Thank you so much for your write up, mustbnuts and Kes! Its helps me so much as to what the roses are like and plan my garden sight unseen. I read all over the www after your postings. Maybe psycological but I always can make better sense of random readings after I read postings here.

What wins me over the most is that SC has a strong damask scent and weeps and spreads. will work so well for what I have in mind.

Maybe somebody will comment on what kind of scent VS has. I think I would like it too, in a different spot as it is a bigger plant...

These two bear little resemblance to each other. 'Sweet Chariot' is a very pendant Polyantha type bush that is wider than tall, and is ideally suited to a hanging basket. 1"+ blooms of deep magenta/purple and well scented. I've never seen it exceed 24" in height. Average Blackspot resistance. It repeats well if well-fed and watered.

'Vineyard Song' is an upright, V-shaped bush to about 4 or maybe 5 feet, typical Polyantha habit, large clusters of 1.5" blooms and also richly fragrant with a unique scent that is unlike most other roses: a definite Damask fragrance but with something quite unique as well. Better than average disease resistance. It is very similar in style and size to 'Excellenz von Schubert'.

Thank you so much Paul and roseseek! that makes things clearer by miles! Now I cant wait to grow VS as well, mainly for fragrance.

For me Vineyard Song was not a big plant. I dug it up but have a new one in the ground. VS tended to arch over. Sweet Chariot is bushier here, and one of mine is a little bigger than 2'. Neither one seems that fragrant to me.

Vineyard Song

Sweet Chariot

"Mr. Moore selected the names Sweet Chariot because, as he said, he had a twin row of them in hanging baskets lining the main walk from the office/entrance down into the nursery."

I remember that! I can picture it clearly in my mind - it was a wonderful presentation.

Oh erasmus!!!! no fragrance?????? Goes to show got to try the rose yourself after all.

I think Paul describes Sweet Chariot perfectly. I wish it were a little more disease resistant but I do find it very fragrant and that with it’s wonderful color and great rebloom, it’s a superb rose. It doesn’t seem to tolerate shade as well as, say, The Fairy does, though. I didn’t know the story about the naming of it, roseseek. Thank you for sharing that.

You're welcome, Dave. I'm glad to share such stories so they are known and not forgotten. It shouldn't be surprising that Sweet Chariot doesn't tolerate as much shade as The Fairy. The flowers are generated to attract pollinators. Light colors reflect more light than darker ones. Put dark flowers in lower light and they disappear, but put them in brighter light and they show up better. Flowers designed to attract pollinators in brilliant light tend to be intensely colored, think Hulthemia with its brilliant yellow and that brick red petal blotch which acts as a target. In general, darker colored types won't be as shade tolerant as lighter colored ones.

Katyajini, you may well find it very fragrant. I find some roses fragrant that other people don't and vice versa.

erasmus, thank you, I hope!

roseseek: so true all night blooming flowers are white and extravagantly fragrant to get noticed by bugs! I notice them too.

You know, it's surprising to me how differently these roses perform in different locations with different people. It makes me wonder just how many roses have been misidentified because their performance is so different in different places and conditions. I'd heard that Sweet Chariot could be grown in a hanging basket but thought that it would have to be band-sized or the grower would need a basket as big as a tub. I could never figure out why it was called a miniature. It is very fragrant here but I noticed that humidity is needed for the fragrance to waft. So, Katyajini, there is hope that yours will be fragrant, too.

You just hit a whole lot of nails on their heads, Kes! Most will look so incredibly different in different locations and under different levels of culture, it's surprising as many accurate identifications are made as there are. If you've only grown Sweet Chariot in the ground, where it makes plants often resembling what you see from Flower Carpets, I can understand why you would question its suitability for hanging baskets. But, seriously, grow it in a 10" hanging basket, NOT in all day sun where it will certainly cook, and keep it sufficiently watered and it will "weep". Not being able to smell it isn't surprising. Scent is oils and alcohols and they can be enhanced, inhibited or even eliminated by temperature and humidity and age of the flower. We are all chemically similar, yet incredibly different. Each nose has its range of scents it can detect and to what extent. Add medications and allergies and it should be even more surprising as many of us smell things as similarly as we do. And, that all changes over time. It wasn't until several years ago I could smell or even taste natural raspberry. I could taste a chemical nastiness I was told was artificial raspberry, but the berries themselves only tasted "green and wet" and had no scent to me. Hand me a flower with "raspberry scent" and that is not what I smell.

