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     ann peck (Anntn6b) Bug Squisher Username: anntn6b Post Number: 285 Registered: 01-2006 |
I was reading William Lanier Hunt's book "Southern Gardens, Southern Gardeners" and he described an effort to make a "tea rose garden" near Saline, Louisiana. page 142 "This was the great age of tea roses and of many kinds of climbing roses. For the past thirty or forty years, a small group of "old roses nuts," as we have been called, hs been collecting the old-fashioned varieties all over the South. Cleo Barnwell and others have been propagating them in Shreveport, and they are supplying plants for the tea rose garden at Briarwood." (Hunt also talks about roses on pages 82-85 where he suggests that Etoile de Hollande is "surely one of the greatest roses ever produced." I contacted Briarwood about the possible continued existance of the tea rose collection. Here's their reply: "Monday December 10, 2007 9:00:27PM Good evening, It was to be old roses, species roses, not tea roses. The mighty appetite of the voles put a stop to that plan. They loved the grafted stock. The specie roses that where not grafted we grow without any trouble from the little varmint. Caroline Dormon loved the old roses. Read "Gift of the Wild Things" by Fran Holman to learn more about this gifted lady. Briarwood, the Caroline Dormon Nature Preserve" So, if near Saline, there's a lovely garden of native survivors (and it includes some roses)Their website is charming. http://www.cp-tel.net/dormon/ |