(Apr 2001)  Page(s) 3.  
 
Heritage Roses. Quarterly Rose Letter of the Heritage Roses Group.
Rev. Douglas T. Seidel. Those Fabulous Foundlings.
In 1973 I first visited the Maryland hill where Mrs. Keays' Creekside had stood and where a number of her roses were struggling to survive. Six bushes of "Faded Pink Monthly" still guarded the approach to the vanished manor house. For thirty years, at that point, no kind hand had tended them, no one had cared to pull the suffocating tendrils of honeysuckle and poison ivy away. But dear "Faded Pink Monthly" was still blooming! cuttings from those stalwart survivors have grown to be the most willing bloomers and the hardiest of the Noisette clan in my Zone 6 garden. Pickering and Roses Unlimited are now growing this legacy from Mrs. Keays.

(Apr 2001)  Page(s) 3.  
 
Heritage Roses. Quarterly Rose Letter of the Heritage Roses Group.
Rev. Douglas T. Seidel. Those Fabulous Foundlings.

Any list of Noisette foundlings must begin with "Faded Pink Monthly". This was introduced to the gardening world almost seventy years ago by Mrs. Frederick Love Keays.....
....While Mrs. Keays hoped in print that this local beauty would turn out to be the original 'Blush Noisette', she could never quite get her rose to match the descriptions of the early writers. But the beauty of the variety and its connection to Mrs. Keays are more than enough reason to grow it today. In the garden "Faded Pink Monthly" looks for all the world like a taller version of the much admired Polyantha, 'Marie Pavie'. But the Maryland foundling regularly reaches six feet and taller ('Marie Pavie' is just three feet here), its foliage is larger, and the bloom is less double in larger clusters.
In 1973 I first visited the Maryland hill where Mrs. Keays' Creekside had stood and where a number of her roses were struggling to survive. Six bushes of "Faded Pink Monthly" still guarded the approach to the vanished manor house. For thirty years, at that point, no kind hand had tended them, no one had cared to pull the suffocating tendrils of honeysuckle and poison ivy away. But dear "Faded Pink Monthly" was still blooming! cuttings from those stalwart survivors have grown to be the most willing bloomers and the hardiest of the Noisette clan in my Zone 6 garden. Pickering and Roses Unlimited are now growing this legacy from Mrs. Keays.