San Jose Heritage Rose Garden

Fall color and winter bloom on "Gatewood Rambler"

A great Floribunda rose from 1968 - Gene Boerner.

Look at this cane that "McKee Plot" put out this week! It's 5 and a half feet tall. That's one happy floribunda!

The ever blooming Mel's Heritage.

Lots of roses in full Autumn bloom today! Here are a few:

Lots of bloom in the garden!

All of these gorgeous flowers are from one bush. We don't know the original name of the rose, so we call it "Casa de Anza Big Pink HT".

We have gotten hundreds of our roses from Gregg Lowery at Vintage Gardens and now Friends of Vintage Roses. You can hear him interviewed on Santa Cruz radio station KSQD tomorrow morning, or for the next 2 weeks at www.ksqd.org: Gregg Lowery, founder of Vintage Roses, will join Joe Truskot on KSQD's weekly garden show, "In The Garden," 9 to 9:30 a.m. PDT, Saturday, July 18, 2020. Lowery has collected more than 3,000 individual roses dating from species roses through Old Europ...ean Roses, Teas, Hybrid Perpetuals and Early Hybrid Tea Roses. He has also championed saving and documenting many of the roses introduced just before and after World War Two as well. Documentation of these roses of the 20s to the 60s was quickly fading into history and being forgotten, although they still grew in many gardens and homes built during those times. Gregg Lowery is widely recognized as one of the world's foremost authorities on old garden roses, their propagation and care, and inclusion in today's home gardens. If you are unable to listen live on the radio, you can listen online on your smart phone, iPad, or computer via www.ksqd.org. If you can't join us at that time on Saturday, simply visit www.ksqd.org. Choose "Listen" and click on "2 Week Archive," then scroll down to "In The Garden." Click the "Play" arrow and enjoy. If you want to hear the broadcast after Saturday, simply visit www.ksqd.org. Choose "Listen" and click on "2 Week Archive," click on "View Full Archive" and click on Saturday, July 18. Then scroll down to "In The Garden." Click the "Play" arrow and enjoy.

The paths have been mowed, so getting around in the garden is much easier. Still lots of weeds in the beds. Could use a few more volunteers on Saturday mornings. Lots to see in bloom in the garden.

This is one of the more spectacular roses in the garden right now. It's planted on the berm not far from the parking lot and trail. It was a garden seedling, and so this is the only plant of it. We named it Sgt. Falk.

Due to the COVID-19 problem, the regular volunteers haven't been coming to the garden for a couple months. The weeds have enjoyed this very much. We're hoping to get our regular volunteers back in the garden soon, but in the meantime, enjoy these photos of the garden at peak bloom! The park is open for getting exercise and walking dogs, as a number of people were seen doing today.

A bit more than 2 years ago, we had the opportunity to import some roses from France. It took a lot of coordination as they needed to be in quarantine for 2 years. They were imported by John Bagnasco, with the California Coastal Rose Society, in southern California for the 2 years, and delivered to us last week. Many thanks to John and the CCRS, David and Marianne for helping with the delivery, Tiger for the time and nursery truck to drive them up, to the Roserie du Desert in France, and to donors to the Mel Hulse Fund. The plants are big, healthy and ready to plant, mostly Tea roses including some found in Australia, a country that we cannot import from directly.

With this mild winter, some roses are already coming into bloom.

We know nothing about this beautiful winter blooming rose. We gave it the study name "Nancy Jean" many years ago, but don't confuse it with a more recent rose with that name. It might be a shrub rose or a polyantha.

Quite a few roses are blooming despite being mid-winter. First Stanwell Perpetual, living up to its name. Then some photos of the enormous plants of Rosa chinensis "Spontanea". We have a pink one and a white one, which overlap in the middle

Winter blooms on Rosa clinophylla are making this bee happy.

It's Red China season. We have found red China roses in a great many cemeteries and Gold Rush towns. They are excellent survivors of extreme temperature variation and drought, and they bloom almost 12 months a year. Some have names Louis Phillippe, Cramoisi Superieur, Archduke Charles, etc. Others are named after the place they were found as they haven't been identified.