It's not a perfect world, is it? People try things with good intentions, and--fail. Forgive, and move on to more skilled growers who sell a quality product.

Let it all out Josh! Tell me what you are growing that is completely clean down there! I would love to know. I will tell you what does well here...although you all are much drier down there. Do you have a list? I should think that most growers grow their own offerings....Have you tried the HPs on offer from this nursery?
Susan

Susan,

We actually have really high humidity, especially during the summer. I would definitely check out:

Souv D'Elise Vardon (Long Ago)
Souv. De Francois Goulain
Cramoisi Supeurieur (ARE - love this one)
Louis Phillipe
Lamarque
Souv. Mme. Leonie de Viennot
Champney's Pink Cluster
Pink Pet
Crepuscule
Milkmaid (clean even as a young band)
Frederic II de Prusse (clean even as a young band)

Just for starters! Your summers may be slightly milder than ours, and your winters a smidge colder. I can't definitely say how these will perform for you, but they've been excellent for me!

Josh

The first nursery has been in business for a long time, but they don't grow any of their own products. Their roses come from Antique Rose Emporium, David Austin, Weeks, etc.

Josh

I was looking for 2 cherry trees, low chill ones. I know that the owners of one local have had a rough year or so with health issues and thought I would like to make a few purchases from them to help out.

The wife was there and I asked her if they were going to get either of the two trees in, she said "Oh Noooo not those! I only order the right trees for our climate" she went on and on... and then told me what cherry she was getting in. Well it is NOT one that will ever produce in our area because it needs over 2x the chill hours.

I am going to write off the way she replied and what she ordered as she just has too much to deal with. I will go buy something else this summer and get the right trees else where

Sometimes people try and just don't have enough knowledge or time to learn. Some gentle hints might help

I know it is far, but you would have a field day at The Antique Rose Emporium.
Everything is labeled. The displays are well maintained.

Josh, I don't know anything about how well Mme. Antoine Rebe does at the Earth Kind Trial Garden, but when I grew it in the Dallas area it was a prolific bloomer for me. I just planted one here last summer, and so far it has bloomed in regular cycles - it even had flowers just a few weeks ago. It definitely isn't a dud in every garden.

I feel your pain but you have to remember that the nurseries can only sell what they can get from the growers. And most of them only know what the growers tell them. The growers want to sell product so they tell them what they want to hear. I've found that a lot of nursery people really don't know all that much about the plants they sell. They're retailers not gardeners in many cases.You have to do your own research.

besides that if what the nurseries do get doesn't sell they won't get it again because it didn't make them any money. A lot of my local nurseries have quit carrying roses of any kind, including Knock Outs, because they don't sell well and they end up just dumping them at the end of the season. It's sad but roses are getting harder and harder to find everywhere.

Who can find a good nurseryman? For his (her) price is far above rubies.
Nurseryfolk, like gardeners and like mankind in general, are of all kinds and all levels of competence, and those that have the full range of skills and knowledge, and a decent market to operate in, are to be cherished. I'm in the sad situation of not having a good nursery anywhere close by (and with gas at $9 a gallon I don't travel much), so my contacts with people who know plants, care about plants, and grow plants for a living, is largely limited to an annual visit to our local plant show with its exhibitors, many of them very well worth talking to, and buying from. Sigh. All I can say is, practice patience, patronize the good nurseries, and forget about the bad ones. Most of my plant buying is by mail order, which works fine but does have the disadvantage that I rarely get a look at the plants until I see them growing in my own garden. And definitely try to swap plants with fellow gardeners, or just give them away (this will give the beneficiaries ideas), though I think you already know that there are other channels for plants than the commercial ones. Perhaps one day there will be a kind of reverse osmosis in which nurserypeople see local gardens filled with beautiful adapted plants, and decide to begin carrying them themselves.
Melissa

The people growing the HPs might be spraying them to keep them healthy. They might look great in bloom at the nursery and they are fast growers. Maybe the nursery advocates using a spray program.

Most nurseries don't have antiques and wouldn't know one if they saw it.

When I have seen antiques, they were older plants long suffering. I don't think the larger ones like being potted very long and even HTs look sad by the second year unsold in a 5 gallon pot. It takes a person who really loves roses to provide the care and most nurseries don't have the time or interest.

