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Antique RosesRoses
rideauroselad

Paul Barden’s Rose Varieties Are Becoming Rare

5 years ago
last modified: 5 years ago

I am writing this post following some correspondence that I have had with Paul that began a couple of months back. Originally, I contacted Paul to discuss the idea of placing some of his rose varieties in the new Rose Garden at the Summerland Ornamental Gardens in the Southern Okanagan of British Columbia, in order to display his work. Paul was pleased with the idea, but when we began to discuss sources for his roses, he told me that he had lost many of his roses in his personal collection to a very bad winter in 2015. He also advised me that Rogue Valley Roses no longer has some of his varieties and they are not regularly propagating others, so his roses are becoming difficult to find.

Hence this post, which is in fact a request to help gather wood for cuttings which will be propagated as a first step to ensure that Paul’s Roses are not lost. Paul has given me permission to write this post and supports our idea to build a secure collection of mother plants to make certain there is a source for these beautiful varieties. My partner in this project and to give credit where credit is most certainly due, is John Prendergast, john_ca on the forum, who in fact will be doing the propagating of cuttings at his property in California.

Now to the details of what we wish to do and how we foresee it will work. We are asking for help from anyone who has mature plants of any of Paul’s varieties as listed in the second last paragraph below and is willing to help, to take appropriate cuttings within the next month and send them to John. It is most likely that the places where roses are at the right stage for taking cuttings are California and other Southwestern States. If you have appropriate plants and would like to help, please PM John through this site. You can do that by going to one of John’s posts, clicking on his screen name and then clicking message on the page that comes up. We would ask that only those who are keen, willing and able to assist, preferably with more than one needed variety to contact John. For some reason, we suspect there may be a fairly significant response to this post and we do not want to overwhelm poor John if we can avoid it.

John already has plants of Jerri Jennings, Mel’s Heritage, Oshun, Janet Inada and Won Fang Yon, so we do not need wood from those varieties. Paul has plants of Ellen Toffelmeir, Carolin Supinger, Unconditional Love and Gallicandy, so those too are accounted for. We also know of a soon to open commercial source, Hummingbird Roses, for Golden Buddha, October Moon, and Pam's Choice. Mindy, the owner, has offered to work with John.

The list of other varieties that we are particularly wishing to acquire is: Treasure Trail, Licorice Tea, Allegra, Marianne, Siren’s Keep, Barbara Oliva, Hettie, Ettiene, Mel Hulse and Joyce Barden. We know there are others as well.

The final stage of the project will be to approach two further reliable Canadian commercial growers with whom John and I have worked previously; see “A new source of vintage David Austin Roses”; and ask if they are interested in preserving and offering Paul Barden's Roses as part of their collections.

Please wish us luck and help us out if you can.

Cheers, John, Rick and Paul

Featured Answer
  • 2 years ago

    Paul said: @KittyNYz6"How are your efforts to locate your roses?"

    I can't speak to that, since its Rick (@rideauroselad) who was pursuing this effort, not me.


    Hello Paul and Other Interested Rose Folk,


    I just saw this renewed post and felt a need to at least answer Kitty's query and referral from Paul briefly. I have not posted for a long while, many other things going on in my life right now. This project though is still being pursued. Here is a brief update. I will try to post a more fulsome answer on a separate thread if time allows.


    Where we have been, Covid 19 pandemic, border closures, John.ca growing on some of Paul's Roses, as well as many early Austin roses, both of which we wish to create a gene bank for in a Public Garden. The pandemic put a halt to our plans as it did to other "Normals" for almost four years. During that time, John.ca kept propagating and growing on


    April 2022? Finally, the US / Canadian border opened to a "semblance" of normality on April 1st. John and his wife spent several days doing the extremely hard work of digging, bare rooting, labelling, packaging, arranging inspection and shipping of more than 50 roses, All of the roses were either Paul Barden varieties, or rare Austin varieties. in the first week of April, I made a 12 hour round trip to Lummi Island, Washington to pick up the roses and clear them with Canada Border Services on their way to the Summerland Ornamental Gardens in the Okanagan Vallery of British Columbia. On arrival, two of my volunteer rose team members and I potted them back up. Total transit time from the Central Valley of California where they were leafed out and ready to bloom at time of shipment to British Columbia, where we still had early spring temperatures and our roses are just breaking bud, 6 days. As you can imagine, this was a huge transplant shock to the plants. I am happy, under the logistical circumstances, or perhaps sad to say, if you are pessimistic, that almost 40% if the roses shipped succumbed to their shipping and transplant ordeal over the spring and summer. Not surprising perhaps because of the seasonal and climate differences and the young age of some of the plants, but not a great surprise either. The surviving roses were later planted for growing on and drip irrigation installed.


    Where are we now? The surviving roses are being grown on in the "English Shrub Rose Garden". We just completed the last rose team volunteer day for 2022 this morning. The roses are hydrated, some are winter protected if I think it necessary and all are hopefully ready for thir first real winter. Irrigation has been off for two weeks and we are getting the first gentle rain in almost three months today. Winter is coming finally after yet another very abnormal year, wet spring, very warm summer and a lot of wildfire activity yet again here.


    What happened this past season? I was contacted early in the season by Jason Crouch, proprietor ofFraser Valley Rose Farm after he had attended an online talk I gave last November to the Canadian National Rose Society, regarding the rose collections at the Summerland Ornamental Gardens where the roses are ready for winter. We already had a significant collection of early David Austin roses in the Gardens, but John's and Sharon's contribution of rare Austins and even rarer Barden cultivars has given us an extremely significant collection of both.


    Jason, my rose team members and I also did some propagating of established English roses from the collection in the Garden in early July. Jason and I are growing them on, and we have somewhere in the neighbourhood of 80 established rare, rooted cuttings that will be offered for sale by Fraser Valley Rose Farm and at the Summerland Ornamental Gardens spring plant sale in May. So, for local Canadian rosarians, there will be a few very rare treasures to vye for. Jason has stated that he wishes to continue our collaboration and propagate more roses from the Summerland Gardens mother plants next summer as well. Proceeds from the roses sold will go to maintaining and caring for the heritage rose collections.


    Unfortunately, some of the Barden roses that John and Sharon sent didn't survive the shock of bare rooting and shipping from the Central Valley of California, more than 1100 miles north to the Okanagan Valley. These included Barbara Olivia, Janet Inada, Allegra, and Ellen Toffelmeir. What did survive, 1 plant of Marianne, 1 plant of Jeri Jennings, 1 plant of Oshun, multiple plants of Galicandy, plus I have a plant of Treasure Trail. So, while sadly, we lost some, others will hopefully survive a zone 6 winter and become mature plants in years to come. Plants that we can propagate from, I hope. It is not out of the realm of possibility that John and I will have another go at trying to establish more Barden cultivars in the collection at "Canada's Secret Garden". Time, energy and fate will tell. John and I are both getting up in years and beginning to slow a bit.


    Anyway, here are a few images of some of the rare Austin roses acquired through John's generous collaboration that are blooming today in the soon to be renovated new section of the English Shrub Rose Garden.:




    Clare Rose




    Dove




    Emily




    Molyneux


    And an image of some of the California and other shrub roses growing on in the to be expanded English Shrub rose collection.







    Wish the new California roses good luck in their first Canadian winter.


    End of report.


    Cheers, Rick

    Volunteer Rosarian, Summerland Ornamental Gardens



    Comments (147)

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