So Far, So Good

I think this is my best seedling from 2008 so far.

This is the kind of rose I was looking for and I'm very excited to see how it matures.

The flower starts out with deep, pink outer petals cupping inner tan-colored ones (the inner petals actually have a color very much like milk tea). I really like the outer pink color shifting to apricot and gradually to brown in the center.

As time goes by, the pink fades to a nice greyish-pink. Since the seedling tends to put out multiple buds per stem, it ends up with a really nice combination of different colors as the flowers fade.

The fragrance is of grapefruit with a hint of semillon. It's very intense - one small flower will fill a room with its lovely perfume.

The plant seems very vigorous and produces lots of bud clusters. The new leaves and stems are purple-red and turn to deep green. The plant is very clean, free from any disease. This is a second-year plant and right now it's growing in a two-gallon pot.

I am very happy with this one so far, and I'm planning to put it in the ground this fall and see how it does.

In fact, I like it so much I used its picture for the banner of this blog. :)

My First Striped Rose

I was very happy to find that I got my first striped rose this year!

While there are quite a few striped roses available these days, I'm generally not fond of their shapes. The shape I'm looking for is a deep cup-shape with a large amount of petals like the famous Bourbon rose, 'Variegata di Bologna'.

I used to grow this rose, however in my garden in the PNW it was always battling powdery mildew and it never repeated. Although it was a very vigorous plant and grew very large, I wasn't able to control its disease and finally I had to give up...

However, after I got rid of it, I started missing striped, cupped-shaped roses. I have to admit that they are very romantic, the kind of rose I really like.
This is the first flower of my striped rose seedling.

Full of petals (64 on the first flower) and a deep cup shape!

The flowers are still small, but hopefully they will get a little bigger as time goes by.

Although the coloring of this seedling doesn't resemble 'Variegata di Bologna' at all, I really like this subtle color combination. Rich red with a slightly darker stripe, although the color varies depending on the angle at which you view it.

It seems like the flowers last quite a while, and the plant seems very vigorous - it's already got two other buds. The only negative is that it doesn't have much of a fragrance...

I hope that this will grow nicely and I'm looking forward to seeing how it turns out.