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Secrets of the Rose

May 19, 2007 12:35 am

BY LUCIA ANDERSON

LD ROSES ARE survivors, according to Stephen Scanniello.

"They've been around a lot longer than we have," he said in a telephone interview from a ferry in the middle of Long Island Sound. "There's a history behind them."

That long history is part of what Scanniello has found so interesting in his career as a rose gardener.

He'll share that interest in a program taking place at Belmont, the Gari Melchers Home and Studio in Falmouth, next Saturday.

Scanniello will share his years of experience with roses and help attendees identify examples of old roses they may have in their gardens. The afternoon will end with a book signing and a wine-and-cheese reception.

The event is the brainchild of Beate Jensen, grounds preservation supervisor at Belmont.

"I want to start a series of talks on various [garden topics], bringing in people from outside the area," Jensen said.

"[Scanniello] ties in with what we do at Belmont. Corinne Melchers had a garden, and she incorporated roses in the landscape," Jensen said. "Some date back to the 1500s. She put in what she liked."

Scanniello said Virginia is rich in rose history.

He cited the example of Lucy Nelson, wife of Virginia Gov. Thomas Nelson, who refused to leave her Yorktown home in the face of an attack by the British Army in 1781 until her roses had been dug up to go with her.

Those rosebushes were transplanted to Offley Hoo, the Nelson plantation in Hanover County, and are now known as the Offley roses. They have spread around the South as family members took cuttings and planted them at their homes.

And it was at Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond that the true musk rose was rediscovered, Scanniello said.

The hunt for old roses leads to what rose growers call "rose rustling." It's not as sinister as it sounds, consisting merely of taking cuttings of roses found in old cemeteries or in ditches alongside the road. Then the quest for proper identification begins.

"It's the hunt, learning new things, growing them," Jensen said, explaining her fascination with old roses.

She said it took her years to identify the Fun Jwan Lo rose growing at Belmont. She took it to several experts in the field before finally pinning it down. But the identification process gets easier with practice.

"After a while they become little faces you recognize," she said.

As far as growing roses, Scanniello is a big fan of companion planting--mixing roses with other flowering plants instead of setting them apart in their own formal beds.

"They look like soldiers in the mud. It's boring," said Scanniello, who spent 14 years as director of the Cranford Rose Garden at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. He left that job to start his own garden consulting business and write books about roses. He now has four books in the stores, including "A Year of Roses," which outlines rose care month by month.

"The best way to grow roses is to mix them up with other plants," he said. "I cannot have a space of emptiness in my garden."