Doors closing and opening.

It's been a whirlwind month. As it appears the property isn't going to sell anytime soon and therefore we will not be able to use the equity to move and hunker down until the economy gets better, I decided to simply suspend plant sales. The overhead of running a nursery is simply too high and too risky during these times.

What helped push me into this was a trip to Seattle to do a workshop for the HRF group up there. Sue Hopkins invited me up and arranged everything. The day of the workshop some 40 plus rose growers from novice to experienced came, and for five hours we talked about feeding, care, pruning, climbers and the rose business in general.

I loved it! And apparently so did they because all stayed past 6:00 PM. The You Tube videos played a major part in convincing them to come. Lots of nice compliments on them.

What I realized that weekend, with a little prodding by Sue and Marji, is that there are rose things I can be doing that aren't about raising and selling plants. Like teaching, writing, leading rose tours, licensing and more.

So instead of trying to keep a plant production nursery going during these times, and particularly one that's been crippled, I decided to stop producing plants and focus on producing rose growers.

Someone told me during that weekend that in order for doors to open you have to purposefully close some. So I closed the door on selling rose plants and lookee here. Lots of open doors around us.

Roots of Progress

There are some roses that are just hard to root. You try and you try and you try and every year you wind up staring at trays of dead cuttings. But as I’ve said earlier I’m Dutch and stubborn and so approach it with the attitude that we are just going about it the wrong way.

Two in particular are Stanwell Perpetual (left) and Secret Garden Musk Climber (right). For years I’ve tried over and over to root plants because they are great roses that need to be in commerce.

Enter Michael Hayes. He came to us part time last year and since he graduated from the Horticultural Program at Spartanburg Tech a few months ago, now full time. He’s fine tuned our propagation procedures and re-installed discipline in how they are taken, processed and handled. We had gotten a little sloppy because we were stretched so thin trying to keep up.

I was entering new cuttings in the database where we track such things and I noticed some cuttings of Stanwell were taken about 9 days ago. So what the heck why not see how they are doing? While I know a watched cutting never roots I couldn’t resist.

Viola!! Roots on Stanwell! And Secret Garden Musk Climbers in pots all over the place. It’s going to be a good year!

As Goes Ohio!

So goes the nursery. Well, as goes Ohio Belle that is. This lovely sport of New Dawn is a rose we have not offered in probably four years. You see, we simply never got around to taking cuttings of it, and hundreds of other roses in our collection. I was chasing my own tail so much I simply forgot to make sure these gems were in our catalogue year in and year out.

Michael and I were taking cuttings from the old Mother Block today when Michael mentioned he had one more piece of burlap left to wrap the cuttings in. I peered under a giant Rose Marie Viaud and lo and behold, Ohio Belle. Two nice canes - holding on for dear life. We took cuttings and as I write they are now in the mister.

Not a big thing but a good harbinger of things to come.

Last year at this time we had barely started taking cuttings. The overworked staff of one, Trish, plus me were too busy with shipping to get to them. Michael came on board around this time last year and we really didn’t get started on cuttings until the end of June.

As I write we have already taken close to 20,000 cuttings closing in on 500 different varieties of roses. Some gems we have not offered in quite a while from old garden to brand new.

You see, a nursery hits a point where you get on a kind of cruise control when it comes to propagating. I really feel after almost three years we’re back to that point. Michael is settled in beautifully, Trish is back to her beloved lists of Mother Plants and me? I’m riding this cruise control all the way to Ohio and beyond baby!

A rose "comes-a-calling"

One of the joys of my job is bringing new roses to our customers. Usually this involves travels to Europe, a few dinners, touring endless acres of rose gardens, a few more dinners and then decisions over nice glasses of wine. Tough work but someone has to do it! Sometimes however a great rose finds me right in my own backyard; in my case the nursery. Such was the case with a Kordes rose.

The nursery firm of Wilhelm Kordes & Sonne has been breeding roses a long time and are very good at hardy disease resistant varieties like Brother's Grimm (at left).

Quite a few years ago Germany (Where Kordes resides) began limiting and even banning the use of chemicals by the Ornamental Horticultural Industry. Wilhelm Kordes then banned them from his test fields - a move considered very risky by many but it makes him a hero to me. Keep in mind we are going back fifteen - twenty years, which was the the heyday of the fussy, spray a lot, cut flower Hybrid Tea.

