My rose seedling Enjouée that I bred is blooming. It’s two years old this spring. Sun’s a bit bright here, but you get the idea. It’s a very vigorous, leafy shrub with a nice vase form so far, pretty impressed. 

That green blob is the rose Enjouée I grew from seed. It’s growing really really well, put on maybe 1/3 of new growth. Head to toe foliage everywhere. I’m not sure if it is wanting to be a climber or stay shrub-like yet but it is extremely vigorous either way. It already has flowerbuds and it’s in contention with a few other roses to be the first rose to bloom. Either way I’m excited about it.

I have a flat with maybe about six to twelve small rose seedlings right now next to the washer. I think half are  ‘Roseraie de l’Haÿ’  open pollinated seedlings, so said seedlings can be a cross with anything else in the garden through bees that visited both flowers. The baby leaves show distinct rugosa rose “rugose”  or crinkled traits even on their first tiny set of leaves. It’s variable though so it’s clear they are hybrids.

The second half of seedlings are ‘Arethusa’ x ‘Lynnie’ which is my first carefully recorded and documented from flower to seed direct cross.  The results I assume will be pink, pink, and more obnoxious girl’s school supply pink which is not ideal but it was a “what the hell cross” as they were blooming at the same time.

I want to cross this rose ‘Crépuscule’ with this rose, ‘Arethusa’ and plan to this summer, after checking on my rose seeds in the fridge today I know it’s gotta be done.

They are tea-noisette and china hybrids from the early 20th century, both introduced in a two year span between 1903 and 1904 and both are certainly representative of what was in fashion at the time. A lot of the roses from that era are really my style. Lots of yolky buffs, apricot, yellow and pink.

‘Crépuscule’ is the tea-noisette, something of a climber with apricot-buff colored flowers, while ‘Arethusa’ (named after the fountain and its namesake nymph) is a short, bushy buff-pink hybrid-china, starting off apricot and going through a color shift to more of a pastel pink as it ages. Most china roses come in shades of deep scarlet, medium reds and deep rose-pinks so ‘Arethusa’ is a bit atypical of its class due to it’s coloring, which no doubt was and still is its novelty.

Both plants due to their china and tea blood are not terribly cold hardy, but ‘Crépuscule’ is a very healthy plant with shiny peach-leaf like leaves that have a distinct droop, while ‘Arethusa’ while not as healthy foliar wise has compact size on its side and a bit more hardiness. Both are known to be very fertile,  ‘Crépuscule’ while it forms hips is said to be more useful as a pollen parent and I’ve been told by a professional rose-breeder to put its pollen on everything, as it often breeds good yellows and other apricot buffs like itself. ‘Arethusa’ is a good seed parent with good germination rates. I applied pollen from an electric (and I mean electric )  hot pink shrub rose ‘Lynnie’ onto ‘Arethusa’ which took and formed a hip in late summer, which I harvested. Checking on the seeds from that hip in the fridge today I saw I had good germination and just planted them up in a tray to sprout. That for me attested that ‘Arethusa’ is easy to work with.

The goal of the cross would be something of an in-between both plants; to tame ‘Crépuscule’s sprawling and rambling ways and have a more mounding smaller shrub as opposed to the porch swallowing mass it can become. Essentially put it’s coloring and foliage onto ‘Arethusa’ shrub size and habit and I’m good to go.

My own rose seedling, now given the moniker of ‘Enjouée’ which means playful, cheerful, kittenish or gamesome as a pun on one of its presumed parents ‘Plaisanterie’ which means ‘joke’, ‘prank’ or ‘trick’. What does a child do when they’re acting kittenish? They pull pranks. (Hur hur hur)

This rose has somewhat of a bi-color staining and color shift on the outer parts of the petals, which are about an inch in diameter. I attribute this to ‘Plaisanterie’, which starts out with cherry-orange buds, open buff colored and then age to pink with some darker ‘staining’. The color shift in ‘Plaisanterie’ is a trait inherited from and is the hallmark of its own pollen parent, ‘Mutabilis’, a china rose. The other presumed parent to this particular seedling, ‘Sven’ doesn’t have as visible mottling, but will compare flowers next time both are in bloom.

