I’ve been researching old roses for the heirloom garden for the front of the house. My primary search criteria are:

• Strong fragrance. I want the fragrance available for passersby and open windows in the summertime.
• Good rebloom. Since the front garden is not large, it needs to put on a good show for a long time.
• Old/heirloom/antique. The variety was introduced before 1905, ideally in the late 1800s. Our house was built in 1900.

Additional requirements:

• Non-invasive. Roses which are clearly invasive in the New York City area are R. multifora, Multiflora Rose and R. rugosa, Beach Rose.
• Disease resistance for mildew, black spot, and so on.
• Shrub form, non-climbing. Up to 6′ high and wide is okay.
• Long season interest. This is provided by good foliage, especially persistent or semi-evergreen leaves, rose hips, and interesting branching structure.

I’ve been able to find a surprisingly large number of varieties, primarily by taking advantage of the advanced search capabilities offered by the Web sites of Rogue Valley Roses (RVR) and Vintage Gardens (VG). Both of these offer searching by fragrance, rebloom, and year of introduction. I tried using HelpMeFind/Roses, but it doesn’t offer any search by fragrance, and attempts to include year of introduction in the search returned nothing.

Of the list below, varieties which most interest me right now are marked with *. I don’t think I have enough room to grow them all, since I’m not interested in growing a rose garden. I might try a few, keep the ones perform best in my gardens, and give away or donate the others. Varieties which are not suitable for my needs are marked with -.

• Aimée Vibert (RVR, VG). Introduced 1828. Flower color: white/near white. Foliage: Dark green, semi-evergreen. Habit: Spreading. Height: 4′. Disease resistant.
• *Ardoisée de Lyon (RVR, VG), a color sport of Baronne Prévost. Introduced 1858. Flower color: Deep pink/purple, fading to lavender and mauve. Habit: Upright. Height: 6′. Disease resistant. Good for hips. Good for cutting.
• -Baltimore Belle (RVR, VG). Introduced 1843. Flower color: Blush pink (VG), White, near white (RVR). Habit: Rambler. Height: 10-15′. RVR doesn’t list this as reblooming, while VG notes a long, moderate rebloom.
• *Baronne Prévost (RVR, VG). Introduced 1842. Flower color: Rose/Clear/Deep Pink. Habit: Upright. Height: 6′. Disease resistant. Good for cutting.
• -Blanc Double de Coubert (RVR, VG), classified as a Rugosa. Introduced 1892. Flower color: White. Sets few hips.
• Blush Noisette (RVR, VG). Introduced 1814/1817. Flower color: Blush/Light pink. Habit: Shrub, upright. Height: 6-8′. Disease resistant.
• Cecile Brunner, Everblooming Spray form (RVR). Introduced 1881.
• *Clotilde Soupert (RVR, VG). Introduced 1890. Flower color: White with pink centers. Habit: Upright. Height: 3′. Both RVR and VG note that this variety “balls” for them, whatever that means, especially in the cool, wet weather of spring. It seems to mean that the buds never fully open.
• -Deuil de Dr. Reynaud (RVR, VG). Introduced 1862. Flower color: Cerise, deep pink. Habit: Shrub, or climber. Height: 10-15′.
• Eugene de Beauharnais (RVR). Introduced 1838.
• Général Jacqueminot (General Jack) (RVR, VG). Introduced 1846/1853. Flower color: Dark red. Habit: Shrub or Climber. Height: 8-10′. Good for cutting.
• Mme. Bérard (RVR, VG). Introduced 1870. Flower color: Apricot, Peach. Habit: Shrub. Height: 6-8′.
• Mme. Creux (VG), likely Kaiserin Freidrich. Introduced 1890. Flower color: Apricot-Buff. Habit: Upright? Height: 4-5′?
• -Mme. Ernest Calvat (RVR, VG), possibly sport of Mme. Isaac Pereire. Introduced 1888. Flower color: Light pink, lavender, cerise. Habit: Upright. Height: 10-15′. Shade Tolerant. Good for cutting.
• *Mme. Isaac Pereire (RVR, VG). Introduced 1881. Flower color: Pink, amaranth, magenta, purple. Habit: Arching. Height: 8-10′. Good for hips. Good for cutting.
• Mme. Lambard (RVR, VG). Introduced 1878. Flower color: Variable, pink, apricot, coppery. Habit: Spreading. Height: 6′. Good for cutting.
• *Marie Pavie (RVR). Introduced 1888. Flower color: White. Habit: Upright. Height: 3′. Very disease resistant. Good for cutting.
• Narrow Water (RVR, VG), sport of Nastarana. Introduced 1883. Flower color: Blush/Light pink. Habit: Shrub, upright? Height: 6-8′.
• Nastarana (RVR, VG). Introduced 1879. Flower color: White. Habit: Shrub. Height: 6-8′. Good for cutting.
• *Pierre Notting (RVR, VG). (Note: This is completely different from Souvenir de Pierre Notting.) Introduced 1863. Flower color: Dark red (VG), Mauve (RVR). Habit: Shrub. Height: 6-8′. Good for cutting.
• Pink Soupert (VG). Introduced 1896. VG describes this as “Almost a ringer for Clothilde Soupert, and every bit as fragrant, but with somewhat smaller flowers a bit less double, foliage narrower, more rugose.”
• *Reine des Violettes (RVR, VG). Introduced 1860. Flower color: Violet/lilac/mauve. Habit: Shrurb. Height: 6-8′. Disease resistant.

