Welcome back to the forum. And, good luck with helping Lillian to prosper and multiply.

Carol

Hi Suzy! It is good to hear from you. I think of you every time I weed my gallicas.

I looked Lillian Gibson up on HMF. It is a very pretty rose. I noticed that it has lots of R. blanda in its ancestry -- R. blanda being the 'smooth rose', hardly any thorns. It should make a nice rose for a place where people brush past and don't want to be snagged.

Rosefolly

I agree with everything Suzie says. The problem is that Lillian is marketed as a 'shrub' rose. If they called her a climber(rambler), which is what she really is, she would fly out the doors. She's a much better climbing rose in all regards than the Explorer climber-shrubs.

Other Lillian pluses: excellent fall foliage color (brilliant yellow) and health.

Bailey is really pushing their own Easy Elegance roses. Could that be a reason they are moving away from the old standbys?

Hi Suzy,
Bailey's Easy Elegance roses are in flux. Their Hybridizer Ping Lim is out on his own.
This may add an additional briefness to Lillian.
I know that Bailey is hard to come by in my part of the country, but I've got cousins in Ohio who may be near nurseries.
(Is a certain nursery in Maine going to get some in?)
Ann

Here is a link that might be useful: To find a place that sells Bailey Plants

I have a 'Lillian Gibson' in zone 4 and it has been more shrubby for me in a tough spot. During the late fall of 2007 rabbits ate all the bark off of her so she had to start from scratch to rebuild herself last summer. Those rabbits had their way with my roses while I was away and the only ones that didn't suffer were the spinosissimas. Still, 'Lillian Gibson' has not put out canes more than about 5' for me although there is a lot of competition from Solomon's Seal in her bed.

This is the kind of post I like to see. I am always on the lookout for this type of rose. But Baileys website was very frustrating, why do people make things so difficult?

Bailey's is a wholesaler of plants. The website assumes you know this.
I had called them several years ago to see if they'd do small orders. They wouldn't.
Finding where this rose will be available will take the efforts of a lot of us to ask where there are nurseries that Bailey's sells to (thus the website connection) and then to call those nurseries to ask them to bring in Lillian Gibson.
(And then let some of us know so we can arrange family trips, or rose exchanges.....)

Bailey's roses are exported to local nurseries here and are common so this info helps me "hope" it shows up this spring.

Does Lillian Gibson produce hips??

Ahhh curses they don't have it listed under roses in their on-site catalogue unless my old eyes fail me ... roses start around page 200. I was going to try and convince a local nursery owner I know to order me some in (pre-paid naturally) but looks slim if it is not shown in the catalogue as it is not a big nursery.

Here is a link that might be useful: Baileys 09 catalogue

lillian Gibson turns up on Sam Kedum's website. In one place it says they ship, another it says they don't-I didn't figure out if their roses were grafted either.

Here is a link that might be useful: kedum

I got my Lillian Gibson from Sam Kedem's Rose Nursery in Hastings, MN last year. I'm pretty sure he no longer ships. All his roses are own root I believe.

Thanks for alerting us to this. Lillian Gibson stands out each year at the Morden Research Station where they have it trained as a climber. I have been tempted to try it even if we are a zone colder than Morden.Some of the Winnpeg garden centres retail for Baileys so I will see if one of them will order it for us.
Leo

Well, I found out on HMF that Hortico and North Creek Farm have it and ship it. Then I found out that YOU are North Creek Farm, Suzy! Why aren't you propagating and selling her? There must be a reason, I guess. She is lovely.

Sherry

'Lillian Gibson' has never produced any hips for me.

Also, Kedem no longer ships roses.

FYI, Hortico says the ship date on LG is "to be announced." That means they don't have any right now and IME, could mean a wait of a year or more for it.

lillian gibson

Here is a link that might be useful: lillian gibson

The point I think Suzy is trying to make is that if we make requests to our *local* nurseries and garden centers, Lillian Gibson just might grace a few more gardens. I am contacting a local garden center that I feel is probably my best bet to respond to such a request. If they can get them in, I will buy a couple of plants from them. If they do well here in my zone 4 garden, I would happily tell everyone I can about Lillian Gibson as a climber. It's easier to recommend a rose to the average gardener if they can just drive somewhere and buy it. Most people who contact me for recommendations (those who aren't as rose obsessed as we are) prefer buying locally to mail order because it seems easier to them.

I donno,It doesnt get much better than having grade #1, ownroot, bareroot, 2 year old roses delivered to your door. Lillian will be planted and growing when I finally make it to the local nursery to see what they have decided to order in. Who knows, they might surprise me, then I'll have to dig another hole or 2.

Amen - what I am really attempting to do is keep a very truly excellent rose in commerce. The actual demand for this rose is more than I could possibly meet on my 10 acre farm in Maine. This rose should be in every northern garden center/nursery - period.There is so much misinformation and so many inferior roses out there, we need to strive to keep the good and dependable roses available and separated from all the "fluff" and hype.

