can you make it out. I think its louise?

Chartreuse de Parme
does any one grow this rose?

You're right: Louise Odier, a great old rose (an early HP if memory serves me). Greatly admired by David Austin and Graham Thomas. On my wish list.

Scentimental and Fourth of July both look good with a red rose. I planted Scentimental this year and so far it is putting out foliage vigorously. I can only dream of having a display as good as yours, though. Have you planted several plants together? It seems like one plant couldn't make that many blossoms, even in San Diego.

Your barrels turned out great! And what a lovely tangle is in the back corner of your yard!

I love the color of McGredy's Stretch Johnston. Is it a climber? Is it still in distribution? Does it grow well and bloom generously for you?

Oh, Steph, I've been waiting impatiently for these. I always love your photos of your garden. It looks like paradise.

Steve, Tango is one of McGredy's hand-painted floribundas. It doesn't get very tall -- 3 feet at the most. I bought one from Hortico, which lists it as Stretch Johnson, and one from Palatine, which lists it as Rock 'n' Roll. I don't really like either of those names, so I call it Tango.

Hearing "Stretch Johnson" makes me think of Magic Johnson, and Magic Johnson is pretty gosh-darned tall. How can they call a rose that gets only 3' if you're lucky "stretch"? More like Midget Johnson or something like that.

Sawwy!

I guess it depends on where you live. Botanica's Pocket Roses lists it as Stretch Johnson and claims it makes an "unusually tall bush" and is "ideal trained on a pillar." I saw it in a county garden in NJ where clearly they had planted it in anticipation of it climbing a pillar, but it had reached maybe 2 ft high. In gardens such as that one, Stretch Johnson really is a stretch. I would hesitate to call it Rock and Roll because of the red/white striped rose by that name. Tango seems appropriate enough since it rhymes with Mango, and the flowers are kind of a dark orange version of that color.

But it was named Rock 'n' Roll almost 10 years before the Carruth Rock & Roll came out, and that one has an ampersand instead of the "n."

I think the height might be a case of own-root vs. grafted again, Steve. The one I bought from Hortico years ago was grafted, but the gophers ate the graft, so it's growing on its own roots and is only about 3 feet tall. The grafted one I bought from Palatine and planted in February is already 3 feet tall, but it might grow to be much taller. I'll let you know next year.

Sue sees these roses in grafted form at the public gardens in San Jose and she says that Priscilla Burton, another hand-painted McGredy floribunda, is beyond enormous -- a huge, huge rose bush. My own-root Priscilla Burtons from Vintage will never go beyond 2-3 feet.

I wish more nurseries would sell these hand-painted roses in grafted form. They're very hard to find.

tango doesnt get very tall. i got mine from hortico.It is a knockout beauty of rose. blooms more heavily in the spring. after that it puts out a lot of blind shoots.

two scentimentals together. you were right...
i will put up some more pictures as soon as my camera recharges.

Lots of wonderful color in your garden Steph, thanks for sharing!

I agree that the rose world could use more hand-painted roses. There's a real sense of fun to them. I remember seeing Eyepaint at the propagation gardens at VG once, long ago. In a glorious garden full of the best HT's of the last century and the best old roses from all previous centuries, it was hard not to just stare at Eyepaint. Sometimes it was in admiration for the perfect shape of the plant. Sometimes it was in admiration for the fullness and shrubbiness of the plant. And sometimes it was in admiration of the vibrant red splashed with white that pretty much covered the shrub.

Zuzu, It appears to me from glancing in a 2005 Handbook for Selecting Roses that Stretch Johnson is the listed name for the rose in question. Similarly, the rose is listed as Stretch Johnson in Botanica's Roses. I don't have Modern Roses (latest version) which I guess is the naming authority, but I'm betting that the official registered name for the rose in question is Stretch Johnson. Rock and Roll, Rock 'n' Roll, Rock & Roll are not listed in 2005 HfSR.

It seems to me that one could certainly claim that Rock 'n' Roll and Rock & Roll are two different names because they are spelled differently, but it's bound to be the source of endless confusion. It is to avoid confusion that we name roses in the first place. So while no database would keep you from having the two names for unique roses, I think it flies in the face of reason. Is Fame! a different rose from Fame? When you go to the nursery, and ask for Fame, which rose should you get? I would also argue that a rose really ought to be allowed only one official name (though sometimes with inclusion of obvious alternate spellings). The fact that Stretch Johnson was marketed under an unofficial name ought not, I think, preclude the registration of another rose by that unregistered name.

Rosemary Verey tells a story of ordering a few hundred roses for a bed of one of her aristocratic customers. She orders Camieux over the phone. The rose supplier's agent rights down Cameo. Verey is expecting tasteful white and pink striped roses but she gets "garish orange" ones. Such are the problems associated with names that sound the same.

