I think if I lived in Middle Earth as one of Tolkien’s creatures, I would be a stodgy Hobbit. Although I don’t have fur between my toes, I am a home-body. I love my gardens and I love our abode and so does my husband, Bob. We are creatures of habit-hobbits, even down to going to the same place for vacation every year! Compound that by our being Connecticut residents…this is called the Land of Steady Habits. Oh, boy! Usually, winter around here is pretty quiet, but this year was a rosie exception.

The Show

I received a call last July from a gal named Kristie. She is the coordinator of the annual Connecticut Flower and Garden Show, because I’m the president of the CT Rose Society. She invited CRS to build a garden with a rose theme for 2016’s extravaganza. We had never done this before! She said that people love roses and were requesting a rose garden. (She had called our previous president, Mirjana, the fall before. However, there was no time to pull a garden together before February.) Kristie and I had a really nice talk. I told her I’d get back to her after I spoke with our board of directors.

After our board meeting where we decided to give this endeavor a try, I got ahold of my Weeks Roses representative, Jerry Amoroso. Jerry is a great guy. He is always ready to donate roses for a good cause, and he jumped right in. The roses would have to be forced to bloom in February. I knew they needed at least six weeks of dormancy before that process could begin. Not only did Jerry bring me roses, but he shared Weeks’ local grower with me.

His rosie operation, Western Growers, is about 15 miles away, and his name is Paul Seymour. Paul had never forced roses for mid-winter before. However, we decided to give it a try or we’d never know if it would work! Jerry dropped off 54 roses, most growing in three-gallon containers, in the end of September. One of our CRS members, Patti Curtin, came over and we whacked all these big roses back and stripped all the leaves from the plants. Paul sent his driver to pick them up. They went into the cold cellar at Western Growers around October 1st.

Landscape

Another of our members, Christine Randazzo, is a wonderful Landscape Architect. She was thrilled to have a wintertime project and became our garden designer. Because most of the roses Jerry brought were Weeks’ new Downton Abbey Series roses, we decided to have a Victorian/Edwardian theme. We were assigned a piece of real estate for the flower show that was 50+ feet across the back, 18′ deep, and the right-hand side looked like a triangle attached to the larger portion of the area. Christine designed a formal rosie garden for the rectangular portion of our display, with a large arbor with twinkle lights and a beautiful fountain at the back.

There were grassy pathways, roses in beds, and boxwoods along the edge. The grassy triangle on the side became a ‘picnic’ area, with a Victorian table and chairs, a picnic on the lawn, potted roses, and a little game of croquet going on. The garden required 10″ kickboards all the way around to hold back the mulch, which were built by my husband, Bob, and our member, Tom Fabian. We named our display, ‘An English Rose Garden.’

The Roses

It was a great design, but how were the roses doing? Christine and I took a ride up to Western Growers a week before the show, and we were delighted with what we saw! Paul had done a wonderful job caring for our plants! When they came out of cold storage in early December, he put them in his warmest and brightest house. When we saw them, they were well grown-out and in bud. Some of the rosie buds were cracking color, and we prayed for a sunny week before the show so they could advance a little more.

What we got that week, after an incredibly warm winter, was cloudy and 12 degrees below zero! The day the roses were delivered to the CT Convention Center, they had to spend the night in the lobby because the loading docks were all open for traffic and it was only 33 degrees inside where we were building the rose garden! We tucked them into the steaming, composting mulch the following day and finished building the garden after the loading dock doors were closed.

Results

What happened was miraculous. The composting mulch warmed the soil in the buried pots, and the spotlights which were on for the duration of the show (Thursday through Sunday) stimulated the roses to bloom. By Sunday, about 2/3rds of the roses were blooming! The garden was gorgeous for the whole show, and CRS members generously shared their time as docents and problem solvers for folks with questions. We received an ‘Appreciation for Exhibiting’ award, the ‘Best Urban Garden’ award, and the ‘Strongest Expression of Show Theme’ award.

At show closing on Sunday at 5pm, I gave all the roses away…to CRS members first and then to the general public. I gave everyone a little ‘Roses 101’ to help them through the rest of the winter with these rosie beauties, and folks left with smiles on their faces. It was an amazing adventure…we came home very tired after our week with our February rose garden, but completely satisfied. As I fell asleep Sunday night, I felt a warm glow remembering the experience and the happy rose recipients waving goodbye to us as they carried their lovely treasures home.