Josh, thanks for sharing your list! I have several of the varieties listed. I love Crepuscule. What a beautiful rose. I don't pay any attention to introduction date and some of these are NOT, as you said, truly OGRs but I wanted to add some to your list that do well here:
Francis Dubreuil (Barcelona?) is a gorgeous crimson and wonderfully fragrant with great repeat.
Felicia is a HM I love so much I'm ordering 3 more for a hedge.
Mystic Beauty (sport of SDLM?) does really well here.
Marie Pavie has done well. Perle d'Or...any poly does well here. I have Cecile bush and climbing.
Sophy's Perpetual is gorgeous and clean....
Those are all of the true oldies coming to my mind that have bloomed. Most of them I received last summer.
MIP grew from a band to 8 foot canes and is amazingly healthy. Svr. du President Lincoln is the same. Neither bloomed last year.
The sickly ones here were the gallicas and damasks. UCK. so gross I just kept pruning all summer. I love the deep dusky tones of my gallicas but I will grow them in pots and hide them after bloom....although with the winter we've had maybe they will perform better this year?
Mlle. Sombreuil (the tea) is a very pretty bush. Constantly in bloom with pretty fragrant white blossoms.
Maybe peruse ARE's inventory and if you don't want to pay shipping see what can be found locally. It seems everything ARE grows does well down there.
Susan

Josh, we want you to open an antique rose nursery in Post Falls Idaho. I'll gladly
work for you.
Linda

I am in east Texas - the only nurseries w/in driving distance that I know I can get OGRs are Chamblees and Antique Rose Emporium. However, the list of what I can order is endless. The SFA University Arboretum Spring Plant Sale in Nacogdoches has some interesting ones - I got a sport of Belinda's Dream, a climber, there last year [cant wait to see it bloom this year, Greg Grant found it] and one called Scottsville Rose - cant find any info on it anywhere, but its supposed to be one of the oldest roses in Texas, a once bloomer. Also "Pink Marechal Neil" - who knows what that is. They also have others like Enchantress, Cramoisi Superieur, etc. Not to mention SO MANY interesting plants that you cant get elsewhere. You should plan to go - its April 5 this spring. Definitely worth the drive to Nacogdoches.

Its sad most people don't know about OGRs and how wonderful they are, but that's just the way it is. I love to order roses [just take a look at my pot ghetto!] and feel lucky to find them at so many wonderful nurseries that ship. Its a shame places like Lowes and Home Depot don't have some to offer. Chamblees is selling a lot of the Kordes landscape roses because that is what people want - lots of bloom, no care. Not sure how I feel about those - smaller blooms, many are thorny. I am trying Flameco Rosita - purchased last spring at a big grocery store chain - but in my mind, they cant compete with a big bloom of Mrs.
BR Cant or others.....

Good nurseries with unusual, interesting plants are hard to find due to the economy. Josh, if you are in the Tyler area, by all means go by Blue Moon Gardens - they have a gorgeous nursery [they have a website] and I can find lots of unusual things there, however in that area, Chamblees remains the best place to buy roses. I am chomping the bit to start going - have already been to Blue Moon.

There are a few really good nurseries around - you just have to find them. I am fortunate to be in driving distance of several. Am going to New Summerfield to the nurseries there on Saturday, want some gallon pots of bridal wreath for $3!
Judith

It takes many knowledgeable gardeners in any one area to support a nursery and encourage them to stock unusual and old roses, anything other than the few standards that people see in the big box stores. Since those gardeners are as scarce as hen's teeth anywhere, nurseries have no impetus to offer anything other than the few common and most popular roses from which they can actually make a sale. I've told people about old roses and encouraged them to try them, but have had almost no success. The dumbing down of America is all-pervasive and nurseries are just one example of the problem. All I can do and have done is to buy from the on-line nurseries that have the roses I want and support them with my trade so they can continue to exist.

Ingrid

Josh, I hear you . Teas do so well here but finding anyone who sells them around here is impossible. In my experience the local nurseries are absolutely clueless about roses ( and many other things as well).

Ingrid, love the "dumbing down" comment; true true true!

Yes, if you actually walk into a nursery which is not a special nursery for OGRs, you will be dealing with retail clerks with little or no knowledge about roses. Once I was visiting a friend who suddenly wanted to go to a nursery and look for OGRs - we went to a nearby one which had a very good reputation. The nice lady barely knew what a rose was, but the nursery was very large, so I walked all over looking at everything. Low and behold, in a back corner they had some banksias in large pots which looked as if they had been there for years - they were 6-8 feet tall! They were blooming. They had the yellow and the double white and the single white. Upon inquiry, they were not even in the nice lady's computer any more, so she looked at them in dismay (no tags, no prices) and gave us a really cheap price - I think she thought of it as getting rid of eyesores!

Jackie

It seems we've all encountered these frustrating situations. It upsets me because with the decline of Vintage, and the disappearance of roses from many nurseries, I can't help but feel like the Antique roses we know and love will eventually fade into obscurity. Since the general public does not have the knowledge to access the online nurseries we know of, I would rest easier if nurseries spent more time educating themselves on preferable varieties for their areas.