I've always preferred the original name of Anisley Dickson to the curious registered name Dicky. So I understand the impulse to use alternative names. I do it myself. I might even be inclined to use the name Tango to avoid the obscure double entendre of Stretch Johnson. But I think Rock and Roll in all its spelling forms belongs to another rose. And for some of the same reasons. FWIW.

Chartreuse de Parma is a rose I've never heard of and it's not in my rose books. Looks great. Does it smell as good as it looks?

I actually do have a grafted Eyepaint from Pickering and it's a large bush, but I think it was even bred to be larger than the average hand-painted rose.

The other rose was introduced as Rock 'n' Roll and later renamed to honor Stretch Johnson, in the same way that Comtesse de Provence and Perception were renamed Liv Tyler and Leann Rimes.

It's bad enough when the names are as similar as Rock 'n' Roll and Rock & Roll, but sometimes there's no difference whatsoever. In my garden, just among the roses beginning with an "A," I have two Abracadabras, two Alohas, and two Ambassadors. In each of these cases, the second rose was the product of a different company, but Kordes and especially Meilland actually reuse their own names for roses that are vastly dissimilar. I have two Cocoricos, for example. Both are Meilland roses, but one is a single red and the other is a pink and white double. I have two Traviatas. Both are Meilland roses, but one is red and white and the other is pure red.

Probably the reason for that is that younger people remember their grandma's garden and that pretty pretty rose, but they can't remember what it's called, so when a "new" rose comes out, they attach an old name onto it to revive the memories of the younger people and get them to buy the rose.

Either that, or they're just not that imaginative. I think J&P is very guilty of this. And, let's face it: the average Joe doesn't have a clue who Comtesse de Provence is, let alone how to say it! They do, however, know WHO Liv Tyler (the lady who played the elf woman in Lord of the Rings) and how to pronounce her name - thus making it a "brand". Now, the day that there's a Miley Cyrus rose I'm definitely going to be protesting. And why on earth would Rosie O'Donnell get a rose??? And it's bad enough that Barbara Streisand (name I canNOT spell w/o spellcheck) has an absolutely to-die-for rose.. I can't stand the woman's acting or singing or her nose. So why would I want a rose named by other, other than "if a rose by any other name, would it smell as sweet?"

Luckily, Toni, some of them have other names. I've never bought Barbra Streisand either, because I don't want her in my garden, and I've also avoided plants with "mother" or "Natalie" in their names because I don't want want to be assailed by memories of my mother while I'm in the garden. There are those other names, however. I finally was able to buy Rosie O'Donnell because I discovered the rose is also called New Era, so that's its name in my garden.

It's true Meilland and Kordes recycle names, and it makes me crazy. Ditto when roses are renamed; as in Maria Callas -> MAAB. Didn't know that the rose in question was actually renamed SJ.

It's such an old tradition to name roses after minor aristocracy that I find the practice quaint. I think it might be brilliant that DA named a rose Queen of Sweden: it has very neat pink fragrant roses on a healthy shrub, kind of reminiscent of the alba Queen of Denmark. One day people may get them mixed up (pink rose named queen of some Scandinavian nation...). Hopefully the newer rose is as good as the old rose.

I agree that a good, high centered hybrid tea rose deserves to be named after a person whom we admire as being classy: Ingrid Bergman comes to mind as an example.

I, too, never cared much for O'Donell's or Streisand's work. I find the rose RO can be photogenic, unlike its namesake. I suppose, however, that it is somehow appropriate that the rose Barbara Streisand has a noteworthy nose!

Oh, you do have a wonderful way with words, Steve.

okay, kinda showing my age here, but I had to look up Ingrid Bergman as I had no idea who she was.

Oh, God, that makes me cry. She was incredibly famous all my life. When I was a child, she may have been the most despised woman in America because she had an illegitimate child. She practically got ridden out of the country on a rail for it.

Never heard of her nor most of the movies she made.

I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hurt your feelings or anything. *hug?*

And everyone has illegitimate children. Heck, I have.. uh.. 18 of them? No, wait, I know who the father is of Chaos and Flower. I don't know who the father is of anyone else, though. LOL!!!

I actually do have one and it did cause a minor scandal. Everyone in my family and most of my friends stopped talking to me for a long time. But I did it long before Murphy Brown made it fashionable.

You didn't hurt my feelings, funny girl. You just made me feel old. Of course, I could blame it on Colorado. My friend Thalia grew up in Aspen, where she must have run into celebrities all the time, but her family was never interested in pop culture. When she was a teenager she was very rude to Jack Nicholson when he tried to talk to her in a local store. When someone told her who he was, assuming she'd be embarrassed, it didn't faze her because she had never heard of him.