When Anne Belovich decides to do something, she goes all the way.
She has traveled the high seas in a sailboat, competed as a distance runner, helped found a no-kill animal shelter in Stanwood and become a successful general contractor – and that’s just since she has turned 50.
| Anne Belovich’s favorite resources
Roses are available from mail order catalogs, nurseries, garden centers and even grocery stores as early as late January. Rose plants come bare root or potted, and most nurseries pot the bare-root roses they receive from growers before selling them to the public. Anne Belovich, a local rose lover who grows more than 800 kinds, listed these retailers as some of her favorites: Christianson’s Nursery, 15806 Best Road, Mount Vernon, 360-466-3821 Molbak’s, 13625 NE 175th St., Woodinville, 425-483-5000 The Plant Farm at Smokey Point, 16622 Twin Lakes Ave., Arlington, 360-652-3351, www.theplantfarm.com Mail order Edmunds’ Roses (Wilsonville, Ore.), 888-481-7673, www.edmundsroses.com Heirloom Roses (St. Paul, Ore.), 800-820-0465, www.heirloomroses.com Jackson and Perkins (Medford, Ore.), 877-322-2300, www.jacksonandperkins.com Vintage Gardens Antique Roses (Sebastopol, Calif.), 707-829-2035, www.vintagegardens.com Anne Belovich grows hundreds of varieties of roses at her Stanwood home. She gives tours of her property by appointment only during the summer months. But hers isn’t a groomed garden, she warned. “We won’t run around pulling weeds before someone comes,” she said. To reach Belovich, call 360-629-4350. For more about roses For more information about selecting roses, visit the American Rose Society Web site at www.ars.org. For help from local experts, call the Snohomish County master gardener hotline at 425-357-6010. Or visit The Seattle Rose Society’s Web site at www.bmi.net/roseguy. The society meets at 7:30 p.m. on the third Tuesday of each month except July, August and December, at the Center for Urban Horticulture, 3501 NE 41st St., Seattle. The meetings are open to the public. “The Combined Rose List” is an international rose directory that lists 14,000 varieties of roses and information on more than 300 mail-order nurseries worldwide. Edited by Beverly R. Dobson and Peter Schneider, the 234-page guide costs $20. To order, call 330-296-2618 or purchase online at www.combinedroselist.com. |
At 80, Belovich hasn’t slowed down any. She has just funneled her energy into a new interest: growing roses.
Between 800 to 1,000 kinds of roses grow on the five acres she owns with husband Max in Stanwood.
“Every time I count I get a different number – just like the elections,” she joked.
Belovich received her first rose plant and a book on roses for her 70th birthday. She acquired a few English roses and was smitten. Something about the combination of a rose’s soft beauty and brilliant color appeals to her in a way no other flower can. “Roses are just miraculous to me,” she said. “I just started filling the yard with roses.”
She didn’t know much about growing roses then, but has since traveled to Australia and Europe visiting gardens and nurseries. Belovich learned what she could from books and other rose lovers and over time she has developed into an expert.
Now she doesn’t bother filling her beds and borders with much else. Her collection includes unique varieties, including one of the largest collections of rare ramblers from France in the world. She has developed a particular affinity for climbing roses and is researching and writing a book on the subject.
Not surprisingly, roses reside everywhere at the Belovich home.
The couple’s house is situated on former farmland, and a cabin built by pioneers sits on the property. Roses surround the couple’s southern farm style house and nod next to fences that cross the fields.
Behind the home Max Belovich constructed pergolas – laden with climbing roses, wisteria and clematis – that lead to a spectacular rose garden.
The garden resembles an amphitheater with a pavilion at one end. A table rests on the platform, and the couple will often dine with guests here. An audience of roses looks on, planted in neat beds.
This is as formal as Belovich chooses to be with her garden design. “The English would call it a wild garden,” she joked.
She doesn’t grow perennials because they require more care than she has time to give. Outside the formal garden, there’s roughly mown grass, trees and shrubs. Elsewhere, her beloved climbing roses are permitted to twist and twine to the tops of trees. They provide a burst of blossoms in the treetops in the spring, she said.
Belovich is reluctant to single out a few roses as the best, because she said there are hundreds of fine varieties available. But she provided a sampling of those she would recommend to gardeners who are new to growing roses.
“My list of roses is selected for availability, ease of growing, landscaping value rather than exhibition quality, although those are not mutually exclusive,” she said. She also selected roses from different classes.
Here are Belovich’s picks and why she loves them, in her own words:
Livin’ Easy: An orange floribunda that is vigorous, free blooming and disease resistant. There is a yellow variant called Easy Going that is equally good.
Ingrid Bergman: A beautiful red hybrid tea. Men always gravitate toward this rose in my garden just as they were captivated by its namesake.
Westerland: This spectacular apricot-colored shrub rose also can be tied to a support as a small climber. There is a lovely yellow variant named Autumn Sunset. These roses continue to bloom well into the fall when they reflect the changing colors of our ornamental maple trees growing nearby.
Charles de Mills: A Gallica dating back to 1790. This rose’s lightly fragrant flowers are purple, shading to crimson or violet with blackish overtones. The petals are tightly packed into a perfectly circular shape. Every rose garden needs at least one old rose such as this one.
Knockout: This unusually floriferous red shrub rose has won an All-American Rose Selections Award (2000), the David Fuerstenberg Prize (2003), and the American Rose Society Members’ Choice Award (2004). It is a foolproof rose that can even be grown in partial shade. There is a pink variant called Blushing Knockout.
Flower Girl: A floribunda that produces huge clusters of pretty pink flowers all season. Rated as one of the top 10 garden roses by the American Rose Society this year.
Rosarium Ueterson: My favorite pink modern climbing rose produces masses of flowers with large, full petals all season. You can grow it on a fence or trellis or train it over an arbor.
Jeanne Lajoie: One of the best of the climbing miniature roses. Miniature only in flower size, this rose will grow to more than 6 feet. The plant itself is almost obliterated by the masses of small pink roses.
Albertine: A rambler producing a solid sheet of apricot bloom in the summer. This flower does not bloom again, which is typical of this class of roses. I think of ramblers as I do of lilacs and look forward to their spectacular display of ephemeral beauty each year.
Golden Celebration: It is difficult to choose just one of the David Austin English roses but this golden-yellow, fragrant beauty is among the best.
Reporter Debra Smith: 425-339-3197 or dsmith@heraldnet.com.
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