I emailed the nursery that released the rose list to express my distress, and they emailed me back. As suspected, they stock what sells. And as opposed as I am to using toxic chemicals to maintain roses, the GM said that there were customers who were willing to use fungicides.

He did say they were considering splitting the Pioneer roses off from the Antiques and making them their own category. He said the reason Gold Blush and Polonaise were in the Antique category because they were from the Antique Rose Emporium and their growth habits resemble OGR. Meh, to each their own I suppose. I may propagate a few of the more unusual Teas I have and gift them to a couple nurseries around here in an attempt to pique interest.

Josh

Honestly, I think the fact that they include roses from ARE at all makes them pretty cool in my book. I've got a local nursery who does, and I love them for that. No, the roses aren't put into any sort of categories, but I don't mind. I wade through the tangle, turning the buckets this way and that, to see what treasures may unfold. I don't always know what I'm looking for. If it looks pretty, and especially if it smells pretty, I'll buy it, much like your average nursery shopper.

Brittie,

If you ever find yourself in Austin, go to Bartok Springs Nursery! If I lived closer I would work there just so I could spend my free time there.

Josh

There used to be a lady in my old home in Florida who propagated a lot of antique roses and donated them for sale as part of the local PAWS fundraiser. Don't know if she's still around, but if anybody likes to propagate and has an interest in a local charity or beneficial institution--Friends of the Library or whatever--might cosider this. My sister gardens, and every once in a while she takes her excess plants, puts them out, and posts a sign saying whoever wants them can have them. She has the advantage of living in a very small town where there's a lot of foot traffic.
I wish I had someone to give plants to.
Melissa

For what it's worth, 'Gold Blush' is SORT OF like a modern Noisette. It's just that instead of being 'R. moschata' X some China, it's 'R. moschata' X 'Abraham Darby'. I wouldn't know how else to class it, except perhaps as the catch-all "shrub". I wonder -- if I made a "modern Noisette" but used an actual China other than 'Old Blush', would it be accurate to call it an OGR? Both parents would be OGR. The basic "Noisette recipe" would be the same, just that a different China would be used. If I then bred one of those "modern Noisettes" with, say, 'Lady Hillingdon', could I accurately call it a Tea-Noisette? Could I accurately call it an OGR? Since it's something I'm considering trying as my plants mature, I'm wondering what you'd think.

:-)

~Christopher

Connie's statement is so very true. It's easy to be critical of an industry until you've participated in it yourself.

very helpful stuff there, Connie, specially since I have contemplated selling plants myself, at the very least, to finance the woodland venture. I suspect we are likely to have a finger in lots of pies rather than a specialist niche and mostly either mail order or selling through plant fairs (of which we have many such, every week). Hopefully, a mixture of perennials (many of which are unusual and rarely carried in nursery inventories), roses, other woody shrubs, seeds and finally, woodcrafts and metal work (We are building a basic forge for my youngest, a welder). Between green woodwork, plants and, if I can summon up the bravery, courses and open days, I have high hopes that we have the start of a viable business (because planning laws are much less restrictive when zoning laws are applied to a business as opposed to a dwelling.....so being able to show some economic profit....and it need not be a huge amount......gets round the very restrictive planning laws associated with land use in the UK.
It is true though, unless you are involved in very high end landscape architecture and design, you rarely get rich in horticulture....
There is a huge difference between producing your own plants for sale or buying stock for resale....and, as a rule, I always source my plants directly from the growers rather than garden centres and other retail establishments. It is not really possible to compare standards since these are two completely different business models with different marketing strategies and profit margins.

As a teacher, the struggle and decline of old roses and their champions taps into my concerns for education in general. Appreciation of history, in all its forms, is a kind of deep as well as broad understanding that is a rare and precious endeavor. The appreciation of antique roses--their botanical, social, aesthetic, and medicinal significance--involves an enhanced awareness of the roots (pun intended?), needs and joys of life itself. Like Josh, I have been frustrated by mislabeled imposters, and it is disheartening to see the state of some of nurseries. I find myself picking up overturned pots, replacing the soil around the roots of old friends, etc. as I pass through disheveled aisles of plants. I also hear Connie's words loud and clear. OGR growers are up against it. Running a nursery is an exhausting and challenging business, and old rose sellers are choosing an uphill battle in a world that confuses speed and ease with fulfillment. Antiques may emerge from the past, but appreciation of their worth for love of historical (and current) beauty or hope for the creation of new and wonderful future forms (breeding and medical breakthroughs) is all about a deeply meaningful here and now. Carol

Josh, my American Beauty (Ulrich Brunner) doesn't get much blackspot at all - no more than any other rose in my garden gets, and that includes teas, chinas, bourbons, etc. And my young Grandmother's Hat has none at all while sitting alongside some roses that do. I can't speak to any of the other HPs. Maybe it's because our humidity is very dry most of the year. I'm in the southern end of the DFW Metroplex. Don't know where you are, but the only time my garden has high humidity is on rainy days in Spring. In fact I remember when I first moved from St. Louis to this area of Texas many years ago, I got nosebleeds all summer from the extreme dryness. Many people in my area use saline solution regularly to help with that problem. Of course, I know that some areas of TX are high humidity - the Houston area might be the worst, I don't think I could get used to it - but you might be surprised with how well some HPs will do if you'd care to try them.

