I just received the below email from the All American Rose Selection organization.
"Dear Test Garden Supervisors and Judges:
As you are likely aware, today’s difficult economic conditions have created challenges for many American businesses. Unfortunately, All-America Rose Selections is not immune to these realities. As a result, we have been forced to make some very difficult decisions. I am sorry to inform you that at the recent AARS board meeting we have decided to stop our trial program effective immediately and will also cease to exist as an organization."
This is a sad day. I have witnessed first hand the progress that has been made in creating roses that were free of black spot fungus at least for the two years some of the roses were in trial. In the Dallas metroplex Blackspot is the number one problem of roses. The AARS test gardens have not used chemicals for the last 5 or 6 years.
I hope that they decide to at least finish the second year of evaluation of the roses that were entered last year. If that is not the case, it would be a terrible lack of follow through and broken commitment to all the nurseries that came back on board last year to help try to keep AARS viable and paid for and submitted trial roses.
Sad, but not unexpected. When the primary members of an organization cease to exist in their former forms, which made the organization possible, it’s understandable when the organization disappears.
I’m sure, based on previous spirited dialogues pertaining to such organizations, most of the folks here have a little bit of a “good riddance” attitude:
But I do wonder if anyone envisions a mechanism, aside from successful marketing blitzes by the big boys, to identify and promote good roses? I hate to think of the network of trial gardens that are going to waste.
I have found myself looking to the trials overseas to have ideas of what rose of merit might appear on the US market down the road… It’s pathetic that Europe has so many trials, and we have so little here in America.
Could an offset of RHA organize a formal trial system of folks’ roses and test their appropriateness to different regions? (I’ve griped enough about the “All American” notion in the past already…)
I have several times tried to open some constructive dialogues about appropriate regional testing of cultivars as a means of offering subjective evaluations, and possibly promoting roses of merit that don’t have the backing of the huge breeding firms. It would help everyone here, it seems to me (with the exception of myself who has only been doing hypothetical ‘armchair hybridizing’ post-Katrina.)
But folks seem more interested in bashing the status quo rather than looking to a constructive restructuring, or even complete alternative.
Of course, I am a complete outsider never having been (nor particularly seeing any point in being) involved with any of the old-guard rose societies.
I started most of my posts with my own critiques of the current trials here in the USA. I think that the RHA might take up some slack in forming a structured means of evaluation, and even offering its own “seal of approval”, if you will.
Apparently you all are not aware that the RHA does have a field trials program where you can have your hybrids tested in both Shreveport, Louisiana and Saint Cloud, Minnesota. The RHA Newsletter usually has details. .
Not too long ago I noticed the “Field Trials” button at the top of the page; it links to some info about the RHA trials in MN and LA. Not sure if it’s only on the new layout that I’m testing.
Not too long ago I noticed the “Field Trials” button at the top of the page; it links to some info about the RHA trials in MN and LA. Not sure if it’s only on the new layout that I’m testing.[/quote]
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