Thank you for that hope Kes! I am really looking forward to growing and smelling these!

Glad to have found these insights as I am trying to make the same choice.

Kim, would you object, were I to copy your "naming" comments for "Sweet Chariot" to HMF entry for this rose? Also wonder if it would be appropriate to repeat comments on relative disease-resistance, as these clearly are not my observations.

Given "average" disease-resistance of SC, the rose I am leaning towards, I have serious concerns that planting this in my garden is tantamount to releasing a chihuahua to fend for itself on the Serengeti. Can anybody else comment on SC's resistance to BS? Perhaps someone in Gulf Coast area?

Thanks.

(Apparently, this blamed Houzz app has decided to give me a new moniker... This is Philip.)

That's fine, Philip.

Hey Phillip, Sweet Chariot was impervious to disease here, but blackspot isn't my issue. She's a wonderful, wonderful rose that in the end just couidn't hack my alkaline conditions. But I'd grow her again in a heartbeat. (Jeri in dry SoCal.)

Roseblushlyn had a Sweet Chariot standard when she lived in the San Diego area. In the front yard, it mildewed badly so she moved it to the back yard where the air circulation and sun were better and it didn't mildew.

I get lots of mildew on many different roses, but Sweet Chariot has never had a spec of it. I put it in the sunniest hottest spot in my south west facing patio ledge planters in my Los Angeles area garden. It does great.

I love Sweet Chariot! It's about 2x2 and forms a mounded shape with crazily blooming. My SC is fragrant and healthy. At least it can hold the leaves quite well after flushes, especially compared to my other minis. (Oh my poor Rainbow's End...) I think it enjoys the full sun and heat in Seattle.

I have Vineyard Song too, but the shrub grew awkward and has much less blooms so I totally forgot taking photos. Not very helpful sorry.

My Sweet Chariots were very, richly fragrant, arching/cascading in growth habit....could easily be 3' across, but no more than 2' high. Growth was vigorous with generous blooming and quick rebloom. Black spot resistance was pretty poor however, so if black spot is an issue for you take note of my experience here in 'Black Spot Ground Zero.'

All in all, Sweet Chariot is a great rose under black spot free conditions. Its fragrance, rich mauve bloom color, and high petal count still are remembered these many years later as quite remarkable, especially for a mini. It just was a hopeless black spotter here, so it regretfully lost its place in my garden.

That was particularly disappointing because I got a number of them at the time, hoping they would play the important role as front of the bed bushes, hiding the, 'naked legs,' of the hybrid teas behind them, but turning out to be serious black spotters changed everything.

I am using Drift roses: Apricot Drift and Sweet Drift, as front of the bed bushes now. They are doing a good job, being just about black spot free, but are not very fragrant, just moderately so, unlike Sweet Chariot's well pronounced, greatly fragrant blooms.

Moses

Thanks muchly for your insights! I was wanting to experiment with Mauve roses for hybridizing, Fragrance would be a big selling point, but I hesitate at the fear of needing life support.

I don't do life-support.

'Sweet Chariot' gets Blackspot very badly here, but its sister 'Vineyard Song', does not.

Thank you, Paul. I don't believe I've seen much about VS used in hybridizing. It is comparably fertile?

@HU-850324470 ’Vineyard Song’ is very fertile - easy to breed. This spring i will be introducing one of the hybrids i made with it in 2008.

I look forward to seeing that! (Is it available for a preview?)

103-08-01, the only photo I have of it, that I could find:

@Paul Barden when you are ready to have it listed on HMF, I'll be happy to put it there for you.

