California, United States

I have a 24 acre country property in Sonoma County in Northern California where I garden intensively on perhaps 10 acres. I grow trees, shrubs, perennials and at least 2,000 roses (I don't count any more!) I have planted nearly every class of rose. My garden style is informal and naturalistic. That gives me the excuse of planting more than I can adequately care for! I tell everyone to see " the big picture. " I have hosted many garden tours over the last 20 years and find that sharing my garden is a great joy.

Update:
On October 9, 2017, my home of 24 years burned in the Tubbs fire in Santa Rosa. We escaped with our dogs and cats and almost nothing else. One of the most difficult things for me was returning to find all the buildings reduced to ashes but my garden with its thousands of roses and countless other plants blooming exuberantly in a nightmare scene of destruction. I felt an overwhelming grief and a strong drive to try to rescue my plants. The following months were spent fighting with insurance, seeking info on rebuilding and coming to grips emotionally with the catastrophe. We finally elected to buy another large property in Bennett Valley and in April we began the task of trying to transplant many of the roses and perennials. With no functioning well and/ or irrigation at the old property, the race was on to wrestle the roses out of the ground before the rainy season ended in May. The giant old tea roses were dug up, placed in huge tubs of water as there were no pots big enough to hold them. Then we put them in the ground on the new property. It is now late July, 2018, and we are still at it. I will keep at it until the old property sells. Almost no one wants to garden on the scale that I did and few know much about caring for roses. My fear is someone will buy the property and bulldoze the garden! Roses are amazingly resilient. Just as we are in the face of tragedy.

Very experienced (49 years)

Last visit: More than a year ago