From skilled photographer and gardener-by-proxy, Ema:
The Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden at the NYBG has ~ 4,000 roses, heirloom varieties loved by French Empress Josephine, roses blooming in early December.
It was designed in 1916 by Beatrix Farrand and completed in 1988 with help from David Rockefeller, in honor of his wife, Peggy, who loved roses.
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All I can decently say about the past week around here is that, after a comparatively clement July and August, we got hit with the worst kind of 90 degree temperature, 70 degree humidity high-summer weather blast. Which was particularly misfortunate, because the Spousal Unit had taken the week as vacation to help me with grunt work around the yard, and the heat / humidity combination made it not only unpleasant but unsafe for either of us to be out in it very long. So he got to hang around the (after he got it working again) air-conditioned living room, where my desk setup is, and busily ‘improve’ the overall clutter situation. The house is now the opposite of improved, the yard looks worse than ever, and predictions are for rain through next Friday.
I dearly love my husband, but sometimes I see why newly retired couples get divorced.
What’s going on in your garden(s), this week?
War for Ukraine Day 563: 3 Days in and the Starlink Snowflake is on the 4th Explanation
Baud
And here everyone thinks it’s capitalism that keeps people from retiring.
CCL
Beautiful roses. Same weather here.
RAVEN
I worked from home for 15 years and my wife retired a year before I did. I was really nervous about what it would be like with her home all the time. Turns out it didn’t matter.
Rachel Bakes
Missed the NYBG roses this year but they were lovely last year. Hating this weather. Things to do outside but on day 2 of a migraine that I can only presume is connected to the awful humidity.
sab
I love roses. I resisted planting them for years because my mother slathered hers in petrochemicals, which I didn’t want to deal with.
Planted them last year for the first time, and our resident deer doe promptly ate them. One of four came back up this spring. It just flowered with huge tea roses. Then miraculously two others just revived this late summer. Those two might just be root stock. We’ll see.
Anne Laurie
I say this in all sincerity: COUNT YOUR BLESSINGS.
(Among them being a very smart wife, for sure.)
sab
@CCL: Same weather here. It sucks. Of all the down sides of being old, the one they never warned me about is the disfunctional thermostat. I spent my childhood in Florida before much air-conditioning. I was really heat resistant. Now I wilt at 80°.
BenInNM
Beautiful roses – we have one large rose bush that has been in the yard forever (it was already well established when we moved in 13 years ago). It’s first bloom in the spring is spectacular.
Otherwise today is going to be spent rejuvenating a dry creek bed that has become overgrown. Temperatures should start to moderate here soon.
BellyCat
Nominated!
Geo Wilcox
My husband was an air line pilot and so I have always been used to being alone for a lot of time during the week. Luckily for us we have a three story house (it really is way too big for us) and he uses the basement as his music and game room. I use the upstairs computer room for nearly every thing except sleeping and eating. We do see each other and do things together, especially outdoor chores on our 22.6 acres but we don’t see each other all the time. It’s wonderful!
CCL
@sab: ditto, but instead of Florida, Arizona.
OzarkHillbilly
Awwwww, Pobrecita…
Welcome to our latter half of June, entire month of July, and first half of August, except 100+ temps. :-) Sorry, no Hillbilly sympathy from the Ozarks. Besides, turnabout is fair play: Been in the high 70’s all week here and only a touch of rain on Tuesday. We are supposed to get some rain Monday night and then… high 60s low 70s the rest of the week. Pbbbththththththth.
Garden wise, my cukes are done for the year. So are the melons. Sad about the cukes, but the melons were a complete disappointment: Small and mostly not at all sweet. I’ll have to figure out what I did wrong there. My beans are all in the “drying” stage. The maters are still producing and the squirrels are allowing me to have 4 out of every 5 ripe ones, so I can’t complain tooooo much. Still picking jalapenos but my sweet peppers have all surrendered to the TMV. The only thing I have to look forward to now are the gourds, which are growing just fine but a part of me feels like I should have gotten more out of some plants. I’ll get better seeds next year.
Flower wise, this place is a riot of color.
ps: thanx for the roses, Ema.
stinger
Beautiful roses — thanks, Ema!
satby
I love roses too, but after a nice early June bloom there’s not been a single flower since on either the potted or the in-ground shrub roses. So seeing these pictures is a delight!
@Anne Laurie: @OzarkHillbilly: I know that kind of weather (90+ & +70% humidity) positively sucks the will to live right out of me, so I sympathize, but having had a summer just like Ozark’s I’m reveling in our current cooler temps. My forecast is the same, badly needed rain predicted over the next two days, but lots of the predicted rain has passed us by this year. Either way, I still have tomatoes ripening, a finally cleared back bed to Preen, cover in cardboard and smother in mulch, hydrangeas to prune, and relocating the last sad daylillies out of the front bed to where they can get some sun next year. Next year I’m planning on putting the 4 potted roses in that back bed, and nothing else! Hopefully I can keep that under control.
sab
@CCL: But that’s a dry heat. My dad was stationed in San Antonio in the 1950s and my Mom used to say ” it may have been dry heat but it still was a hot heat.”
kalakal
Lovely roses – thanks Ema.
