Garden photo courtesy of Rosewild

Madrone Garden The large tree of buff colored limbs covered with creamy yellow flowers against a darker line of Coastal Redwoods is our native tree, Arbutus menziesii, called Madrone or Madroño by the Spanish. The California gold-rush author, Bret Harte wrote a poem about it which inspired the name for this section of my rose garden: Madroño by Bret Harte Captain of the Western wood, Thou that apest Robin Hood ! Green above thy scarlet hose, How thy velvet mantle shows ! Never tree like thee arrayed, O thou gallant of the glade! When the fervid August sun Scorches all it looks upon, And the balsam of the pine Drips from stem to needle fine, Round thy compact shade arranged, Madroño Not a leaf of thee is changed! When the yellow autumn sun Saddens all it looks upon, Spreads its sackcloth on the hills, Strews its ashes in the rills, Thou thy scarlet hose dost doff, And in limbs of purest buff Challengest the sombre glade For a sylvan masquerade. Where, oh, where, shall he begin Who would paint thee, Harlequin ? With thy waxen burnished leaf, With thy branches' red relief, With thy polytinted fruit,— In thy spring or autumn suit,— Where begin, and oh, where end, Thou whose charms all art transcend. In 2015 here at the foot of this handsome tree I decided to begin consolidating my far flung collection of species roses with specimen trees and other old roses. Roses blooming in this photo taken on May 4, 2021 are ‘Mutabilis’, Rosa foetida, ‘Austrian Copper’, “General Vallejo’s Yellow Banksiae”, ‘Heart’s Desire?”, Rosa helenae, ‘Purezza’, ‘Golden Chersonese’, Rosa primula, and Rosa watsoniana. Specimen trees visible are Mexican bigleaf magnolia (Magnolia macrophylla), Mexican Fan Palm (Washingtonian robusta), and Hickories (Carya sp.).

Uploaded 11 DEC

Garden photo courtesy of Rosewild

Garden: Tennessee Allée My Tennessee Allée garden is a broad passageway separating a northern hillside native oak garden from the larger southern meadow Madrone rose garden. It is lined with trees, shrubs and wild roses I collected in Tennessee. I spent summers on the farm of an aunt and uncle where I was free to roam the woods and fields and explored everything. So wild roses from Tennessee are planted beneath Hickory and Sassafras trees with other Tennessee shrubs like Sumac along the sides of the allée. These are Rosa setigera and its variety tomentosa, Rosa carolina, and Rosa palustris with many other Rosa species intermixed.

Uploaded 10 DEC

Garden photo courtesy of Rosewild

Rose Woods in the Mayacmas Mtns. near Petrified Forest, California. Our 60 acres in 1975, the year we bought it. As I take you on this tour through “Rose Woods” and the various sections of my rose garden I’ll intersperse the story of how it came to be. Until I was thirty years old I lived a city life, renting, commuting and on vacations and holidays, backpacking or gold panning in the Sierra Nevada mountains.  But that changed in 1975 when my friend, Michael and I bought 24 hectares (60 acres) of land north of San Francisco Bay in the Mayacmas Mtns. of eastern Sonoma County just a couple of miles east of the historic Petrified Forest. We were looking for 4 hectares (10 acres) of flat land but everything we saw was either straight up or down, logged or shaped like a landing strip.  Then we stumbled on 60 acres nearly within our price range but remote up a 4-wheel drive road at 488 meters (1600 feet).  With fir and chaparral on steeper slopes, oak and grass on gentler, our goal was to plant a vineyard to pay for the land and give us income in our later years.

Uploaded 10 DEC

Garden photo courtesy of Rosewild

Stone Rail garden

Uploaded 9 JUN 21