I love my Lillian Gibson. I recd it from North Creek 2 years ago. The red canes in winter, the cold hardiness, the lack of thorns, and covered in bloom! I can't wait to see how she does this year!

{{gwi:229285}}

There is hope at least in Calgary but it depends on Manitoba and then the US ... quote from my nursery friend protected to avoid problems ... a small nursery run by a man who cares.

" ... I haven't seen Lillian Gibson on ant availability lists yet, but I will check with my suppliers next week. We don't order directly from Bailiey's nursery, but our Manitoba suppliers deal with them often. Hopefully we can bring this rose in,as we need more climbers. "

'The devil is in the details' as they say. At least you know of people who already have an established wholesale relationship with Bailey's. Nobody around here does. The minimums are pretty serious, so getting somebody to start dealing with them just for roses isn't very practical.

And apparently those minimums were too much for the local garden center I contacted. They did look into it, but said they just couldn't swing it. I'm trying to think of who to contact in a larger city south of here.
Somewhere in this state I'm sure there has to be a garden center that orders from Bailey's...it's finding them that's the trouble. If only we could get Bailey's to tell us where to find their stock, we could work backwards.

Don't know what the minimum is for Manitoba as per US vendor "I am interested in exporting" Bailey rules, but know I am covering financially risk free to my contact up to double digits for my own personnel use quantities - got a lot of space where climbers are needed after giving up on the explorers.

Here in Manitoba I e-mailed 3 nurseries . One responded positively but had already received their order. I have not heard from the others. Riku, you might want to contact one of them, Jeffries Nurseries in Portage la Prairie. They are both a wholesaler and a retailer and have been carrying Baileys Easy Elegance roses. Perhaps if two (or more) contact them they might do something.
Leo

Sucess, Jefries Nurseries has ordered in 10 Lillian Gibsons and is potting them up for availability this summer. I barely have room for one so now I have to find a way of alerting other Prairie heritage rose enthusiasts.
Leo

Amazing that's the number I volunteered to support ... hahahahaha ... hope they are mine

So wait, if they are not my order that makes potentially 20 out of crop of 900 or nearly 2.2% in the field that Bailey's could sell to just two people in the world if they want to even without showing it in their catalogue ... just image now with the states have 10X more people surely they could hit 50% of the crop sold by word of mouth.

Good work guys. Now we only have 880 Lillians to go! Well, if we get some more nurseries and garden centers to buy up at least 1/2 Bailey's crop, maybe then they will list this excellent rose in their catalog -and BTW make a whole lot of northern gardeners extremely happy!

I just wrote an email to my local nursery (Wickham Nurseryland) ;)

thanks for the heads up Leo!

Sharon

I see in HMF that Lillian was introduced in 1938, so no patent issues. Have you considered sharing cuttings with other cold climate speciality nurseries? I don't know anything about the proprietors, but I have had good success ordering from High Country Roses.

If y'all are having a hard time sweet-talking your local nurseries into buying Bailey roses, then maybe dropping names of some of their other, more star-powered originals like Endless Summer Hydrangea (ugh) and Tiger Eyes sumac (a real beauty, IMHO) will be of some use to you. Those are the real money-makers, and the roses can just hitch a free ride.

Stefan

Endless Summer, at least, is being distributed differently. My guess is that Bailey's has licensed it to several (many?) growers, like Monrovia. Those are the people my local nurseries are dealing with, not Bailey's. So the only local nursery that is dealing directly with Bailey's for the big sellers is White Flower Farm, which is a very different beast in so many ways that people usually have a hard time understanding that it really does have a local presence as a local nursery.

Well, failing that, I'll at least give my opinion from when I would pass them by at nurseries back home in Minnesota -- they seemed, on the whole, to be boring and soulless, not to mention overpriced. Maybe the newest varieties have bucked the trend, but I was never impressed enough to lay down money for one. Priorities do shift in different climate zones, but knowing they weren't going to be overly hardy in the upper Midwest to begin with (unless you prefer your roses to act as mere die-back perennials), I didn't see any reason why I shouldn't simply choose to go for some sort of fragrant, reasonably healthy floribunda instead and pay even less for the privilege of having additional dimensions of enjoyment.

It's a shame that Bailey can't work a bit harder to distribute their roses to a wider audience; the lesson of Buck roses should have percolated through the industry by now. Maybe the Knockout craze has had a depressing effect on other shrub rose sales.

Sorry, I meant to specify the usual profile of Bailey's own-bred roses (which 'Lillian Gibson' doesn't fit, in my opinion, and that could be another reason it isn't being pushed). Anyway, I doubt very seriously that an older rose with a name like Lillian's will sell well without a hot new name makeover and an ad campaign, but it could probably make quite a splash if it did. The masses of today aren't going to go after great-grandma in flannel PJs when they can have a bimbo in a bikini with silicone, even if it is all just in the power of suggestion.

I like fannel pj's and definitely want my roses real and different not plastic... the plastic ones all look the same and nar a discernable difference in geometeric proportioning and oh lord the tension grooves from gravity sure look gross on the blooms.