I miss roses, they don’t do well here in west central Florida
MazeDancer
Beautiful roses. Thanks for pics.
And, of course, Mrs. Rockefeller loved them. Wonder how many gardeners she had?
Weather was my #1 factor in choosing where to live. So sympathies to Anne Laurie as we are supposed to get mild summers to go with snowy winters.
Thank you climate change, we are not really getting either.
Many of you don’t mind hot summers, or having to stay inside in the AC. I, literally, cannot function.
Reconsidering Maine. Thought it would be too cold. But, now, not so sure. Buffalo is known for its gorgeous housing stock. And ferocious Winters. Soon, may just be nice houses.
Probably going to ride it out here in (less North than Buffalo) Upstate NY. But starting to wish I had chosen MI. Traverse City area. Mackinaw Island. It has to be cooler there, right? Maybe New Blue WI?
Though – and I say this having lived in Santa Fe, Santa Monica, and Sag Harbor – parts of Michigan may have gotten too trendy and pricey already.
Gvg
@kalakal: Grow old garden roses. Louis Philippe is known as the cracker rose. Old French rose that for some reason loves Florida and will survive abandoned homesites even. Blooms most of the year, no chemicals. A well cared for one can reach 18 feet. Most people trim I’m to about 6. My aunt uses a hedge trimmer. She is not a gardener. I gave her rooted cuttings 20 years ago and they still survive, she has even learned to root more which is good, because occasionally her dogs dig one up making a cool cave under the deck.
Mrs. B R Can’t is also good. There are others. Your local rose club will probably publish a list of easy care roses for your area. The old roses should be on their own roots. Others should be on fortuniana. Most box stores sell roses on the wrong rootstock for Florida. The rest of the country like Dr. Huey but that dies here. It’s actually not that hard to grow roses in Florida, but you need to choose the right kinds, buy from good sources and shovel prune any that don’t please you after a few years.
Kristine
Cooler fall-like temps here in NE Illinois as well. After that spate of 90s+ and high %RH, it’s a relief to be able to open doors and windows. Just hoping neighbors don’t decide it’s a great day to Burn Stuff.
Beautiful roses–my mom would’ve loved them. I have one rose, a red supermarket teacup that I swear I bought in the late 90s. After a year, I planted it and a teacup white by the back door, where they thrived until a few years ago. Well, red thrived. White gradually shrunk. I moved them both to pots, and white finally gave up. Meanwhile, red grew large enough that I split it in two. One half was weaker and gave up last year. The remainder bloomed like a boss. I bring it indoors for the winter and need to watch for spider mites. Hoping I can keep it going.
As for the yard, it’s late summer. My least favorite partial season. Everything is fading/browning and the first leaves are starting to drop. Acorns are Everywhere–walking across parts of the yard is like walking on a rocky trail, and when they hit the gutters it sounds like someone is shooting BBs at the house. But in a few weeks the squirrels will have dealt with all of them.
Jeffg166
If only I had the land, money and staff of gardeners I too could have a beautiful garden.
ema
Thank you all!
Geo Wilcox
The only roses we have are the wild pink ones. They grow into HUGE bushes in no time, need no maintenance (chemicals, trimming, etc.), and come back more covered in flowers than ever. The kind we kill are the invasive multiflora rosa. I have to wait till they flower and make note so I can off them the next year in early spring before the ticks are out.
Joey Maloney
No rose content here: but thanks to the app Seek which I just learned about from this here near-top-10,000 blog, I know the names of most of the plants in our garden (it came with the apartment, we didn’t plant it originally). So I can now say that it’s the fishtail palm which died suddenly, rotted from the inside. Which is a shame because it was a really interesting looking plant, and tall enough to give some shade. And I can say I put in its place a (much smaller) Ti plant that was potted and getting pretty badly rootbound, and maybe now it will grow up big and strong!
opiejeanne
The Empress Josephine collected roses for the garden at Malmaison, and had them imported from around the world. She introduced repeat-blooming roses from China and shipments to Malmaison were allowed to cross the blockade when England and France were at war, and she began a hybridizaton program to improve varieties that only bloomed once a year.
The repeat-bloomers were something new to Europe and England; the roses they knew until then only had one big bloom in the spring and nothing after that.
SkyBluePink
Gorgeous photos! Thanks, Ema-
Betsy
These photos. Wow.
ema
@SkyBluePink:
Thank you!
ema
@Betsy:
It’s even more impressive when you stroll around the garden. Definitely a must visit place.
BigJimSlade
Lovely photos!
I’ve noticed that when a yard has a rose bush, it usually has many of them. Do they sell them by the dozen, or something?