I posted some pictures of the SJHRG back in May on the gallery. The link is below. The SJHRG is also involved in planting roses along the Santa Clara University Fence. See photos from that here: http://forums2.gardenweb.com/forums/load/rosesant/gal0503114413560.html Here is a link that might be useful: More photos of the San Jose Heritage Rose Garden

Thanks. This is on my To Do list, and it keeps slipping with all the busyness of this time of year. R

Well, Ken said we can't talk about GE, and I have to say that I've had a couple that just won't grow. On the other hand, I have three that are great growers, probably 3 to 4 feet across and just gorgeous! LOL. By the way, I love Liberty and don't have any problem growing it. I think it's one of my top ten favorites! Anyway, I'll mention three plants that have been a nightmare. The first is petasites. Though despised by some gardeners, in my opinion this is an awesome plant when it's given plenty of room and planted in the right location. It looks best in filtered shade with afternoon shade and plenty of moisture. (Otherwise, it will wilt every afternoon when the sun hits it.) Throw some slug pellets under it a couple times throughout the summer. The leaves will get humungous- I've grown some close to 4 feet in diameter. But BEWARE!!! It send out shoots which travel in every direction and grows fast, even in clay and poor soil! You'll have these things popping up all over before you can say "boo" unless you install a fool-proof root barrier to contain it. The second plant that will run you out of house and home is phragmites australis. You won't normally find this in a garden center and there's a reason why!!! This tall grass is commonly seen growing in ditches along the freeway. There is a native specie which is supposedly okay, but I have an introduced specie which has naturalized throughout the midwest that is...well, I'll say INVASIVE!!! I thought that a clump of this would look interesting in my flower garden, so I dug a hole 4 feet wide and 3 feet deep. I lined the sides of the hole with a root barrier (3 feet deep) but neglected to put a barrier on the bottom of the hole. Then I put a clump of this in the center. Later in the summer, I began seeing sprigs of this stuff popping up 6 feet away from the original clump! Hummm...what's going on here? To make a long story short, with a shovel I hand dug 8 yards of dirt out of the center of my flower bed in the process of tracing all the roots that were growing outward in every direction at a depth of 3 to 4 feet!!! I've NEVER, NEVER, NEVER seen a plant grow like that- a nightmare! (While I was trying to dig this thing up, I swore that it was growing faster than I could dig!)Wow, like playing with fire! The last plant, which I'm still fighting a losing battle with, is crown vetch. The Transportation Dept. uses this ground cover on steep banks along the freeway to hold the dirt in place. It loves poor soil and drought conditions! (The only thing that it doesn't like is full shade.) I have it growing all over because the previous homeowner spread a bag of seed to combat soil erosion on the hillsides along my driveway. The stuff is aggressive, hard to kill, and self-seeds in the fall. It makes a continuous mat 3 to 4 feet tall that's just about impossible to walk through it, and strangles out everything in its path including small trees. I don't recommend planting it! Don

So, I looked up Himalayan blackberries, and that is definitely the blackberry I grew up with, which is naturalized all around here (coastal Northern Calif). Grows in vacant lots, untended back yards, roadsides, next to RR tracks, etc. Makes very good berries in the Fall, and you can see lots of folks harvesting them all over then. I was a little surprised to read your description, John. Perhaps it spreads so fast in TN (50 feet across from one twig!) because you get summer rain, while we get NONE, nadda, zero rain for 6-7 months in the summer? I am not aware that it spreads quite that fast here. Most of the "blackberry patches" I am aware of around here mostly stay where they have been for years. Of course, the VG rose beds are irrigated, so that would make it worse. There was a house on our street which was vacant for 7 years. There was a blackberry thicket in its back yard (which I helped the new owner get rid of), but even in our warmer climate, it was only about 10 feet by 3 feet, after 7 years of neglect of that garden. Of course I realize it can and does eat roses, and has undoubtedly eaten a large area of the old Vintage Garden property and roses. I just wanted to tell you my experience with it, so folks do not think it is IMPOSSIBLE to get rid of, and that therefor the situation is hopeless. . (It probably IS impossible to "contain" - you have to declare total war on it - I agree you cannot keep it as a pet). My new neighbor and I got rid of her backyard patch in about 2 days of work, working maybe 2-3 hours each day. The patch turned out to have eaten 2 very old plants of 'Cl Caroline Testout', which is why we tackled it in the first place. (My neighbor thought the roses growing out of it were part of the patch - I had to explain that although blackberries are related to roses, their canes do not actually produce rose flowers.). We dug up the roots as well as we could. That was 15 years ago, and the blackberries have not come back. Of course, in her garden and in mine, tiny 2-3 inch high (we call them "thorned blackberries" to differentiate them from the thornless ones which also grow around here) blackberry sprouts do come up in the lawns, beds, etc. Each time we see any, we pull them up, and we keep an eye out for them, just as we do for poison oak sprouts (which you cannot just pull up, of course, without gloves). Sorry for the long digression, but I wanted to make sure that folks understand that the situation in Vintage Gardens old rose collection is URGENT, and must be dealt with, but it is not fatal, and it is not impossible to deal with. Will just take a lot of manual labor, to make sure the roses are rescued. The roses which were eaten by the blackberries in my neighbor's garden were not killed, and re-bounded quite quickly after we freed them from their unwanted friends. Jackie