Comments on: The Rose Ark: Our Journey to Preserve Heritage Roses

By: Lisa

Lisa — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 05:48:19 +0000

I’ve always been curious about roses, but my area in Southeast Alaska is so wet only the open center roses thrive. There are some local roses of this type and a few special ones that traveled from farther. I’m still unsure which types will thrive in our conditions or what category the roses I see belong to. There has been a little more community garden sharing in recent years and I’m excited to practice taking cuttings. I hear one gardener in town has roses a family member brought when they immigrated from Norway about a hundred years ago. By sharing cuttings she hopes to keep the rose going in our community and the story of her family. I have several plants grown from seed my Dad harvested over in Sitka before he suddenly passed away. Our last conversation was exchanging ideas about these roses so they have a special place in my garden. I continue to use the garden as both research project and a beautiful sentiment place to enjoy.

By: Lisa Brady

Lisa Brady — Tue, 24 Jun 2025 15:51:02 +0000

Y’all are amazing and saving these roses is epic! I love to see whatever you do. You are making the world more beautiful and making sure future generations get to enjoy that beauty as well.

By: Sheri

Sheri — Sun, 22 Jun 2025 20:03:57 +0000

Many members of my extended family have gotten starts of what we refer to as Grandma Weaver’s rose. I believe it is a Moss rose type that blooms once in the early spring, usually just in time for our annual Memorial Day weekend gathering where we all bring flowers from or gardens and create mini bouquets (in a solo cup with chicken wire ‘flower frogs) . We then take them to the cemetery and place one at every family member’s headstone ( I think we are at 14 or 15 now) including Grandma Weaver.
It may have a few straggler blooms the rest of the season, but it can be somewhat of a bully in that it likes to grow by runners when it is happy. But she takes a hard prune and comes back again. Plus if she didn’t send out runners, we couldn’t keep passing new roses on !
Sadly in my area, rose rosette disease is starting to run rampant. At the campus I work on as a grounds keeper, we have pulled so many knock out and drift roses in the last few years we have probably filled a 30 yd dumpster at least once. We have too many invasive multiflora roses around which increases the chance of rosette. They are taking over the woods at home too. I plan to spread some death and destruction starting once this heat wave breaks and through the next winter here at home hoping to slow the spread.

By: Denise

Denise — Thu, 19 Jun 2025 13:24:18 +0000

The Rose project has been my favorite from the onset. The size and scope of your plan. The pressure to propagate, grow and then plant hundreds of varieties with the world watching. Mother Nature, weather, decisions, mistakes. It’s all part of the beautiful story. I will get there to see it when it is ready. Ann would be proud.

By: Gina

Gina — Thu, 19 Jun 2025 12:04:12 +0000

Dear Erin, so happy to hear that you will be taking on the tasks of growing roses on your farm.
I love love roses and I have a few in my garden but they are struggling due to a caterpillar eating up all the leaves … I want to plant more roses but afraid to lose them .
All the best to you. Wish I was close to your farm to volunteer and learn more about roses and other flowers.

My best regards,
Gina

By: Daria

Daria — Tue, 17 Jun 2025 22:11:21 +0000

The roses that grew in the garden of a house we lived in in Buffalo when I was very little are roses I still remember but that was already getting to be Japanese beetle territory and they’re a purgatory for roses. My introduction to heirloom roses was on the UW campus in Seattle in their, then quite large, medicinal/apothecary garden. I’d take my break from working in the library to go down there and smell all the different kinds of roses, and they were all fragrant, w/ their unexpected nonhybrid tea shaped flowers. Occasionally snitch a bloom to tuck in my bra. So many different types of lavender, too. Such a change from the more Japanese landscape esthetic that influenced PNW gardens. Many of those bushes must have been quite old at the time. In my garden I grow the climbing Cecil Brunner, a mass of tiny, perfect buds turning into slightly ragged pompoms that’s taking over a shed, Darlow’s Enigma which is 20′ into a silver maple, Zéphirine Drouhin, the thornless, fragrant repeating climber, and hopefully, Queen of the Violets which I first met in a book over 50 yrs. ago.

By: Deborah Cline

Deborah Cline — Tue, 17 Jun 2025 12:28:56 +0000

Loved the meadow and how everything beautiful takes patience, hard work and love!

By: Carol deSousa

Carol deSousa — Tue, 17 Jun 2025 04:36:20 +0000

Erin,
I have been following along since you went to Anne’s farm and took cuttings to bring back to your farm. I am so excited to see that this has succeeded to the level and beyond your initial vision. I am starting to purchase so many of the vintage varieties , I kind of feel like Anne when she first started because she was also in her 60’s like me. I am trying to learn every thing I can on how to help the roses I have survive for my planting zone which is between 5a/5b in Upstate NY. It is difficult for many of the varieties to survive here but I too feel it important to help plant and propagate ones that thrive in my zone to ensure for the future generations.
I hope to talk with Gregg again this year to get some of his feedback on my vision. I can hardly wait for the day you will open your farm to the public! You have been the inspiration for my flower farm.
Warmly,
Carol deSousa
Meadowsweet Flowers

By: debra

debra — Tue, 17 Jun 2025 01:26:06 +0000

Hi – thanks for sharing your collection, and even more thanks are warranted for you and your husband and company taking the time, energy, and money to preserve these beautiful collections for future gardeners!

Btw, what type of special irrigation system did u design to use for the roses?

Thanks, and have a great week, deb

By: Allison

Allison — Tue, 17 Jun 2025 00:25:47 +0000

Thank you for sharing your work. You and your team are amazing. I get so inspired every time I watch your videos. I love roses and am currently working on my own rose garden and reviving some that my grandmother had. I have also been looking to plant some of the old roses in my yard to keep them going. I live in Seattle, so I don’t have a huge yard, but hopefully I can get some room to get one or two of the older ones. I look forward to updates and maybe visiting when/if you open it up for visitors. Again, thank you so much for being so open to sharing all the great and inspiring work you are doing.