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I am so pleased to see these beautiful new photos of my very favorite rose, "Betty"! Organic Tosca
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Can anyone who has grown this rose give me some information as to what I can expect? For instance, how big is it likely to get? Does it prefer lots of sun and heat, or does it need a bit of shade? Thanks.
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Can anyone tell me how big this plant gets? Thanks.
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I know of a very old plant of 'Betty' that grows to approx 6' high and almost as wide. It was planted before WW1 so it's approaching 100 years old. A very beautiful old plant. Despite its age, it looks very healthy and vigorous and the foliage is as attractive as the blooms. It is not pruned heavily in the winter. The owner removes any dead or exhausted wood and then just lightly cuts back and shapes the rest. From a distance it looks more like a Tea rose than a Hybrid Tea. It's a shapely plant that is well covered with healthy foliage and many subtly coloured flowers appear all over the plant and tend to nod a bit. What appears to be the same rose can be seen in a number of old gardens around Perth. Most of these are pruned more traditionally - cut back reasonably hard to a few main stems - and when pruned like this it grows much more like a typical Hybrid Tea with fewer, longer, stronger stems and fewer, larger blooms. These plants get to 4' - 5'6" high depending on care and conditions. I have an own-root plant - from a cutting of the old plant - but it has only been in the ground for one season so it's still quite small and it's too early to tell how quickly it will develop. We are in Perth, Western Australia, where the winters are very mild and there isn't a real dormant period so roses do tend to get taller than average here.
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Thank you so much! I bought a band plant of Betty last Fall, and I love it more than almost any of my other roses. I only have 8 plants, and all are in pots, as I am extremely limited as to space, and I have recently realized that I am going to have to give some of them away, now that it's dawned on me that they will GROW (I just got carried away). I was delighted to read what you had to tell me about Betty, as it now seems to me that I can keep her for some time - although it remains to be seen how it will do for me in a container. As you have mentioned, the foliage is as lovely as the bloom - that was the first thing I noticed. Mine also is own root, and growing very well. I am in Central California, so my winters are probably more severe than yours, but still mild compared to most of the U.S. Thank you again for your reply!
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You're very welcome! I think it's a very special rose too. It was exciting to find that the owner of the garden with the old plant of 'Betty' knew the name of the rose which had been planted by her father. So often we come across these truly excellent old roses - plants of great age - thriving in old gardens but with names long forgotten.
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I wanted to thank you for the story about Betty, as well as the info. I love knowing some of the history of a rose, particularly a rose that I have such a strong response to. A big part of my being drawn to Old Roses is the sense of the history behind a given plant, especially that kind of local story - it gives a little snapshot of the past.
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In San Francisco, you can hardly walk down any street without seeing CB planted in someone's garden. This must have been a very popular rose in the 20th century here , widely propagated by nurseries and sold everywhere. And why not? This is a very satisfactory landscape rose here -- tough, drought resistant, free of diseases and always in flower. The spring flush is particularly spectacular, but the bushes are never without a few flowers, even in winter.
The plant in my garden was there when I bought the house, and though not perfectly sited, I have left it where it is. It is one of three plants in the whole garden that I did not remove/replace (a walnut tree, a pear tree and CB) I can't imagine having a garden without CB.
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I know that my grandparents had CB in the garden of their house on 32nd Ave. - my grandfather used to put a bud in his lapel every day before going out for his walk. This would have been in the 1930s.
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