Prague Rose Garden Club Update

Despite the intense heat of the past week, the roses in the Prague Rose Garden have been growing quite nicely.  The seated arch has been the focal point of the garden but there were no roses growing up the arch.  Last spring I planted a Lavender Lassie on each side and I think by summer's end they will grow to meet at the top of the arch.  They are flanked on either side by some form of Knock Out. 

The bed below is where I started my work in the Prague Rose Garden.  This bed sat idle with grass over two feet tall.  I thought, "With no roses and the city crew unable to get their John Deer equipment into it, surely no one will be offended if I clean it out and put a few roses in."  Being closest to the road the three tall minis in back and the row of The Fairy in front add some nice color to passers by.  Eventually the two English Roses I planted last fall in the center (Heritage and St. Swithun) will add some heighth and fill out the display.  Hopefully it might even attract a few people to stop and, well, smell the roses. 

Last year I turned some attention to the other end of the garden where a lone purple hybrid tea that is very winter tender was making a home.  I had less of a plan on this one and lots of cuttings and suckers that had taken, so I began to fill it in.  Up front you have two plants of Popcorn on either side of the water hydrant.  On each of the corners are yellow roses: in the back are two of the English Rose Graham Thomas and in front are the miniflora Autumn Splendor and an unknown yellow florabunda.  I took the cutting sometime ago but didn't write down what it was from and forgot.  I'll figure it out in time to label it when I get around to putting markers of each of them.  When I do this, I was thinking that I would put the variety, class and year.  What do you think?  Does it need more information or does more mean people read less?  Flanking the hybrid tea are Reine des Violettes and Precious Dream and behind is DayDream.

I took a step back so you can get a sense of the size of the garden.  It's not so large as to make the upkeep too difficult yet large enough to make a statement.  I think its elongated design, running diagonally across the corner of the park, works nicely for the maximum display.

I would like to mention that the Prague Rose Garden wouldn't be here if it weren't for two very special people - Milo & Norma Foreman.  Norma was the first president of the Prague Rose Garden Club.  She tells me that it was really Milo who put the garden in and took care of the roses.  Milo is now in his 90's and I get the priviledge of spending Sunday mornings with them, as Norma is the pianist at the Prague United Methodist Church which I also have the joy of serving.  One last thing, Milo did a fabulous job making sure that the garden had a very rich and friable soil.  The ground is incredibly easy to work.

Making the Move

Back in January I separated two suckers from their mother plants and recently dug them up to move to the park.  The first one is Precious Dream, a Hybrid Bracteata from Ralph Moore.  It has begun to develop some nice roots.

Now the young plant of Precious Dream is making its home in the Prague Rose Garden.  I think it enjoyed the ride in my new Honda Ridgeline pictured it the background.  After 10 years in my Nissan Xterra it was time to pass it along to my son, Thomas. 

The second rose is Reine des Violettes, a Hybrid Perpetual from 1860.  Reine des Violettes is a purple rose that has a strong spring bloom and scattered blossoms in the fall. 

Both are now snuggled in to their new home in the Prague Rose Garden.  The Rose Garden has three beds.  I started working with the South bed and it is now filled with a row of The Fairy, two English Roses in the center row (St. Swithun and Abraham Darby), and a third row with Twister, Autumn Splendor, and Seattle Scentsation.  Now I am filling in the North bed and these two join an originally planted lavender Hybrid Tea, two plants of Popcorn, two Graham Thomas, and one DayDream.  I still have the front row to complete with several more minis to flank the two plants of Popcorn.

Soaker Hoses in the Park

Last summer's heat and drought took a real toll on many gardens in Oklahoma.  My roses at home did fine because I could easily water them on a regular basis.  The roses in the Prague Rose Garden at the park had a harder time.  Angie (my wife and best volunteer) and I walk in the park several time a week on the half mile trail, so we often would take a hose and sprinkler to water the roses as we walked.  We would stop and move the sprinkler every couple of laps.  This kept most of the roses alive; although, we did lose a few of them.  Instead of remembering to take the hose to the park, then carrying it there, moving it around while we walk, and taking it back home, I decided that we could do better this coming year if I were to put in soaker hoses to take advantage of the three water spigots that are conveniently located in the garden.  So I picked up a soaker hose from the hardware store and 5 gallon bucket of gardening tools and started installing the soaker hoses this weekend.  Once they are all installed we will be able to water the garden much more simply and effectively while we are on our walks. 

The soaker hose goes down easily by digging a trench a few inches of deep in the mulch for the hose to lay in.  You can find soaker hoses at Harbor Freight and here are some coupons for Harbor Freight.  Eventually, the hose should settle in right at the surface of the garden.  I only got one of the two small sections put in, and I can tell that it is going to take a lot more hose than I expected but this is a good start. 

Something to remember if you decide to work in a public garden - learn to let go.  Below is the growth of Abraham Darby that was broken off at ground level.  This happened when people were decorating the park for Christmas and someone stepped on the small band sized rose I planted there only a few months earlier.  When laying the hose in the garden, I had to dig up what was left of the rose to find out where to route the hose.  It looks like it will survive just fine but this could easily be very frustrating.  Instead of being upset, I am going to adopt my friend Delbert's philosophy. 

