Rose and peony (member) Garden  

Listing last updated on Wed Aug 2024

United States

Pockets of Zones 5-7 on our hilly high-desert cherry orchard facing south along the Columbia River. Main feature is a series of ponds draining two springs. Area is dotted with natural colonies of Wood's roses, red osier dogwood, boggy willows, drained wet clay pastures and the occasional old rootstock from long-ago pulled orchards. Birds arrive in waves all year long and nest on our land, the species too numerous to mention. The massive, oppressive heat of summer here twigged my interest in roses. My family grew them in the dampish California San Francisco Bay Area, and my stepfather fought a never-ending battle with disease on his hybrid teas. I was turned off for decades by memories of him spraying, pruning, fussing and fretting. But our blast-furnace summers (with little humidity) made me think that perhaps our weather pattern here was different--perhaps it was possible to use the brutal High Desert heat (and 1000 ft. elevation) to grow good roses, provided I could find ones that would survive the equally noxious winter cold.

I grow and have not yet killed:

1. Paul Transon
2. Austrian Copper
3. Hamburger Phoenix
4. Vanguard
5. R. roxburghii normalis
5. Alfred Colomb
6. Midas Touch
7. Jaune Desprez
8. Mrs. Dudley Cross
9. Baronne Henriette de Snoy
10. Swamp rose
11. Mrs. E.G. Hill
12. Peaceport
13. Eminence
14. Abraham Darby
15. Tea Clipper
16. Darlow's Enigma
17, Eglantine
18. Pride of Oakland
19. something Gregg Lowery sent me called Mendocino Pernetiana
20. "Beryl"
21. Break o'Day
22. Deep Secret
23. Audie Murphy
24. Padre
25. "Legacy of Elizabeth Moore"
26. Angel's Camp Tea
27. Mlle Antoine Mari
28. Cecile Brunner, CL
29 Louise Odier
30. Sutter's Gold
31. Isaac Periere
32. Robert Leopold
33. Auguest Gervais
34. several unidentified gallicas