Vintage Gardens USA Closing

Quite a few nurseries have closed in USA and Vintage Gardens will close their Website at the end of 2013 due to what they term "Hard times". I know they have difficulty over the years making a profit to keep the nursery going. Let's hope some of our older nurseries here can pay the bills and make wages. Would be a shame to lose some of the older roses stocked by nurseries like Thomas, Mistydowns and Rustons.

Oh no! Vintage was one of the absolute greats! It was to classic roses what Edmunds was to modern.

Betsy, it's going to be a sad day when it closes. I like to know where I can source older roses for breeding. Unfortunatly we are losing some of these due to lack of sales, owners retiring and developement taking up fringe land for housing. I do have a lot of the early HT's sourced from closing nurseries, one of my valuable finds recently was 'Floradora'. Think I have about 20 budded. I had one of the local guys very into exhibition call and admired 'Ethel Dawson' which he didn't even know existed. We will probably see it in the Australian bred classes at one of the shows next year. The ones most likely to be lost are those bred between 1940 and 1980, which consisted of some very good roses but also a lot of unhealthy duds. I've added 'Peer Gynt' and 'Tiki' to my collection because these could also be lost.

We can't save them all but with nurseries closing we could end up with a very small collection of new roses in the future.

The nursery is not totally lost just yet. They are ceasing orders as of 30 June. There are plans afoot by the friends of the gardens and the heritage committee to "try" and keep things going, if only as collection.

Vintage has a vast array of friends, from novices to learned horticulturalists. I hope they can keep the collection going, at the very least. This place is a national treasure, the largest single collection of antique and rare roses in the country. Their website is also a goldmine of information - clear prose, diagrams, charming without the frou-frou.

And they played classical music as you walked through the show gardens. Beautiful, unforgetable experience in Spring.

Good on you, Ozeboy, for your efforts to preserve some of the best.

David, I was aware the group that helped Vintage to keep going did so last year. This is a more recent notice but hope you are right.Their collection is such that they can't all be replaced elsewhere.
Betsy, you have been lucky to visit what might end up just a memory.

Locally it would appear nurseries are cutting stocks. Even Swanes garden is only a fraction of what it used to be when Ben Swane had it in the 1970's and 1980's. Gardens cost money to maintain and are a very expensive overhead. Keep in there Finbarr I'm going to order roses from you this season.

Here is the whole story,
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David except for the posts it is the same as the information that came from Greg Lowery. Let's hope the rescue group keep it all together.
I bought one of their catalogues a few years back which contained 360 larger than foolscap pages. At the top of each section (Group of roses)
is a few words on history and traits. This catalogue looks at all the known groups like the "Old European Roses", Gallicas, Centifolias, Damasks, Albas, Mosses and Hybrid Chinas. All the groups are documented well. A must for the beginner making the move from PBR HT's shown in rows at most nurseries. Interesting to see the header in the HT section showing a well dressed man with a sprayer on his back spraying the HT roses.

My book (Catalogue) was purchased from Pat Toolan who just might happen to have copies available. Perhaps they are still available from Vintage Gardens, a very worthwhile addittion to anyones rose book library.