Years ago, Delbert was serving an inner city church that had an empty lot next to it.  He decided to plant a vegetable garden in the empty lot and planted a tall row of sunflowers on the back row.  Since poverty and hunger were issues in the community why shouldn't this land be used to grow food.  The garden grew up beautifully with the sunflowers standing as a beautiful symbol of hope in a despairing neighborhood.  People would tell Delbert, "You know they will steal everything in the garden."  Delbert would say, "No they won't."  "Oh yes they will," his detractor would answer.  Delbert would respond, "No, I won't let them."  Sure of their position they would point out, "You live miles away and when you are gone they will come in and steal the vegetables, watermelon, and anything else that grows in it." Delbert persisted saying, "It is impossible for them to steal anything from the garden.  I'm growing it for them so it is already theirs."  Delbert always helped me to be less tied to the things in my life and more connected to the people.

As you can see, one section down and miles of hose to go.  Next week I will finish the other small section at the other end of the garden and sometime latter I will tackle the much bigger center section.

The Prague Rose Garden Club

Public Gardens can be wonderful additions to communities by providing beauty and serving as demonstration gardens featuring desirable plants or gardening ideas.  However, when they are not maintained they detract from the community and give a negative impression of particular plants.  The second of these options is what was happening to the the Prague Rose Garden Club.  I'm sure that the original members of the Prague Rose Garden Club could never have imagined that the garden would fall into such a state of neglect.  The great era of civic organizations and gardening clubs seems to be coming to an end.  Just look at the struggle of the American Rose Society to maintain its membership.  It only seems logical when people can learn more about roses in an afternoon of Internet surfing than they would gain in a year's participation the the ARS.  This is not meant to be a criticism of the ARS (I have been a member off and on several times over the past 20 years) just a description of our social reality.

My own involvement with the Prague Rose Garden began as an act of gorilla gardening.  We moved to Prague just two and a half years ago.  After the first year and after I got started on my own rose garden, I decided to start taking care of one of the two end gardens (this one actually did not have any roses growing in it and the other had one hybrid tea in the center). The garden consists of three beds: two 10 foot by 8 foot small plots on each end with a roughly 40 foot by 8 foot center section. After working on this small bed for a few months, I finally got fed up with the care of the center bed.  The city mows the park but since this was a garden with a concrete border which keeps the lawn mowers out, it did not get mowed.  It had gotten so bad that the grass and weeds were over two feet tall and you could hardly see the the six Knock Out, one Double Delight, one Europeana, and one lavender hybrid tea roses in the garden.  I brought my weed eater out to knock down the grass and weeds.  While I was pulling weeds directly around the roses a curious friend stopped and took the picture you see below.  You can also see a corner of the first bed I started on in the picture.

Since then, I have been spending an hour or two each week in the garden and have planted: 7 The Fairy, 3 Popcorn, 2 Graham Thomas, 2 Lavender Lassie, 1 DayDream, 1 St. Swithun, 1 Heritage, 1 Abraham Darby, 1 Twister, 2 Autumn Splendor, 1 Seattle Scentsation, 1 Reine des Viollette, 1 Precious Dream, and 1 Marti Gras.  Wow, that's twenty five rose bushes - more than I thought.  It doesn't seem like that many.  Partly because they are still very small and we did have some casualties from the summer draught and record heat.  A couple of The Fairy, 2 Gertrude Jekyll, one Vi's Violet, and a Tattooed Lady were lost this summer.

The black weed barrier that had previously been put down was removed by the High School FFA because (as so often is the case) it had grass and weeds growing both on top of and underneath it.  As I continue to add to the number of roses in the garden, I plan to install a soaker hose system for easier watering in the coming years.  While I hope that the efforts in the Prague Rose Garden will offer beauty to the park and community, I also hope that it will inspire a few more people to take up gardening with roses and maybe look beyond the most obvious selections. 

The roses I have added have either been own root bands that I have bought or they have been ones that I have started from cuttings.  This means that they are still very small but that since they are own root plants they will live longer once established.  In the Spring I hope to put together a workshop on rose propagation for anyone in the area who might like to attend.

This is the first bed I began working with.  The line of  small roses in the front are The Fairy.  As you can probably tell, two of them didn't make it through the summer.  On the back are Autumn Splendor, Twister, and Seattle Scentsation.  In the middle are two very small starts of St. Swithun and Abraham Darby. 
My long term hope is to get the garden strongly reestablished and then to see if we can get the Prague Rose Garden Club started again.  I know people don't join clubs like they used to.  If I'm successful then hopefully twenty years from now, someone else won't be trying to start up the garden and club again.  One other note, I often hear about rosarians who run out of space in their home gardens.  Why not expand your work into a public garden that is needing some help?  It might be at your local park or even at your church.  I think that there are probably many public spaces who could benefit from your expertise and time.