Some of us posted pictorial tours of our gardens in Evey's clematis cubit, but all of her forums are gone now. I think we should have our own Garden Tours forum. What do you think? I know Sue and I will do tours of ours, and I'm sure we can get some great photos of Calsurf's garden. Anyone else? Do you think it's worthwhile?

No one wants to tour my "garden" but I would love to see more of the gorgeous gardens I've glimpsed here - go for it!

I'm w/Porkpal. Maybe in 3-5 years my garden will be worthy of a tour, but for right now, it's just newly planted roses & trees and other plants. and WEEDS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ACK!!!

Sounds good to me! :)

Alan

A big YES vote from me!

Judy

I love garden tours.

I started one at my bb at RoseFile (am I allowed to say that here?) on a garden I had in NJ. Maybe I can cross post? I have some photos from Roseraie de l'Hay. And some from a few public gardens in the SF area. Oh, and if I can find them, some of ARE's grounds in Brenham.

Right now, my own garden is a total wreck. The plants are far apart and small. That whole six or eight years of moving things when they don't look right hasn't happened. The paths are too wide and not defined. And volunteer plants clutter everything. Furthermore, the framing elements are really weak, so many views of the garden seem to make no sense. Sometimes I think it looked better when it was totally overgrown with weeds!

Once I get the structures in, it will start looking a bit better. So maybe next year. Or the following one.

First of all, you definitely can talk about RoseFile here, and you are welcome to link to RoseFile whenever you want -- not just to the BB, but to your essays and everything else on the main site. If someone asks a question that's answered well on your site, post a link to it. It's a beautiful website and everyone should see it. In fact, I'm going to post a link to the main site here.

http://rosefile.com/

You certainly could use a link to the BB for your New Jersey garden, but that kind of garden tour gets fewer responses, from what I've seen. People will talk in generalities and won't comment on specific things in the garden because of the back and forth it would entail. For that reason, I think you should repost everything in this cubit when you have the time. As for your current garden, you could always just do a series of closeups. I'm certainly not going to post photos of every part of my garden. Some are less photogenic than others.

I guess I should create that forum before I give you any more advice, huh?

I'd love to see your garden tour again.

Sounds good to me. Thanks.

I just added a short one of mine.

Zuzu and Sue, will you be adding your own tours? I updated mine at http://cubits.org/roses/thread... to show some "portraits" of some of my non-rose plants, in addition to photos of the broader garden.

Another idea I had for a thread might be photos of entire rose plants, not just close-ups of the blooms, so that folks can see how tall, wide, bushy, leggy, leafy, etc., a cultivar is. But then again, I probably wouldn't be able to take such pictures in my own garden, because the plants are so close they all blend together.

Mike - Taking pics of the entire rose bush would be great if it was a mature bush. I'm not sure how old roses have to be to be "mature", but my 3 year old (technically.. I planted them in 08, so growing season 08, 09, & 10 makes 3?) Mardi Gras right now is only about 12-14" tall because I had to cut back the poor thing almost all the way down to the ground. Same w/my Oranges & Lemons (last year it was 3' tall, right now, it's only about 8" tall) and JFK (about 8" tall, last year had 2 canes over 3' long). My Mr. Lincoln had to be cut back to the ground, so I ended up lopping off almost 5' of cane. :( :(

I don't think I'd be a good candidate to take pics of what a mature bush looks like except for my neighbor's roses.. those are 20 year old bushes and NOTHING hurts 'em. They got almost as badly damaged w/the cold as mine, but they were about 10' tall (were brushing the eves of the roof) and the landlady lopped off about 6'.

One of the things I really like about Vintage Gardens' website catalog is their drawings that show what mature cultivars within different rose categories look like without leaves (a few are shown here). This is more informative than the typical height (and sometimes width) given in most catalogs. Of course, everything depends upon where a rose is grown, and how it is pruned and shaped - which can be done to taste, but is more often necessitated by climate due to winter die back, as you point out. Though it's nice to see the whole plant in a catalog, even if it's just a suggestive sketching.

Zuzu, I hope I haven't wandered too far off the topic, but didn't think you'd mind since you created a separate forum for garden tours.

It's hilarious to think I'd care that someone wandered too far off the topic.

Mike, I'm hoping people do include long shots of the whole rose bush in their garden tours or in the Growing Roses forum. I have the same constraints as you: I can't get far enough away from most of my roses to get the whole shape, either because they're surrounded by other plants or because I'd have to stand in a fish pond or on the garage roof to do it.

I usually post photos of whole rose bushes just to prove the folly of describing something as a "ground cover," for instance, when it's 12 feet tall in my garden.

Obviously, those shots of the entire rose bush would be extremely useful in our rose database, so please add them if you have them.

Where is the garden tour thread? I wouldlove to check it out!

Here's a link to the Garden Tours forum, Meredith. There's only one tour so far, but stay tuned.... Besides, the one that's there is a great one. You'll love it.

http://cubits.org/roses/forums...