I knew about Kordes Roses for years of course. Great classics like Dortmund that were as easy to grow as any roses I'd ever seen.

It was during a stint in The Netherlands judging the rose trials, that I finally had a chance to see so many of the new ones we didn't seem to have over here. Aprikola, Sterntaler (lower left -called Golden Fairy Tale in the U.S.) and Sangerhausen Jubilaumsrose (upper right -Floral Fairy Tale here) were just a few of the great roses I saw.

After the celebration dinner I approached Wilhelm Kordes, introduced myself as a fan of his roses and a nursery owner and asked if we could carry his roses in the United States. He took my card and much to my delight about a month later I got a letter saying yes, they were interested in licensing us to carry their roses including many of the new ones. They even agreed to send Mother Plants from Germany!

We've slowly been introducing them over the past few years and this season is our big push. One of my new favs is Cubana (lower right). I came upon this little gem last summer when I was wandering through the gardens. Or rather, it came upon me.

Unfortunately due to our financial situation I had not been able to hire the normal summer help to keep the beds weeded so they were pretty overgrown. Trish's sons would periodically go through with a weed-eater to cut the worst down but this particular bed was overdue.

Popping up above the Bermuda grass saying "here I am, pick me, pick me" was the bloom spray of Cubana that you see in the picture. I pulled back the weeds and saw the foliage was lush and dark green all the way to the base of the plant. I grabbed my secaturs, took some propagation material and we introduced it this past spring.

I love finding, testing and introducing new roses to our customers. And it's also a lot of fun when a great rose like Cubana finds me.

I might let the weeds grow up a bit this year as well to see what else comes-a-calling.

Our re-birth has begun

Part of what makes us, well us, in my opinion is that we offer roses hard to fine elsewhere. They may be old, they may be new - but many are unique. Quite a few of the newer ones are roses I found in Europe and brought back to introduce to our U.S. Rose Family. This is not something I take lightly and consider an obligation to them.

As well a great excuse to get over to Europe!

At least that's how it was before the problems began.

Last week we began our first baby step back to the past. We went to a dear friend's house who generously opened her garden to us so we could take cuttings of old and new rose friends to propagate for our customers. Michael, Trish, Myself and some of the Red Clay Day Gang propagated them and they are now in the mister.

Then today I set out upon Kubbie, Jethro's smaller brother, towing the small trailer. Loaded up with burlap for wrapping cuttings, buckets of water for putting the cuttings into, clippers, lists of roses to take cuttings of, my camera and another list of roses to take photos of, I set out on the grand tour of the old property.

I roamed all over the place taking cuttings of this and that - some old, some new. Took photos of roses I haven't visited with in a while, smelled the newly cut grass and just enjoyed the day.

About half way through my sojourn I rounded the corner and there were about 30 varieties of roses bred by the Barni Family in Italy. Beatrice sent them to me about 3 years ago and I have not had a chance to do anything with them since. Beatrice understood why, bless her heart.

They are in full bloom, healthy, clean and lovely. Very few of them are available in the U.S. at this moment. Tomorrow I'm going back to take photos, cuttings and another baby step along the path of our re-birth.

Barni Roses - coming soon to an Ashdown website near you!

Ready, Set, Propagate

Man, I love this time of year. Propagation season is about to really get rocking. We've already done some from the existing plants we have in inventory but in another week we move outdoors to roses we have not had in stock this past season

Or, sadly several seasons for that matter. We had so many roses we wanted to propagate and offer to our customers but we just couldn't get to them these past few years. And quite honestly I couldn't focus enough to get us organized to get to them anyway.

Now however, we know where we want to go, Michael starts full time next week and since he is our main propagator I know I'll have a solid person out there running the show.

We have a very ambitious goal this year. 1000 varieties on the website by September 1st. I think we can do it and I've put the word out to the Red Clay Day Gang for help and I know they'll respond.

I certainly measure Ashdown's year by the business stuff like profit and loss, website stats, attrition rate of transplanted roses etc etc. But our identity and to me one of our yardsticks are the roses we offer our customers on the website.

We are privileged to care-take some lovely and special roses. And a responsibility of that privilege is to make them available to customers to keep them in commerce and in as many gardens as possible.

And for purely selfish reason I love seeing all those new babies blooming the in greenhouse. It's like seeing old friends over and over again. Talk about stopping to smell the roses!