Oh Paul, that is just stunning! I love everything about that one. The color is spectacular! Thanks for sharing.

What a gorgeous rose, Paul! I look forward to learning more about it. Those delicious, purple-mauve descendents of Multifora give my Gallicas a run for best in show for breathtaking color. I am so grateful for breeders who dowsize the house-eating rambling of Multifloras and other large purples while keeping the spirit of classics like Violette intact so that tiny urban gardens like mine can indulge in many, many helpings of roses in my favorites shades. I have managed to cram Veilchenblau and Violette into my microscopic patch of soil, but unless I build a roof garden, I have hit my gargantuan rose limit! Carol

As far as I know, only one nursery here in Europe offers Sweet Chariot,and nobody offers Vineyard Song. I want them both!

Wow! It has been a couple of years since I responded on this thread. I have since moved my Vineyard Song (I still call it Bunch of Grapes) a couple of times. Yes, it is not liking my alkaline soil all that much but we shall see how she does this year. She was so heavy will blooms (hundreds of them) that I had to put plant supports around her. So these pictures are from last year, after putting the supports around. So her flowers are a bit "bent" to the side since she was not used to her canes being supported (hopefully, that makes sense). She is a blooming machine.

Paul, I am so happy to hear you are still introducing your babies! Have you chosen a name for 103-08-01? And if I'm not prying too deeply, can you divulge the parentage and describe the plant?

Thanks, gang, for your help! I now plan to get V.S. for sure when I can. (I have to recall that Ralph Moore's default setting would probably be to favor a more diminutive parent, and I should not infer that S.C. was a *better* sibling for his choice. *I* need strong plants to survive my climate/abuse.)

And thanks for the additional photos, mustbnuts. Those picts clinch the deal!

(Philip in ATX -- I really need to log out of Houzz and fix this sign-in issue!)

@Philip.

There is an entry for the rose on HMF

Its 'Rosy Purple' X 'Vineyard Song'. You can read more on HMF. I have not assigned a commerce name for it yet, no. Maybe I should auction off the naming rights!

And I think its a fair assessment to say that Mr. Moore often set aside full-sized seedlings in favor of the smaller selections. Tiny roses were, after all, his primary goal. I expect 'Vineyard Song' made it into the catalog only because his staff and/or customers looked at it and found it remarkable. (which it is)

Mustbe, I have a very young SC and it hadnt bloomed much first few months but is yours self cleaning or are you deadheading it?

Paul, good idea to auction off the naming rights

@Paul Barden you know how difficult it was sometimes to get Mr. Moore to see something outside of his "orange-pink mini" wheelhouse. Sharon VanEnoo, Judy Morgan Miller, I'm sure others, too, and I BEGGED him, urged him, cajoled him for a very long time to get him to even consider offering roses such as Pink Powderpuff, Out of Yesteryear, Out of the Night, Moore's Pink Perpetual, Moore's Classic Perpetual, Muriel, even Vineyard Song and a host of others. If it wasn't a miniature, he honestly had no idea if anyone would buy it. He didn't know if anyone would be interested in his Hulthemia hybrids. Fakir's Delight excited and confused him. Would it sell? I only wish his eyes could have seen stuff like that decades earlier. Heaven only knows what might have been released and become part of our gardening vocabulary. Even more distressing is how impossible so much of that catalog is simply gone.

@roseseek So true about Mr. Moore. It can be as much a trap as an asset when one is so exquisitely focused on singular goals; you don't see the other magic happening all around you. But when you are Ralph Moore, with such a vast catalog of work surrounding you all day, for decades, you gotta stay focused or you'll get lost in the mire of possibilities. I can't blame him for limiting the scope of his efforts.

But as you say, (and you and I know this all too keenly) there were scores of fascinating roses on the Sequoia property, and very few of them were ever considered for commercial release. No doubt there are many, many exceptional roses that vanished when the property was bulldozed, never to be seen again. I don't know how many plants of it still exist (I assume Texas A&M still have it) but I still have "Orange Moss", and 12-59-10, two of the first Moss hybrids he made. I also have the red climber bred from 'Sheri Anne' and 'Paul Neyron' growing here - you remember that huge climber on the north end of one of the houses not far from the office? It covered the whole end of the greenhouse, loaded with 4" cherry red blooms. It doesn't grow as well in my climate/soil, but it hangs on.

