Ramblin’ Roses
It’s not surprising that antique roses are growing in popularity— only that they took so long to make their comeback. Where to see them and how to grow them: a selective guide.
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Meanwhile, in the little town of Independence, outside Brenham, horticulturist and wholesale nurseryman Mike Shoup was growing the wax-leaf ligustrums and red-tipped photinias demanded by the staid gardens of the time. He might still be dusting the powdery mildew off his pittosporum if the state’s economy hadn’t hit the compost pile in the early eighties. Lush, exotic landscapes were the last thing on foreclosed homeowners’ minds. Scrambling to find a niche for his nursery business, Shoup began to tinker with native plants. On a foray into the countryside near the nursery, a member of his staff discovered a lusty rose spread out along a chain-link fence, cloaking its lethal spurs beneath creamy yellow, five-petal flowers the size of saucers. The rose was identified as the incredible Mermaid, which can grow thirty feet high and doesn’t mind being pruned with a chain saw. But Shoup couldn’t find it for sale anywhere. So he took cuttings and began to propagate it, offering it and other vigorous foundlings for sale alongside his native plants.
Shoup heard about the Rustlers from Welch, whom he had met as a graduate student at A&M. He tagged along on several rustles, swapping cuttings and tips, wondering if perhaps the roses he was saving could save his business. Then, in 1983, he and Welch started the Antique Rose Emporium in Independence (Welch later left the business). The Emporium now cultivates more than 500 varieties of roses, the best of both the new and the old. Shoup, who is 45, launched another nursery outside Atlanta, Georgia, four years ago, and his newest location opened for business in San Antonio in February. Almost seventy thousand people roamed through his display gardens in Independence last year, bloom-bedazzled, filling little red wagons with two-gallon pots of Bourbons and Noisettes like Mrs. B. R. Cant and Rêve d’Or and as-yet-unidentified found roses like Pamela’s Pink and Puerto Rico.
If you doubt the Rustlers’ impact on the commercial success and current availability of old roses, consider this: Every specimen of the Emporium’s Souvenir de la Malmaison, an 1843 Bourbon with large, dense pink blooms, is a direct descendant of the bush the intrepid band discovered at Mary Minor’s home in Anderson.
So You Want to Be a Rustler?
AS MEMBERSHIP IN THE TEXAS Rose Rustlers swelled, the group rustles began to collapse under their own weight, with rookie members descending on the gardens of their hosts by the dozens, clippers snapping. “I stopped going on group rustles because I felt like we were abusing the generosity of the gardeners who allowed us to take cuttings,” says Shoup. Other rustlers also became uncomfortable with the locustlike invasions, so cutting exchanges like the one at Washington-on-the-Brazos have now replaced the group rustles. “It isn’t like the wild old days,” says Puryear.
Then again, nothing is, but that shouldn’t deter you from a little rustling of your own. Says Shoup: “Rose rustling on a one-on-one basis is still so important, because you’re preserving and passing down family roses and their histories.” Although gardening lore holds that a stolen plant will fare much better than a given one, always ask permission. Your cutting won’t grow at all if you get shot or you’re in jail. Besides, your encounter with the rose’s owner is integral to the quest; the story of a rose can sometimes be as sweet as its scent. Welch, for instance, tells a circuitous tale about a cutting from a climbing variety of Old Blush he received from Cleo Barnwell, an avid rosarian now in her nineties who lives in Shreveport, Louisiana, who got her cutting from Elizabeth Lawrence, “probably the greatest garden writer the South ever produced.” He grew the climber, passing along cuttings to friends, colleagues, and the Emporium. Now it’s all over the place. He has seen its offspring swallowing the front of the Nimitz Hotel in Fredericksburg. I have one of its babies by my front gate; it’s three years old and as big as a Volkswagen.
