A Special Rose from Tuscany
I was very fortunate to help lead a recent Botanical Garden trip to Tuscany. While there, we toured many of Italy’s famous gardens: Ninfa, La Foce, Gamberaia, Villa Lante and others. It’s very humbling to walk amongst cypress trees that are several hundred years old or to wander through elegantly contoured boxwoods. I almost wish Cleveland Botanical Garden was located in zone 7- then we could grow those stately cypresses year round! The typical Italian style of these ancient gardens draws from a fairly simple palette of plants: boxwoods, junipers, cypresses, wisterias, lemon trees and roses. Of course, there are exceptions and some gardens have a more diverse collection of perennials. One of the more special plants we saw was an incredible white rose with a red center called ‘White Rock’. In doing a quick search, we’ve been unable to locate that particular cultivar here in the U.S. It may be that we will need to source it from Italy. If you know where we might find this unique rose, let us know!
‘White Rock’ Rose
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May 27th, 2008 at 9:45 am
Hello Cynthia. I wanted to let you know that Ashdown Roses Ltd. in South Carolina (http://www.ashdownroses.com/) carries many of the Delbard roses from France and has an import agreement with Europe. They may be a good source for getting you this rose from Barni. I know they are set up for importing with all of the appropriate certificates. They don’t have the Barni roses listed as available, but I know they were talking about it and since the roses need to be quarantined, they may have them and they are not ready yet. The owner, Paul Zimmerman is a wonderful man and extremely knowlegeable in all things rose related.
Jackie
May 28th, 2008 at 12:52 pm
Jackie-
This is a wonderful suggestion- thanks so much!