Agree with you on the frustration of seeking good nurseries who offer a good selection of old garden roses. I'm just thankful that we have several in-state that deliver to area nurseries. I hope you discover the local ones that offer a good selection. Don't give up looking in all sorts of places. I found my Mrs Dudley Cross at Calloways.

Agree with you totally about nurseries not taking good care of their stock. You'd think they would, seeing that the plants are their investment. Try to put your outrage to rest and just say, oh well, maybe some workers called in sick and they're very shorthanded today. Then focus on the wonderful roses you have that I've heard you talk about. But if you can't, I don't mind your rant. Sometimes it's good to let it all out with people who understand. Lou

Connie and Paul know more about this subject than any of us. From my observation over several decades and my experience with the industry of nearly a decade, it is spot on. It doesn't matter how wonderful, fragrant, perfect an unknown rose is nor how much YOU adore it, if it is once flowering and not in flower the moment someone looks at it, forget it. The plants are destined to remain in your hands probably until you either donate, give them away or dump them. Auctions and botanical plant sales can be a bit easier to sell such things and if you're a cold country nursery, your chances are probably greater selling cold hardy, once flowering types. Otherwise, you usually can't give them away. KIm

I imagine all growers and sellers of fine old roses have days (years!) when they are ready to run screaming into the sunset. I wish I could not only send words of gratitude to all those who preserve these rare beauties but also multiply myself into many energetic volunteers to assist with labor and marketing. Thank you, all who have been growing and passing along historical beauties over the years (and developing new and wonderful roses by breeding OGRs). Because of you, I have great joy in my garden. I followed your work long before I joined the forum. And thank you to Josh and others like him who are diving into the world of OGRs with mind, heart, and hands fully engaged. The enthusiam of another generation of old rose lovers and caretakers makes all the difference.

I fear (know) that Kim is right. Most buyers are looking for continuous bloom on plants that reach full maturity quickly and never outgrow their designated spaces on small lots. Continuous bloom can be wonderful, but so can the philosophical shift that accompanies an everchanging garden. Change in my garden scaffolds my ability to cope with change in the larger scope of my life. I rehearse the movement between seasons, I value the fruit that is offered after the flowers have fallen, I appreciate the underlying structure that is the framework of visible beauty and my vision of what is good and exquisite expands. It is a magical moment when I notice the lacey delicacy of La Ville's sepals and the delicious fragrance offered up on her blooms. When I was a designer, I suppose I tried to sell a philosophical perspective along with my designs. It was a hard sell but one close to my soul. Sometimes a client began to know the garden as something alive, a companion of sorts. Too often, the garden was treated as an order of showroom furniture, a livingroom suite conveniently prearranged and nearly instantanious in its evolution. Argh!

Josh, did you mention medical school in your future? Or perhaps botany? Josh's Antique Rose Display Garden and Nursery? :-)

Carol

'Continuous bloom can be wonderful, but so can the philosophical shift that accompanies an everchanging garden'

Hear, hear! I touched on this in another thread when I was asked, since I'm gardening in a very long rose season climate, why I bother with once bloomers. Part of my response was exactly this. I value seasonal change in the garden, I cherish longing for that spring or summer flush and, to be honest, at least sometimes, I find continous blooming plants just a little bit boring. After looking at the same flowers for 9 or 10 months one is bound to get that feeling. I'm often hasty in my winter rose pruning just in order to force this change in my garden...

As we speak, my young winter magnolias are blooming and what a spectacle that is. A spectacle I can enjoy only for 2-3 weeks max (if the flowers are not spoiled by the weather) but I would never contemplate substituting these plants for everblooming ones. This spectacle being rare just makes it so much more valuable to me.
Nik

For those of you in the area, the New Orleans Botanical Gardens is going to have its antique rose sale next month. All roses are propagated in-house to benefit the volunteer program at the gardens. They generally carry a nice assortment of teas, chinas and noisettes in gallon pots. The normal price in years past was $10 a rose.

Here is a link that might be useful: Sale date