But that’s not the end of the story. Several years later, Welch arranged to tour the late Lawrence’s garden in Charlotte, North Carolina: “There, growing up a tree, was this beautiful specimen of Old Blush. I said, ‘Aha! I have found my plant.’” But no. His guide told him that Lawrence had gotten the cutting from a neighbor, Elizabeth Barnhill Clarkson. Welch went to look at that plant. “Aha!” he said. But no again. Clarkson had brought the cutting for that plant from Uvalde when she moved to Charlotte as a bride in the twenties. Welch now has friends scouring Uvalde for the original plant.
Welch suggests you start looking for old roses in your own family and community; if it’s growing and blooming in your area, it’s tried-and-true. Cruise the “modest” neighborhoods where gardeners held on to the plants that worked, either because they appreciated them or because they couldn’t afford the latest. And while a lot of cemetery roses, once ripe for the clipping, have been destroyed by the heavy hand of perpetual care, they’re still out there. I’ve got my eye on a fountain-shaped bush with deep red flowers I saw blooming in East Austin’s Oakwood Cemetery in December.
When should you conduct your search? Although some old roses will bloom nearly year-round, most are in their fullest glory in the spring and fall, flagging down even the most nearsighted or distracted rustler. In recommending cutting times, Liz Druitt, the author of The Organic Rose Garden and co-author with Shoup of Landscaping With Antique Roses, takes into account the best time to root those cuttings: “Night temperatures should be moderately cool—50 to 60 degrees—and day temperatures shouldn’t exceed the high 80’s.” In other words, fall is optimum. But carry your cutting kit, which should consist of a good pair of pruning shears, paper towels, a jug of water, plastic bags, tags, and a pencil, in your car at all times, just in case.
Cutting Remarks
ONCE YOU’VE SPOTTED A JEWEL AND gotten permission to snip away, what do you do? Resist the temptation to identify the rose first. For one thing, if you’re in love, does a name matter? For another, the name of the rose is more elusive than you might imagine. Even those who have moved far beyond casual identification from bloom color and leaf shape and into the botanical scrutiny of a plant’s sexual parts have learned to shun certainty. However, if you’re after old roses, you should at least be able to distinguish the stiff, leggy canes (stems) and the large, glossy leaves of the Modern Hybrid Teas from the mounded, rambling, or climbing forms of Teas, Chinas, and Noisettes, the Texas trinity of vintage bloomers.
Once you start cutting, never take more than a plant can afford to spare. The point is to save old roses, not decimate the survivors. Cut off a six- to eight-inch section of rose cane that has finished blooming—growth that’s neither too old nor too new—making sure to get several sets of leaves. Underneath the leaves, where they join the cane, are the triggers for your rose sprout, little green bumps called auxiliary buds, or leaf nodes, that will, if all goes well, send out roots when stuck in soil. Wrap the cutting in a damp paper towel, drop it in a plastic bag, seal it, label it, and protect it from heat and cold.
The sooner you can “stick,” or plant, your cutting to root it, the better. Gently strip the leaves from the lower half, exposing the auxiliary buds. Though cuttings might root without any foliage at all, a set or two of leaves on the top half help the twig carry out food production until roots form. Next, recut the twig about half an inch from the end at a 45-degree angle. The rose rooters I talked with were ambivalent about dipping the ends of cuttings in commercial rooting powder. It can be helpful, but it’s not necessary, and some consider it expensive and offensively synthetic (read: not organic).
You can stick your cutting directly into the ground, but keep in mind that this isn’t its final resting place. While grown-up roses prefer a sunny location, the cuttings need to be sheltered from direct sunlight during their root-forming stage. Or you can root your cuttings in small containers—even a paper cup will do. In either case, stick the cutting in loose, premoistened, well-draining soil (pre-drill the hole in the soil with a pencil to prevent damaging the cutting), making sure that at least one of the exposed auxiliary buds is covered. In six weeks your cutting will be rooted. Maybe. Don’t expect 100 percent success, although you can increase your odds by sticking Chinas and Teas, which root most easily. Keep the cutting moist but not soggy, and if you stick it in the late fall, protect it from freezing by covering it with a glass jar or plastic bag.
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