Each flush the flowers are becoming a bit prettier and cooler weather has brought out that raspberry-pink stain even more. I’m thinking this rose hasn’t settled into it’s proper bloom form yet, so I may get an increased petal count next year. Overall, it’s a cute rose, can’t wait to see what it does.

I’m so proud of this.  I designed and planted (most) of the plants here for my cousin’s front yard. She let me design it with some input of what she liked and didn’t like, but has pretty much given me free range and trusts my taste. It has a long season of interest and looks quite different during different months of the year.

Their house’s siding is mostly a creamy pale-yellow siding, sort of like unsalted butter, very light with black shutters. They also have stone siding too, which has shades of orange, ruddy-maroon, slate-blue and other rusty tones all sort of marbled together.  To compliment I chose a palette of dark greens, true dark purple-red maroon, silver, a lot of light periwinkle purple-blues to provide a hazy, dreamy look at sundown, generous doses of scarlet in the spring from quite a few azaleas and then peonies, and then in mid/late summer as seen here through crape myrtles and red annual vinca and verbena. I also included some white and pale yellow was also added via some shrub roses thrown in to echo the siding. There’s also some pink, but that appears and disappears depending on the season, it’s not a constant. Personally I would have had the walkway, if it was my money and house with their siding and colors, have done in either a blue-slate colored stone or a darker more rustic cobblestone in a slight winding ‘S’ shape manner instead of a straight promenade, but that’s just me…I didn’t have a say in their hardscape choices when I began work on their yard, they had already chosen it out and had it set.

All of this was started being planted last June or so and we’ve been adding more and more as we tweak and edit. My cousin is a saint at watering, so the plants generally are thriving if not almost two times bigger than they should be and it is such a thrill to see everything come together as I sort of imagined it in my head. I’m not a very technical designer, I’d like to think I more “paint” with the plants, as obnoxious as that sounds, but it’s more how my thinking process goes when it comes to color and texture of the plants and maintaining an aesthetic balance. 

A lot of my ideas when it comes to landscape design are much out of my reach monetary wise, for both my family and myself as a working individual. That fact hinders a lot of my horticultural projects for myself at home, and for some of my clients as well. I can’t go buy all that I want to buy and often have to compromise, so to be able to work somewhat in a sandbox environment for my cousin, who is quite financially secure and has been a glowing patron, is fantastic.

I’ve got a temporary roommate this weekend. We had to clear the porch of all small stuffs to prepare for Irene so that meant my “pot ghetto” of rose seedlings had to move. I think I have about a ten or so seedlings. I solved half the problem by planting out four that show rather good health and vigor out in the yard. The rest are a bit straggly and I’m debating what to do with them. This one is different out of the bunch, it is the strongest, healthiest grower. It shows considerable signs of being a rugosa rose hybrid, which makes sense since most of the seeds I germinated were either from the rose bush ‘Roseraie de L’Hay’ a rugosa rose, or ‘Plaisanterie’ a hybrid musk/china so chances are it came from the former, which is very exciting since the variety is not known for it’s fertility and hip formation, and yet my plant has so far shown itself receptive to other pollen in the garden as it forms hips for me. The seedling is definitely a cross with another rose of a different species origin somewhere in my yard, making it a hybrid. The slight crinkled or rugosed leaves and bright light green new growth on the tips, which is clearer in person as is how healthy it actually looks however hint that at least one of the parents, in this case the mother, was surely a rugosa. So it might end up showing traits of both parents due not completely looking like a pure rugosa. I’m rather excited!

The one problem, however, is that rugosa seedlings can take a while to get established and flower, sometimes not flowering for the first two three years of life. Hybrid rugosas with other species blood means there are variations to that time frame, but I don’t think I’ve seen this flower yet, so chances are it probably will take some time. Nevertheless, this fella is gonna stay in my room until Irene passes over, then probably sometime in Sept. I’ll plant it out in the yard.

         Picture of gladiolus ‘Witch Doctor’ intro 1964 in the garden.

First zinnias of the season. Will be cutting a first batch for a local florist this Thursday.

