Olympic Coast Garden, a photoblog |
| Olympic Coast Garden, a photoblog
About... Contact us Archive Blogroll SequimRarePlants.com |
Olympic
Coast Garden
|
 |
Rose 'Darlow's Enigma' Although each flower is small, they come in clusters that are ever blooming and sweetly scented. It grows either as a free-standing shrub of four to six feet tall, or can be trained as a climber up to about eight or ten feet. As a climber it doesn't continue growing taller and taller, but spends it energy growing thick and bushy. I met the namesake of this plant, Michael Darlow, at his home/nursery in about 1990 when he was living near the north end of Lake Washington, in the Seattle suburb of Bothell, and purchased this rose from him. A year or two later he left there to move to Hawai'i. His garden/ business surrounded his house and wasn't large. It was charming, in an overgrown stuffed-full sort of way. What I especially liked were the tall bellflowers, forms of Campanula lactiflora, that were blooming alongside his roses. The milky blue of the bellfowers contrasted beautifully with the light pink and yellow roses. His specimen plant of 'Darlow's Enigma' was trained up and overtop an archway over the side gate from his parking strip into the garden. The plant looked to be about ten years old. The story on this rose's name involves a bit of mystery. Darlow sent a plant of it to Heritage Old Roses, a mailorder nursery in Sherwood, Oregon, as a double form of the musk rose. When it flowered for the nursery in Oregon, they realized it was something different than the double musk rose that was already “in the trade.” But they could not determine what exactly it was. Nor could anyone else, and they checked with their many rosarian contacts around the world. Because it could not be identified as any known rose, they named it in honor of the person from whom they obtained it. Unfortunately, Michael Darlow has been mute as to where or how he obtained it. |
| The way to make a comment on this blog is to send us an email. If you click on the picture of the stamp at the bottom of the page, you will be able to send us a message. And we, Susan and I, would like to hear from you. The commenting system for this photoblog is simpler and less automated than other blogs. Although comments are not posted automatically, we will respond to your email by posting it along with a return comment following yours. You can help us by mentioning the date of our post you are commenting on such as "6-1-2010." I thank you in advance for your input, ...Roger Pierce. |
| 0 Comments |
 
|
 |