Photo dated Saturday May 12, 2001, Sequoia Nursery, Visalia, CA

Just think of all the seedlings grown on these benches, year after year, that were never seen because they weren't "miniatures".

Looking at old photos taken at Sequoia Nursery in 2001, I am finding all kinds of things I saw. Here is a rose named 52-89-9 (it does not appear in the master breeding record), which, I'm guessing, has disappeared since the destruction of the nursery.

And here is Mr. Moore showing me the original plant of 12-59-10, the 'Pinocchio' X 'William Lobb' moss from 1957 that bred 'Fairy Moss' (12-59-10 X 'New Penny'), the first Miniature Moss variety.

@Paul Barden absolutely! I wish I could find the photo I took of 12-59-10 dwarfing that green house. No one would believe the size of that monster without seeing it. Please consider putting that photo of Mr. Moore with it on HMF, or allowing me to if you don't wish to. I'm sure your plants of those early moss hybrids are likely the last. They don't appear on the interactive Heritage Garden catalog, so they don't grow in that garden. That Sheri Anne X Paul Neyron plant he literally thought would make a standard stock with its thornless, thick, straight, strong canes. What to do with these "treasures"? There are no gardens willing to take them on. None of them have the resources required to maintain them "for posterity" and they aren't worth a dime in the real world. No one wants to pay for them, so of what "value" are they? No nurseries are willing to take them on as how many are they to honestly expect to sell annually? One? Two? Have you sought Fairy Moss recently? Only RVR lists it and I've been on their "wait list" for more than two years now as i want to try it with Minutifolia. So many of those incredible wonders lost, most without ever enjoying their minute in the sun and the majority of a life's work gone without any way of recovering it. Natalie informed me that TAMU is resistant to sending anything from their fields as there is active RRD in the area. Very little still grows at SJHRG for a long list of reasons, water, durability, theft/vandalism, labor.... all the usual issues.

"No doubt there are many, many exceptional roses that vanished when the property was bulldozed, never to be seen again."

Wow. That just came around full-circle to a conversation Kim and I were recently having. Among other things, Kim lamented the loss of so much of Basye's original material from the Huntington that he *tried* unsuccessfully to distribute.

Even the larger breeding houses, when they change hands, have huge losses when other's don't see the value in a line, or have different goals, or a new breeder's ego comes into play. I get it, But as an amateur breeder, I know that 99% of that stuff is better than what *I* have ever grown.

(I had been on a quest for Basye's "probable amphidiploid" which I had presumed was in safe location up until a few years ago when I learned the last accession was lost. I can't say, in hindsight, it is surprising. What sane person (without understanding the pedigree or goals) would have seen the value in that wicked thorny monster? It was essentially pruned to death, evidently -- something both the species resent.)

Kristine--I believe I deadhead it. However, the flowers (at least for me) last a long time on the bush. Also, since they are sprays (if I remember correctly), I just deadhead where the spray meets the cane. If that makes any sense.

Phillip, glad I could help. Hope you enjoy Vineyard Song and that she produces well for you.

Are all of you talking about Ralph's Creeper? The rose that used to run wild all over the place? Even though the buildings are gone, I believe (last pictures I saw which was several years ago) that the rose was still there. I don't know if they built something on the property or not. Could have, by now....

No, not 'Ralph's Creeper'. That's a very different rose.

Google Maps' latest imagery is from 10/2020 and shows it was being used as a Harvest Pumpkin Patch at that time.

The Sheri Anne X Paul Neyron rose was this one. https://www.helpmefind.com/rose/l.php?l=2.64336.0 

Paul...I wonder if you could talk Raft Island Roses (Gig Harbor, WA) into carrying your roses own root...they import multiflora grafted from Canada, but have greenhouse that could be used for own root. The founder Frank Gatto is doing hybridyzing and I think they could do own root specialty roses, now they are shipping roses. The biggest problem would be website software and the website is just a list...but they have a great history and might be open to something new.