… provide[s] an information clearinghouse for invasive plant identification, research and management … by:

* Identifying the type and extent of impacts of invasive plants on biodiversity
* Developing working lists of invasive plants and guidelines for their management
* Compiling and facilitating access to information on invasive plants
* Promoting alternatives to the use of invasive plants
* Establishing statewide objectives for management of invasive plants
* Sponsoring and facilitating conferences and forums on invasive plants and their management
* Identifying potential and new plant invasions, facilitating awareness of invasive plant spread and associated ecological impacts, and promoting aggressive control as appropriate
– The Invasive Plant Council of NYS

The next Brooklyn Wild Parrot Safari is Saturday, June 3, 2006.

The tours, guided by Steve Baldwin, start at 12 noon
at Brooklyn College‘s Hillel Gate, on Campus Road at Hillel Place, close to the last stop on the 2 train (Flatbush Avenue/Nostrand Avenue).

The photo above was taken September 29, 2005. It shows a parrot checking me out as s/he’s about to get into a fruit from our next-door neighbor’s apple tree. Their apple tree bloomed gloriously last Spring, just after we bought our house. More blooms = more bees = more apples = more parrots. This Spring the bloom was scant, so we expect fewer apples, and fewer parrots, this year than last.

[Technical update, August 21, 2006: Removed new lines between table rows to eliminate white-space preceding table, per http://groups.google.com/group/blogger-help-publishing/browse_thread/thread/a2999c2c0017b5b0.]

I’m trying to select an “antique” rose or two for the heirloom garden, one which was available in 1905 or earlier. (Our house was built in 1900.) I don’t want to have to learn how roses are classified: Floribunda, Musk, Bourbon, and so on. I want a rose which will perform well in a mixed border: long-/repeat-blooming, fragrant, disease-free.

Many of the rose growers I’ve found online assume that the visitor is a rose “geek.” The only way to look at their offerings is to browse through a hierarchical listing of what’s available. They require that you already know the rose you’re looking for and how it’s classified.

Vintage Gardens provides the best online search tool I’ve found.

Our rose collection has grown to over 3500 varieties, including every rose class from the very oldest to the most modern. It is the largest collection of roses offered by any nursery in the world today. We value each variety and look on this as a preservation collection that provides a valuable resource to gardeners and helps to preserve our heritage of roses. We go to the greatest lengths to maintain correct identifications on our roses. We research and compare with collections worldwide to ensure that our information is as accurate as it can be. In our catalogue we identify the source from which our mother plant came, to assist others who are seeking a specific rose.

Vintage Gardens

Below is a table listing partial results from a search for roses introduced in the 1800s with intense scent and rapid rebloom.

