Do you already have The Generous Gardener? If not, you might be glad to have it. It's one of the most vigorous rose bushes in my garden, and the blooms are so pretty.

A very apologetic woman just called from Austin roses and said they do not sub without contacting customers, so it must have been a packing error. They will ship out the correct Rose on monday. She said I should have contacted them last year also, that they would have made it right. I now remember that last year, I received a note saying they were out of the one I wanted. This year, I made SURE I said no subs.
Very happy customer now. As I said, the roses look great! Two of those are old garden roses, cl. Sombreuil and Mme. Isaac Pereire. They look grafted, need to check on that. Princess Alexandra of Kent and The Generous Gardener are the other two. Edit:
I actually did plan to buy Generous Gardener locally, so that's not such a bad mistake after all.

We have three generous gardeners growing over a gazebo, and they are truly lovely - wonderful scent, few thorns (so good for sitting there!) and of course a glorious, subtle colour. When David Austin here sent me a wrong plant, they not only immediately sent the correct one, but told me not to bother returning the incorrect one. So you might finish up better off, and with a wonderful extra plant to boot.

I am growing my tomato plants from seed myself this year. They are doing good so far.

Mika, she did tell me to keep it, to either plant it or gift it to another gardener. Very fitting for a rose named "The Generous Gardener"!
We're supposed to get rain tonight or tomorrow, and I would love to go ahead and get these in the ground tonight so I don't risk having a 2 or 3 day delay. Plants always seem to do better if I plant or transplant on cloudy days. All the other roses are leafed out, which for our area, is about 3 or 4 weeks early. Next week, we're expecting Temps in the 70s.
The forsythia are in full glory, and that's our indicator for pruning time. So far, it looks like I'll be pruning for shape and size, not removing dead like most years. knock on wood there's no big freeze later....

So really the best of all worlds. I hope you decide to keep The Generous Gardener. It sounds as though you are in for a specially wonderful garden this year, I hope it materialises for you!

One of the Austins I've always wanted is William Morris. I ordered one from Hortico a few years ago, but they sent me a red hybrid tea instead. I checked HMF to see whether it was available anywhere else and learned that Heirloom carries it.

Heirloom is a nursery I've always tried to avoid. The first rose I bought from them, Kaleidoscope, has been growing in my garden for 11 years old now, and it's still only about 10 inches tall, but at least it's the right rose. Over the years I've bought a total of 10 roses from Heirloom, and 5 were mislabeled. That's 50%!!!! When I've contacted them about the mislabeled roses and have included photos, they have never responded. Maybe they don't read the e-mails. Maybe they think I just like to send them pictures of roses.

So, as I said, I've always tried to avoid that nursery, but now I'll do more than just try. The owners have gone insane. They want $40 for a 1-gallon own-root Austin rose. Forty dollars for a little own-root rose with a 50% chance of being the wrong one!

Zuzu ... Actually, Heirloom is under new ownership, but I agree, their prices are insane.

Wish I could send you one, zuzu! I've sent small quantities of seeds to people in America, but I think sending a live plant is now so complicated that only commercial sellers with the right administrators can do it. I wanted to buy a small daylily that costs peanuts in the US, but it wasn't available in the UK - it would have cost me over $100 in certificates and shipping to get it, so I didn't bother.

Zuzu ...

According to their site JC Baker and Sons in Canada carries it and ships to the US. You have to register to get pricing.

Here's a link to their site:

http://www.jcbakker.com/

It's a wholesale nursery, Lyn. I can't register without a resale license.

Dang !

Just found this lovely blog, describing her favorite DA roses:
http://vwgarden.blogspot.com/p...

Cindi, your new plants look excellent- glad you ended up with a free gift you were wanting! Kinda hoping they accidentally send me a Generous Gardener too, LOL.

Happy camper here. The new roses are in the ground, and this morning we got over 3" of rain, which fell slowly and softly, without hail or wind. By afternoon, I was able to go out and pull elm seedlings with roots 2 feet long with just a slight tug. I prepared areas for roses that should arrive tomorrow, and cleared out more of the straw I scattered on the bare root roses I planted in November. It looks like every roses from Palatine is leafing out! I''m relieved, because some years fall planting just doesn't work out. We had a mild but dry winter, and so far spring has been consistently and unusually warm. At this point everything is growing better than any year I can remember.

What a great progress report! I hope the warm weather continues for you.

Many of my roses are in bud, and the drought is definitely over in my part of the state. We got more than 8 inches of rain in just the first 12 days of March, so I think many of these buds were ruined and won't open up into pretty blooms. After 3 years of drought, however, I'll take rain over pretty blooms!

My garden looks soggy but happy, the plants are so lush, lots of small buds on the roses!

Local vineyard.

Geeesh ... don't ya just hate it when you forget to do something that you know you need to do to keep your plants health ?

I bought four canned roses down in the valley when I went down for grocery shopping last month. They are looking quite good considering that they were not from my favorite nursery down there. The roses were completely leafed out while mine had just started to leaf out.

I hauled them up to the house pad and then we got days and days of rain. I never went out and watered them ! I know better. I absolutely KNOW not to count on the rain to water plants in containers because the rain bounces off of the foliage and never reaches the soil in the can. Did I go out in the rain and water my new roses ? Nope ...

I finally remembered and was outside in a real downpour today ... with an umbrella no less ... watering my roses. I lifted the cans and they were light, so I know the plants needed water. Arrrghhhh

They'll probably be fine.
I bought a rose once in a 5g container and couldn't plant it because it was raining. I set it amongst some others where it was to be planted and completely forgot about it until the rains subsided and by then everything around it had leafed out. 3 months later I discovered it had grown through the container and into the soil...so I cut away the container and built a wooden planter around it. Didn't want to disturb the roots by pulling it up. It looks silly when they're all dormant, though !

Thanks for the encouragement, Mike.

I just felt so stupid because I really know better. Also, if you can picture me out there with the hose watering roses with rain pouring down in what is often described as a "gully washer", you have a sense of why I didn't want to put it off for even one more day ... It rained like that all day, yesterday with no breaks. I finally just gave in and went out there and got the hose to water the plants ...

I know the roses will make it just fine because roses are, for the most part, tough plants.