Nana's Rose

Following is a revised version of an article I posted a while back. I deleted it some time ago, but it seems appropriate to repost it for the Rose theme of Zoomit's current challenge.

I have a wonderful rose bush that owns one corner of our patio. It is a climbing rose with flowers a most delicate pink. It is breath-takingly lovely and innocent and pure.

Throughout my childhood I heard my parents call it the Van Fleet rose. My father's mother, my Nana, brought a cutting as a house-warming gift when my parents built their brand new house in 1954. She knew that my mother loved flowers, so it became the first resident in the new landscape.

The story goes that this lovely rose was one of the many roses that my grandfather gave Nana for her garden in New Haven, Connecticut. My grandfather worked as an electric lineman for the New Haven Railroad. As he traveled the rails with the other workmen on the handcart, when he spied a pretty rose in a someone's back yard he would hop off and ask permission to gather cuttings to take home to his wife.

Nana apparently had a knack for growing things--as did my parents. Between Dad and Mom, they managed to get Nana's gift to take hold and it flourished under their care.

Alas, lives change, people age and then leave us, and untended yards revert back to nature. By the time I took possession of my childhood home in 2001, the Van Fleet rose was barely existing in the backyard weeds. I had always loved that particular rose, though, so I was determined to bring it back to glory. In the photo below you can just see the trellis peaking up out of the weeds.

The first obstacle was to protect it from backhoes and bulldozers as we renovated and added on to what once was my parents' house. (I was afraid I would kill the bush if I tried to move it.) I surrounded the canes with sticks and pipes and wrapped it all together in day-glo orange tape so the contractors would hopefully avoid it.

My lovely rose did not bloom that year, but it did not die either!

When the next growing season came around, so did patio construction. I had to tie up all the canes so they wouldn't become embedded in the stamped concrete-and so the workers would not get hurt by the thorns. As you can see at the back corner of the concrete, my precious rose and the patio have an intimate relationship!

Today my grandmother's rose is still going strong, in fact, threatening to take over the patio! While tending to it over the past years, I researched climbing roses in general, and the Van Fleet rose in particular. I learned some interesting facts along the way:

The Van Fleet rose was introduced in 1930, which would make sense in the time frame my grandfather rode the rails in Connecticut.

It is sometimes known as ‘New Dawn', which is its officially registered cultivar name.

It is a select member of the World Federation of Rose Societies Hall of Fame.

Climbing roses defy their name! Yes, they have long canes (up to 20 feet sometimes) but they only bloom on the horizontal ones. I added wings to the original trellis and tied the canes out to the sides. Each year it continues to expand in size and also in quantities of blooms.