Yes, her name really was Rose Busch. Whenever someone notices the coincidence of my having the name "Laurel Busch," I say, "That's nothing—my mother-in-law's name was Rose Busch!"

Rose introduced me to gardening, and she was a source of motivation, competition, and countless free plants for the next 30 years. Besides being tied to each other by the man she raised and I married, we were connected by our love of flowers. It didn't matter that each of us was drawn to the garden for a different reason: she was compelled to nurture people and plants; I have to have an excuse and a place to go outside and enjoy nature. And while it's survival of the fittest for my plants, she had the proverbial green thumb.

Rose's Garden

Rose lived in a small tract home in a Reno subdivision from the time it was built over former potato fields in the mid 1950's. Both her front and back yards were surrounded by English-style borders of flowers. Needless to say, she had color from early spring until late fall.

These pictures were taken June 27, 1999.

Left to right: sweet peas, roses, lavender, and more roses along the north edge of the back yard. Rose and I shared a love of pink, purple, and blue flowers and a distaste for yellow and orange flowers.

Rose was far and away the best gardener I have ever known. Her plants bloomed earlier than anyone else's and grew twice as large. I always said they knew they had to do that because they were in her garden.  I mentioned competition earlier, but there wasn't really any because she always won. The only edge I had was with plants that thrive in poor, dry, sun-baked soil—flax, bachelor's buttons, morning glories, and so on. For some reason she had trouble growing them! (Or maybe she just said that so I wouldn't feel so bad.)

Our Garden Tour Ritual

Every time I was at Rose's house during gardening season, it went without saying that she would give me a tour of her flowers.

In summer, we would stop on the patio to admire everything she had in pots. She always had petunias, Martha Washington geraniums (the other kinds won’t do), and fuschias.

The tour of her flower borders always started just outside the door from the garage, and we always turned right and went counterclockwise. Along the east side of her yard (against the house), she had forget-me-knots, primroses, and columbines in early spring. She had new and old perennials there every year along with some rose bushes.

She would complain every spring that all the tulips had come up red and yellow and she was going to call Breck’s catalog and tell them. (And she did.) I would remind her that the yellows and reds always bloomed first and that the fancy ones she ordered would bloom afterward. We went past the butterfly bushes (which she refused to cut back the way the way experts recommended but still had good blooms every year) and paused just before we reached the corner.

She pointed out the clematis vine and trumpet vine in the northeast corner. Moving along the north side of her yard is where she usually complained about the ancient fence and the neighbor’s repair job. She had more perennials here—coneflower, lupine, lavender—and one rose bush after another. They were followed by her wire against the fence for delphiniums and sweet peas. She planted the sweet pea seeds every year on St. Patrick’s Day.

Now we were at the northwest corner, where she had a lilac bush and (begrudgingly) a few irises. There were her clumps of veronica and spiderwort, parents of my own clumps at home.

Along the west side of her yard, we tried to ignore that neighbor’s wheezing debarked dog while we checked the progress of her clematis vine and searched our memories for the name of the crocosmia and compared notes on our autumn crocuses. We both remembered the feuds she’d had with the woman on the other side of the fence about the fence, the plants, and the watering. That wall also held her chrysanthemums and bellflowers. She’d given me bellflowers several times, and I was never able to keep them growing in my yard.

At the south end of her yard was a large tree with a large flowerbed under it. This is where she always complained about the neighbors’ elm trees spreading their seeds into her yard. The border along the south end of her yard led us back to the beginning. This is where she put most of her new bulbs and flowers. We also got another view of some of her patio flowers from there.

When I didn’t have to rush off, we continued the tour around to the front of her house. She always had alyssum returning from seed in the crack between the patio and her garage wall. Through the side gate and along the south side of her house, we passed the candytuft that came back there every year. She told me about pruning her flowering shrubs in front and how hard it was, and then she complained about how they didn’t have many flowers this year (I knew she had pruned them off but didn't have the heart to tell her).

In the front of the house, she had twin arborvitaes with vinca on the ground around them. She used to buy lots of blue lobelia plants every spring to plant along the edge, but in later years she stopped doing that. She had rose bushes and small perennials around her front door, along with the flowers in pots on her porch.

Rose's Famous Rhododendrons

The purple rhododendron was next to the corner on the east side of her house. For years people driving down Melrose Drive would stop to look at her rhododendron bush when it was blooming. They couldn't believe a rhododendron could bloom that well in Reno. She always told me confidentially, with a snicker, that it takes nine months for a rhododendron to grow a flower.

Our tour was nearly over after we’d admired the purple rhododendron. All that were left after that were a few more bulbs, another rhododendron, and some peonies that didn’t bloom well. Around the corner, on the north side of her house, were a couple of holly bushes and a lot of daffodils.

I will always miss my garden tours with Rose, and I keep wanting to tell her every time one of my own flowers blooms. My husband dug up her rhododendron bushes and moved them here after she died, but they'll never do as well here as they did for her.

Updated 8/18/08

© 2000, 2005