anyone has them. The one I remember is from Jerome a few years ago. He had a very large OTN that was pruned low and was very upright and bushy. I would love to try to emulate that in my garden.

The very small band I have is already looking lanky and floppy. I wonder what I can do to encourage bushiness? With most roses I simply let them do their thing, but with Hybrid Perpetuals it seems that you can really manipulate their growth habit and they don't seem to mind.

Hi Rosylady. Yes that's Nahema to the right. It's a wonderful rose and seems like a very good friend for OTN, for the way I'm trying to train it.

I would think you could encourage OTN to become more bushy and stout by pruning it back, but I'm not sure how old it should be before you start doing that. I would think you could probably gently start when it is very young. I would start as soon as it sprouts up a new came of its own, but others here will surely know better.

I just got mine in the fall or maybe the winter. It has been growing fast and I'm very happy about that since I'm training it as a semi-climber! It arches naturally already and is very pliable so far. I'm just going to keep weaving it through its neighbors, through trellises, wires and through that tall peony cage and see what happens. :-)

Trained for the next year. Arching, laterally. Let’s see what happens.

Already sprouting after just defoliating it maybe a week ago. Happy. Happy. :-)

This rose has the prettiest prickles! Can you fall in love with a rose for its prickles? Sigh..the flowers are pretty darn pretty too!

~Sjn

I don't think there have ever been any strong candidates for ID. But I did meet a woman who remembered the mother plant from her childhood in Novato.

That’s surprising Jeri! It seems too great of a rose to be unknown and not have a real name.

We like it enough to have 3 of it.

The rose Old Town Novato is pleasing me greatly with its perfectly symmetrical and evenly spaced laterals! I couldn’t have planned it better if I got out the measuring tape and told it to specifically grow at 3 inch intervals.

On every trained cane it’s doing this... perfectly growing every 3 inches. What a treat for the overly-organized, slightly OCD, gardener like me.

It's clearly something from that Victorian Era of gardening, when gardens were so mannered. Where it lives on the hillside, the canes are arching out of their own, and I think will bloom similarly.

Old Town Novato was tested for RMV in December and found not to be infected with RMV. This is one more old rose which may be called "virus indexed". As it has been spread around via cuttings and not budded, they all should be "virus free", at least for the group for which testing and clean-up are available. Should anyone think to bud it, please keep that in mind and only use either indexed stocks or seedlings. More neat information!

And the mother plant grew next to the old Novato train station, until that whole area was bulldozed.
Isn't it wonderful that we are finding "clean" plants in California?

Yes ma'am, and I am delighted that information is becoming more available so it can be shared.

So many buds this year! Wow this is a generous rose!

(Ignore the aphids please. The ladybugs will get them soon enough.)

I think it loves your area. It's a great rose.

Beautiful! I have aphids too but I saw some baby lady bugs. I also found round holes chewed through some rose buds! Must be some type of beetles?

wow Cori Ann! I'm so looking forward to watching all your roses start to bloom this year! I planted an OTN band last summer and got one massive, incredible bloom. It then went into root-building mode and hasn't put on much top growth yet.

I can't wait to see all of yours!

:-)

Look at all those buds! This is going to be beautiful!

Yes it really responded well to being trained laterally and being defoliated to force dormancy in my yard. :-)

Totally disease free right now too. Didn’t fertilize, but maybe I should after this flush!

Sad to say, it doesn't seem that Bierkreek offers this anymore, at least it's not on their list on-line. They seem to have reduced their stock a lot. It's too bad...

Yes ma'am, they hit a wall where they had to reduce their selection dramatically to save themselves. Unfortunately, you can't continue to offer what there isn't demand for. It is too bad, but it has, so far, allowed them to stick around.

Oh dear. We have had a few days in the 100s already and Old Town Novato’s gorgeous, delicate petals are like flambé. Or s’mores roasted over the fire. I was so excited about all these buds, SOOO MANY, but now they’re all sunburnt. The other roses near it were not quite as affected. Hubner Plot handles heat like it’s no problem (cream colored, far left). The thick petals of La Rose de Molinard show no sun burn at all (bright coral pink, far right). WWII Memorial got a bit of sun burn and melting too (grayish pink, bottom), but none had as much damage as Old Town Novato. (Photos below hopefully show, Houzz has been weird lately)...

The delicate, thin petals are crispy on all the blooms, but also the buds and and I’m not sure they will even open now. :-(

I remember now this happened last year too. We get intense heat waves too early for this rose here. We go right into summer weather in April. It likes NorCal obviously, but i think it likes the microclimates a little milder (say like... Novato). ;-)

I think I’m going to need to move it to the shade, where it gets only morning sun so the lovely blooms have a chance here. It will have to mingle with my rhodies and azaleas. Luckily it seems easily trainable and the bush habit itself is simply lovely and extremely healthy, so I think it will look great over there mingling with the rhodies too.

I think that was a good idea.

Saved a few blooms and buds from getting scorched by the heat today. Old Town Novato and sweet peas. :-)

Such wonderful long stems.