June in the garden, what a wonderful time! While the spring bloom seems to be extended by the cooler than normal weather, the cool, moist weather also makes fungal disease more prevalent. Still, from across the yard, it really is great to look out and see the bloom.
I have to say thank you once again to our members who promoted the May 6th Peninsula Rose Society Rose Show, welcomed the public and helped make the show a success. A special thanks to Barry Johnson, who donated so that we could continue the long tradition of a public show. The flowers, arrangements, and art exhibits were beautiful, and the fragrance area was a knockout as the public walked in to over 250 vases filled with roses. We even have a new member who signed up at the show, Julie Rible-Rafnel. Welcome Julie!
We may want to ramp up the show effort for next year to include a judged show and I will be starting the search for a volunteer to be Chair of the show. A Chair will help by organizing and recruiting people for the things we did at this show, plus organizing schedule preparation, recruiting judges, arranging for clerks and placement, trophy and runner jobs etc.
The May PRS Meeting saw our first judged monthly show and the blooms looked nice. June and September are also judged shows. But bring roses to admire (or to identify, diagnose) other months. Remember, no meeting in July, but there is a Picnic on July 15th.
I also want to thank Pam Schenk for setting up an activity with Filoli. Pam who is a Volunteer, arranged for herself, Dorothy Hunter (a former PRS member) and me to give two rose “classes” and garden walkthrough to about two dozen Filoli Volunteers. They especially appreciated the general rose information and “interesting tidbits” about roses that we talked about in the garden. From why roses are called “tea”, to how the Peace rose was saved in WWII, to the “obvious” color for the “Julia Child” rose. One tidbit is the huge Sally Holmes rose over the Filoli arch and bench is about 20 feet away from one parent. That 10-foot-high rose is a cross with Ballerina, a very small single hybrid musk rose. The other parent in the cross is Ivory Fashion.
PRS will have a display at the Filoli Flower show June 1-3. I will be giving a presentation on summer rose care with emphasis on how Filoli does their care on June 2 and 3. If you go, be sure to see the PRS entries, or drop by the presentation and talk up the PRS to guests- it is a good way to increase our membership.
The Oakland Morcom Rose garden tour, organized for us by Anne Quincey really shows how roses like the Bay Area. Thank you, Anne!
Happy Gardening!
Stu Dalton