I thought of you and your roses when I visited them and saw their set up. Mike, Frank's son runs the nursery and answers the phone.

That brings up some interesting questions, Ann. I don't know, but I suspect that getting proprietary material distributed is a whole different headache/can of worms. I await with interest the responses of those with more experience.

I have, for instance, heard a great many stories of unfulfilled promises of introduction after great lengths are gone to propagate and distribute,. Likewise, failures to (when agreed to) provide remunerations are common. And I wonder how a hybridizer determines who gets access to their material. There are also stories about hybridizers who discover that a product of many years of labor has been reintroduced and credited as someone else's work when they share material for trial, destroying the possibility of collection of royalties.

But I digress, and I wonder in fact if this conversation merits a whole topic dedicated to it. Most of us rosarians fail to appreciate the labor of love that dedicated amateur hybridizers commit to their craft, nor what a cruel mistress this love can be.

More to your point, I would suspect that if customers want a hybridizer's cultivar to be introduced, the most effective route might be for the prospective paying customer do the legwork themselves, and to sell the seller on the product you intent to purchase from then. Customer demand and testimonials are a stronger market driver than anything a hybridizer can do.

Let's face it, we all want to believe ours might be the next Knock Out rose, but with much fewer than 1 in 100,000 seedlings deemed worthy of introduction, a marketer's reluctance to carry and sell a "relative unknown" is somewhat understandable.

(Philip in Central Texas)

Those Google pictures just make me sad. What a waste!

Phillip, I was lucky to get a breeder's rose, Violet Hour. I love this rose! Great rose! Gail, the breeder, had done a ton of work and it went to a person/nursery who was unethical (nice way to put it). All her work was for naught.

However, happy ending to the story. Burling (Burlington Nursery) agreed to sell this rose! So perhaps approaching a breeder and nursery person (she worked for Ralph Moore for decades), might be a way to go. I was thrilled that she stopped by my house on the way home from Burling's nursery and personally gave me a plant! This rose is one of my best roses! Such a nice thing to do! So, perhaps selling your roses and working with a nursery/breeder might be the way to go. Who knows? Food for thought.

Violet Hour

This rose just glows! Hard to tell from the picture. Takes heat like crazy. Bees love it. Flowers like crazy as well. This is one of her first blooms when she was just a little bitty baby.

Interesting pedigree. I need to look further into that one for something I'm working on...

@ann beck 8a ruralish WA said: "Paul...I wonder if you could talk Raft Island Roses (Gig Harbor, WA) into carrying your roses own root...they import multiflora grafted from Canada, but have greenhouse that could be used for own root."

Thanks for the suggestion, but I'm not terribly interested in trying to convince a reseller of grafted HT's to add my roses to their catalog. Seems to me that'd be a hard sell, but I appreciate the suggestion. I welcome any inquiries from nurseries who want to obtain my roses, but I'm not interested in chasing down new agents.

As Philip has suggested, putting roses out into the world is sometimes fraught with unpleasant surprises - having roses "stolen" to be renamed and sold by someone else (I suspect this has happened to me once, but I have yet to prove it), having a nursery promise to pay royalties and then fail to do so, and having a nursery take roses to evaluate, and after producing numbers of plants, change their minds and dump them. (That happened to me with both 'Carolyn Supinger' and 'Sanibel', but it happened at the time when the big nurseries were collapsing and going bankrupt - as this one did - so I can't blame them) Most of the nurseries that have put one or two of my roses in their catalogs have never reached out to me to even ask if I wanted to be paid royalties - they just go ahead and do their thing, often using my photographs to promote them without crediting me for the imagery. So I have reached a point where I'm really not interested in engaging nurseries and trying to persuade them to distribute my roses. I retired from this work 12 years ago, so I feel like its ancient history for the most part.