A Long Island Rose Garden


News To Me
The Zones They Are A-Changin'
About This Website
This website is dedicated to my rose garden and all the amazing little creatures that live in my garden. I live in zone 6, Long Island, New York. Perhaps the information on these pages will be useful to other gardeners on Long Island, or even elsewhere in similar climates. Our region is known for its humid summers -- with high temps and muggy days giving to dewey, cooler nights -- all of which contributes to black spot. Black spot is the nemesis of roses on Long Island, but by choosing black spot-resistant cultivars, roses can do very well here. I am a firm believer that industrial pesticides have no place in residential gardens and that the cumulative toxicity and damage to the environment and our health cannot be justified for ornamental use. I don't spray fungicides or use any insecticides except horticultural oil on occasion. This information might be of interest to you when gauging the vigor and disease resistance of certain roses that you might be interested in growing for yourself.

On this site, you'll find pages dedicated to the individual roses that I grow, with pictures and reports of their progress in my garden throughout the growing season.

Cats love catmint! (nepeta x faassenii)

Updates:

May 18, 2007 - Updated my list of recommended roses for Long Island: Alberic Barbier, Duc d'Angoulême, Earth Song, Eden, Freckles, James Galway, Marie Curie, Quietness, Tchaikovsky, Traviata.

May 6, 2007 - I am headed to D.C. this summer to intern at a public interest organization that works in food and agriculture policy. I am really excited about this opportunity to work on one of the most important and pressing matters of our time. The corporatization of our agricultural system has far-reaching consequences -- domestically and globally; on our health, climate change, and the environment.

Although I won't be able to work in the garden, I intend to continue updating the website. The roses will be completely neglected for a few months, and I look at this as an opportunity to keep testing the roses under the most rigorous conditions, and to weed out the weak cultivars. I plan to report my observations after I return.

The garden has survived many long periods of neglect before, and I fully expect that most of the roses will be fine. And yes, of course the cats are coming with me.