I emailed the following letter to National Public Radio (NPR) in response to their broadcast, yesterday, Monday, May 29, 2006, Tending ‘Defiant Gardens’ During Wartime. Today I recorded it over the phone with them for possible broadcast on Thursday morning.

Regarding your broadcast, “Tending Defiant Gardens During Wartime,” broadcast around 7:50am EDT, May 29, 2006.
[http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5435131]

Thank you for this story, apt for Memorial Day. It made me think: How much “defiance” figures into my own gardening? The garden does not judge me. The insects and plants do not care if I’m angry or happy or grieving.

Gardening connects me to something bigger than me, bigger than everyone. Through gardening, I can tap into a sense of time that dwarfs the brief existence of humankind, the source of all suffering in the world. It reminds me that, whatever happens to me, to us, life prevails.

Gardening is an act of defiance because, no matter what people inflict on each other and themselves in the names of their gods, gardening demonstrates hope.

Just broadcast this morning on NPR:

From the Western Front trenches of World War I to the deserts of Iraq, soldiers have found comfort in the simple act of gardening.

Kenneth Helphand, writes about war gardens — not just victory gardens, grown in time of scarcity, but those planted on hostile fronts, including Eastern Europe’s ghettos and the Japanese-American internment camps of World War II. Helphand calls the gardens an act of defiance.

NPR : Tending ‘Defiant Gardens’ During Wartime

How much “defiance” figures into my own gardening? The garden does not judge me. The insects and plants do not care if I’m angry or happy or grieving.

Gardening connects me to something bigger than me, bigger than everyone. Through gardening, I can tap into a sense of time that dwarfs the brief existence of humankind, the source of all suffering in the world. It reminds me that, whatever happens to me, to us, life prevails.

Gardening is an act of defiance because, no matter what people inflict on each other and themselves in the names of their gods, gardening demonstrates hope.

I’m unfamiliar with the statistical analytical method of redundancy analysis used in this paper, and the charts were unintelligible to me. But the underlying thesis is intriguing, and underscores the importance of protecting and expanding biological diversity in all environments, even – perhaps especially – urban ones. It’s never too late to start making things better for living and future generations.

The unequal distribution of wealth in cities contributes to other forms of spatial, social, and biological inequities in complex, interacting, and self-reinforcing ways. … Spatial variation in urban bird communities may also reflect socioeconomic variables and cultural differences among the human population. The purpose of this paper was to examine whether socioeconomic factors (such as mean family income and ethnic diversity) also relate to the diversity and abundance of birds in Vancouver, British Columbia. … Results demonstrate that wealthier neighborhoods have more native species of birds and that these native species increase in abundance as the socioeconomic status of the neighborhood improves. With two-thirds of the world’s population expected to live in cities by 2030, more and more people will grow up surrounded by a depauperate community of birds, and this could adversely affect the way people perceive, appreciate, and understand nature. Ultimately, as city birdlife diminishes and urban dwellers become dissociated from the natural diversity it represents, popular support for preserving and restoring such diversity may wane, allowing ecological conditions to further erode.

Stephanie J. Melles. Department of Zoology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5S 3G5
Urban Bird Diversity as an Indicator of Human Social Diversity and Economic Inequality in Vancouver, British Columbia
Urban Habitats, Volume 3, Number 1, Fall 2005

The New York City Blogger Map, http://www.nycbloggers.com/:

A map of the city that shows where the bloggers are, organized by subway stop. Find out who’s blogging in your neighborhood!
…
You can click on the map to start exploring. The overview map will show you how many blogs are in each borough, and the borough maps will show you how many blogs are at each station. Click on the station to get the list of blogs. You can also browse by subway line, using the buttons on the right. And you can search for a specific blog by name using the search feature.

If you’re a resident of the concrete jungle, you might be surprised to learn that you share your home with some 1,300 plant species that have been native New Yorkers far longer than any of the city’s human inhabitants, having thrived through thousands of steamy summers and snowy winters here.

But what’s more surprising is that, second to new construction and development, the biggest threat to the livelihood of the city’s native plants are the numerous non-native invasive species. …

Gotham Gardeners: Go Native!
Science & the City, April 24, 2006, New York Academy of Sciences