Tangled Branches: Cultivated
happenings in and around my zone 6b gardens in northern Virginia and in central Virginia
Thursday, March 17, 2005
Goodbye Hugh Dickson
This morning I decided Hugh Dickson had to leave. I've been putting up with his untidy habits for far too long. I feel a little guilty because he's been here 16 years and I could have tried harder to get him to clean up his act. But between the blackspot, the floppy stems, and the relatively meager repeat bloom, I just got tired of him. I invited him to live with us in 1989; mail-ordered 3 plants from Roses of Yesterday and Today to go outside the bay window in the dining room (...it would be lovely to host a brunch in late May with the windows open and the beautiful fragrance wafting in...).
I used to keep really good garden records until I took up genealogy in 1990. I only know that these roses are Hugh Dickson because I just looked in my old garden notebook, and found the sales receipt. It looks like Roses of Yesterday and Today doesn't have this variety anymore either.
I will say that Hugh was wonderfully fragrant, and when young was much more vigorous and floriferous than lately, and he was from a good family. But the planting site was always a bit awkward - hard to tend the plants there because the bay window was in the way and hard to wash the window because the roses were in the way. So I cut them down to the ground today, in preparation for digging them out. The current plan is to fill the space with some Siberian iris that could use dividing.
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