For my 1,000 post, I thought I’d put a picture of my assumed to be open pollinated seedling from ‘Sven’ which currently runs under the moniker ‘SvenOP’ until I think of something more creative and witty. It’s my first “pretty” seedling I’ve ever been able to raise and something I’m rather proud of to say “I grew that from seed”. It’s smaller in all regards to its presumed “mother” with flowers sorta being under to about an inch in diameter, and sadly doesn’t have much of a scent, but the petals being darker colored with a distinct paler inner reverse are rather attractive. We’ll see how this one matures and ages. 

I’ve put my first seedling that looks promising enough to be planted into the garden up on HelpMeFind rose cultivar database. That puts me as a rose breeder on the site thus cementing my “status” I guess as I now have documented accounts of any rose seedling growing.

It’s not technically my first surviving seedling, I had one seedling from I think maybe 2007 survive long enough to bloom and be planted outside but it is a sickly and a rather homely, stunted seedling of what I believe to be ‘Queen Elizabeth’. It’s dwarf, single blossom type of white-pink that turns used-tissue ugly. Needle thorns. Defoliates during summer. I keep it out of pity for being the first one I ever grew from seed. Being said my success rate can be implied to be abysmally low until this past winter. Winters 2008 and 2009 were also me growing flats of rose seedlings in my dorm room or tried to keep them at home but they just didn’t work. 2010 I was lucky and had four seedlings that performed well and I stuck with them. Three are “sisters” being that they came from the same batch of seeds and probably from same hip, which I lost identification for but I assumed they were open pollinated seedlings of the small shrub ‘Sven’.Thus this currently goes by ‘Sven OP’ but if I like it enough and it performs well it might be renamed something else.

I’m looking forward to see if there are any improvements. Of the three “sisters” it had the healthiest foliage during the summer as I subjected them to live in their own quart sized pots on the steps of our back porch. Two sisters became afflicted with powdery mildew rather easily, while this one stayed relatively clean in the same conditions. I left the two other sisters in their pots over the winter while the clean one got planted in the fall. If they survived the winter in the pot than I would plant them out as it would mean rather hardy vigor and might be worth a second shot. They both unfortunately died, which was disappointing, as I like second chances or comebacks, and they had interesting flowers, but they weren’t strong enough.

It’s not in bloom yet, so sole picture is of a green blob, but considering how large it was when planted (tiny) and how vigorous it’s showing in terms of spring growth, pretty much doubling in size. It has smaller foliage than ‘Sven’. I’m very curious to see what it will be like and its disease resistance this year while in the ground. It did bloom a few times for me last year, which is good for if a seedling shows remonancy that young it means it probably a rather reliable bloomer. The flower was small, less saturated purple-white sort of lilac colored flower I’m remembering, with a decent scent. Hopefully that too might be improved with age.

My page will continue to fill up, I will add the ‘Plaisanterie’ seedlings that have done extremely well so far, I have over a dozen seedlings of that right now that show no signs of dying on me..yet…but we’ll see. I’ll add them as they age and start to bloom actual flowers.

My mostly ‘Plaisanterie’ open pollinated rose brood. Quite a few have flowered small pseudo first flowers that showed hints of them inheriting their mother and thus the grandmother ‘Mutabilis’ color shift process in their petals, which while found in other roses, most china roses colors deepen with age, but the color shift in ‘Mutabilis’ which goes from creamy yellow-buff buds and flowers that age to a pink and then rose-crimson is relatively exclusive to it and its progeny. 

I’m looking forward to seeing them grow and mature so I can see differences and give them names. I’m very excited about that part. Since the name ‘Plaisanterie’ itself is French for ‘joke’ or ‘jesting’ I’m trying to think of funny, cheeky names for the seedlings that continue the French and or ‘Joke’/’Jest’/’Gag’/ motif for the lot of them. I’d like that to be a thread going throughout my work with roses.  I want to do that with my roses, have interesting names. I will never call something “Heaven Scent” or “Apricot Pillows”, or ‘Pink Dream’.I’d like to be a bit more clever.

For example, I have another rose in my possession named ‘Indian Love Call’ which was named by the breeder after a friend who particularly liked it. I however, associate the name with the 1930’s song, so I anticipate any good seedlings that come from using that rose either in open pollinated hips or direct crossing; they all will have to carry names of obscure jazz and blues, pop standards that I like and fit the plant. Pretty clever right? I think it would be fun.