6 roses win honors from American Rose Society

Six roses have received national awards from the American Rose Society, recognizing them for their hardiness, longevity or tested quality, and they could make good choices for your garden.

This year’s members’ choice award goes to ‘Celestial Night,’ a mauve floribunda from Weeks Roses, hybridized by the famed Christian Bédard and introduced in 2019. It’s widely grown, has a garden rating of 8.7 and is slightly fragrant.

The 2023 members’ choice for fragrance award goes to ‘Sweet Spirit,’ a red blend grandiflora from another famed hybridizer, Meilland, which was introduced in 2018. It, too, is widely grown, has a garden rating of 8.5 and is the highest rated for fragrance.

Three miniature and miniflora roses have been inducted into the ARS’ Miniature and Miniflora Rose Hall of Fame this year and are recognized for their excellence and for their minimum 20 years of use in commerce.

• Nancy Jean is an apricot blend miniflora with outstanding exhibition form, with no noticeable fragrance.

• ‘Erin Alonso’ is a medium yellow miniature which produces full, high-centered blooms with no noticeable fragrance.

• Simplex is a white single miniature that has a slight fragrance.

The ARS’s award of excellence recognizes new miniature and miniflora rose varieties of superior quality and marked distinction.

The 2024 AOE award goes to ‘Petite Peach,’ an orange-pink miniature with 50 petals on each bloom that fade to white. The plant is a low-growing and rounded plant with good disease-resistance and little fragrance.

Science in the garden

Looking for ways to engage children in the garden or enrich their summer with fun science experiments? The TurfMutt Foundation may have a plan, or even 10 of them, for you.

The TurfMutt Foundation, founded by the Outdoor Power Equipment Institute, is a U.S. Green Building Council education partner and part of its global learning lab, which is an online education platform for kindergarten- to 12th-grade teachers.

It’s also an education resource at the U.S. Department of Education’s Green Ribbon Schools, the U.S. departments of energy and environmental protection energy, and Petfinder, among others.

The organization has just announced 10 new lesson plans for students from kindergarten through eighth grade. They are designed to help students learn valuable lessons in their own backyard, a park or school yard, and are synchronized with the Next Generation Science Standards and include suggestions for more ways to learn about the topics covered.

The curriculum’s hero, Mulligan, is inspired by TurfMutt Foundation’s president and chief executive officer Kris Kiser’s own dog that he rescued a few years ago.

“Having a dog as a spokesperson of our program makes it ‘sticky’ for kids and no one loves a yard and green space more than a dog,” he says in a press release. “Children may be more apt to learn valuable lessons right in their own backyard or school yard from a fun-loving adventurer like Mulligan the TurfMutt.”

The lessons are varied by grade and available for free on the TurfMutt website at turfmutt.com or available by subscription at the U.S. Green Building Council Learning Lab at usgbc.org/education/learning-lab.

Among the activities suggested for students:

• See trees “breathe” by capturing water vapor given off by trees on plastic bags, and learn how trees absorb and return water to the atmosphere.

• Practice counting and learn about their own carbon footprints at home and in school.

• Figure out how many creatures hang out in 1 square foot of healthy dirt outside, observing the worms and insects found.

• Calculate how much water a plant transpires.

• Go on a scavenger hunt to find the wildlife that reside around us in backyards and community parks.

• Conduct an experiment examining whether we water plants, or plants water the Earth.

• Use rain gauges and an outdoors experiment to calculate water runoff and talk about ways to control it.

• Do an experiment to discover dust in an area and discuss ways to mitigate it.

• Learn how soil and trees help capture storm water, with a poster illustrating how communities with green plantings and riparian barriers does a better job of controlling runoff into waterways.

One of the plans also provides an original drama script where students can act out parts for flowers, sun, trees, shrubs and “environmental villains.”

Show off

If you have a beautiful or interesting Marin garden or a newly designed Marin home, I’d love to know about it.

Please send an email describing either (or both), what you love most about it, and a photograph or two. I will post the best ones in upcoming columns. Your name will be published and you must be over 18 years old and a Marin resident.

PJ Bremier writes on home, garden, design and entertaining topics every Saturday. She may be contacted at P.O. Box 412, Kentfield 94914, or at pj@pjbremier.com.