I grow many of the older Austins. In fact, I find myself to have an affinity with, if not a prefernce for some of the earlier English roses. My rose garden is just starting to bloom in the past two days. Many of the earliest blooming roses are the older English roses. The reds seem to be all opening, including; The Squire, Prospero, Wenlock, William Shakespear (Original) and William Shakespear 2000. Here are some images of some of the older English roses I grow and love: [IMG]http://i197.photobucket.com/albums/aa146/rideauroselad/Roses07/DSCF0031.jpg[/IMG] English Garden is vigorous healthy and has good rebloom in my garden. [IMG]http://i197.photobucket.com/albums/aa146/rideauroselad/Roses07/DSCF0030-2.jpg[/IMG] A close up of a bloom of English Garden. [IMG]http://i197.photobucket.com/albums/aa146/rideauroselad/Roses07/P6160049.jpg[/IMG] Pegasus is gorgeous, fragrant, healthy and prolific in my garden. My two plants are covered in buds and opening now. Less of an old rose character and more musk like though with large blooms. [IMG]http://i197.photobucket.com/albums/aa146/rideauroselad/Roses07/SUMMER015.jpg[/IMG] The Squire, a bit fussy, I grow him in a pot. But when he blooms, he's worth the trouble, 5 inch dark crimson blooms that take your breath away. [IMG]http://i197.photobucket.com/albums/aa146/rideauroselad/Roses07/P6160050.jpg[/IMG] The Pilgrim, powerful Tea Rose fragrance, intricate old fashioned flowers, the most gorgeous yellow flowers and healthy to boot. There are more, but one mustn't go on too long. Cheers, Rideau Rose Lad

Looks like the flowers were opening well in spite of the cold weather. That is a really impressive greenhouse in the second picture. My favorite daylily is the next to last one. Thanks for showing us a glimpse of the gardens. Val

Sounds like a great project, Ian! I have seen histories of horticulture for California, but not for here. One factor in plants dropping from nursery inventory is patents. If a nursery has a choice between propagating a common, older, unpatented variety and a newer patented one that they'll get a royalty from, they go with the one that will bring in extra income in the form of royalty payments. So you'll see an old rhodie or rose cultivar drop off the market and be replaced by a practically identical-looking, newer, patented cultivar. How plants respond to propagation methods matters too in what stays in the trade and what disappears. Market forces, same thing that's pushing out indie nurseries in favor of big box stores, require that plants be propagated on a large scale and all the same way. Plants that require specialty treatment tend to get dropped from inventories because they're more expensive to propagate, and you can't always recoup those costs if the customers won't pay more. I have noticed that the indie nurseries that used to propagate their own material, aren't anymore. It's become too expensive, much cheaper to just buy stuff in from the large producers. Retailers buy finished plants, and the production nurseries buy in rooted cuttings and tissue-cultured plantlets, and that narrows selection. Hammond's Acres of Rhodies still propagates his own stuff from his own mother plants, so he has rhodies no one else carries anymore. Some of the very oldest garden plants in this area, were selected because they could survive the long slow arduous journey cross continent in a wagon train, and were worth carrying all that distance. Plants that came a little later had to survive onboard a sailing ship from China or through the Panama Canal. Not an issue in our selection anymore. And some of those older, easy to transport plants have turned out to be invasive! like Gardener's Garters, purple loosestrife, and now butterfly bush. Other plants aren't worth a nursery's time because they're so easy to propagate that no one will pay money for them, like walking iris, nigella, common bearded iris, and robinia. These are 'pass along' plants. You have to have a really special cultivar of these to get anyone to pay for them. I have grown a lot of different roses over the years (decades ...) and while I adore the old garden roses I have learned to prefer the brand-new cultivars for many reasons. Better disease resistance in the newer roses, and I mean the very newest ones, like less than 10 years old. Better production, and the flowers have more substance now. They last longer, and hold up to rain and thrips better. I grew some of the earliest hybrid tea varieties for a while and while the individual flowers are gorgeous they just don't cut it in the garden compared to the new stuff. Flowers ball in the slightest bit of humidity, and fall apart as soon as they reach their peak. And the plants need much more work - more watering, more fertilizing, more spraying, than the roses that have been coming on the market in the past few years. I used to grow a rose called 'Amelia Earhart', which is a cultivar from the 1930s I think. Absolutely drop-dead gorgeous flowers, and knock-your-socks-off fragrant, but I only got ONE good flower, maybe TWO, per year. It never put out many flowers to start with, and most of them had some kind of damage from rain or dew or insects, and many never even opened all the way before falling apart. I babied that rose for years before chucking it. Same problems with the old polyantha 'Clothilde Souperb'. Compare that to 'Memorial Day', a new cultivar, which is equally gorgeous and fragrant, and I get dozens of perfect huge flowers off of it every year, with just routine watering and feeding, and I don't really need to spray it at all. Amazing what 100 years of hybridizing can do, isn't it?

Arlene, I wish you the best with your wonderful new hobby! My FD is grafted, I ordered it from Edmunds who no longer carries it. I have begun to grow several own root HT's and the results look promising. There are many good HT roses that aren't available grafted. Some other very fragrant HT's I have are Tiffany, Firefighter, Pink Peace, Memorial Day, Perfume Delight, Grande Dame, Beverly, Francis Meilland, Big Momma, Bewitched, Chrysler Imperial, Cinnamon Dolce, Double Delight, Big Momma and Buxom Beauty, all grafted. I also have La France, which is own root, heavenly fragrance! An own root granfiflora, English Perfume is wonderful. A couple of other grandifloras that I have which are fragrant are Twilight Zone and Fragrant Plum. Probably way more info than you needed or wanted, but I enjoy sharing. Austin roses are new to me, I have a couple, there are several I'm interested in, they are beautiful.