Zanthan Gardens
Weblog of a Central Austin Garden

Dateline: 2004-04-23
Yesterday two flowers open on ‘Buff Beauty’ finally. She and the other hybrid musk roses (‘Prosperity’ and ‘Penelope’) suffered the most from the attack of the spring cankerworms. If not for that, I think she would be covered with flowers this spring. I planted ‘Buff Beauty’ three years ago, and although she’s produced the odd flower or two, she’s yet to prove her worth in my garden. But I really like the apricot color of the flowers. ‘Gruss an Aachen’ has flowers somewhat similar in both form and color, but has only been in my garden six months and has already out-performed ‘Buff Beauty’. She’s highly-rated by many other gardeners, so she might just be in an incompatible location. I’ve also heard that she’s a slow-starter.
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Dateline: 2005
‘Night Game’ opened its first flower on April 16th making it the first named iris to bloom this year. However, the stalk is quite short, only about 18 inches tall. The first flower opened on the bottom and is also rather small.
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Last November, when I was pruning roses, I noticed that some of the canes seemed very, well, lively. I hated cutting them or throwing them out. So I decided to see if I could get them to strike.

Following the instruction in Rayford Clayton Reddell’s The Rose Bible, I made cuttings about a foot long and stripped off all but the topmost set of leaves. Then I planted them, putting two of the bud eyes underground and two above.
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Dateline: 2004

2004-04-13. Noisette rose ‘Madame Alfred Carriere’.

The cold snap that came last weekend has dropped nighttime temperatures into the 40s and ‘Madame Alfred Carriere’ is loving it. Her flowers hold their shape better in cool weather. Under normal April conditions they open and fade in an afternoon and looking, sadly, like crumpled tissues. The flowers are larger than ‘Madame Joseph Schwartz’ and more of a peachy pink than ‘Souvenir del Malmaison’.

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The Iris Society of Austin held it’s annual show today at Zilker Botanical Garden Center. For the first time in several years, I didn’t have a single iris blooming, so I wasn’t able to enter. Apparently I’m not the only one with that problem in Austin this year. There were probably only half the normal amount of entries. The one group of irises that looked good, however, were the Louisianna irises. AJM likes these bog plants and if we ever get around to building a pond, I’ll get some for him.

This bearded iris won best “space-age” iris.

The semi-double sport of ‘Souvenir de la Malmaison’ has a cinnamon-scented center. I can’t always smell it, but I did today.

Updates
Need to hunt down the dates for these photos.

Dateline: April 2, 2004
This week, the Tea rose ‘Madame Joseph Schwartz’ is trying to steal the spotlight from ‘Ducher’ and ‘Souvenir de la Malmaison’. Now into her third year in the garden, she is a mass of rosebuds. The Tea roses, first bred in the mid-1800s by crossing China roses with Bourbon and Noisette roses, are popular in the south. As a rule, Teas are considered “delicate”; that is, they are not roses for cold climes. But they stand up well to Austin’s heat and humidity.

‘Madame Joseph Schwartz’ is often described a “white” sport of ‘Duchesse de Brabant’, but is actually more creamy pink. Her color varies from flower to flower and season to season. The loose cabbage-shaped flowers are not individually arresting. They have weak necks an. the flowers dangle like bells. They have a casual, blowsy look that is at home in the wildflower border. On warm days (highs above 85) they open and fall quickly. But when in flower, there are always a lot of them, and they are nicely scented.

‘Madame Joseph Schwartz’ is a great landscape rose because she forms a dense shrub which is attractive even when not in flower, so dense that the thin flexible canes droop under the weight. She can get to six or seven feet tall although after three years in my garden is is only about three feet tall and wide. I’ll be glad when she reaches her full height and I can look up into her flowers, rather than kneel on the ground to see them. In my yard, she blooms best in cool weather. This is her second flush of buds this year; the first was at New Year’s. She blooms so early in my garden, that her buds are frequently nipped by frost. She also holds up well under our summer heat. She hasn’t had any problems with mildew or black spot.
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