February Program - Tucson Botanical Gardens, February 3rd 6:30pm

The Shovel Pruning Auction Is Always Fun!

Our February meeting is our annual Shovel Pruning Auction meeting. You may ask, “What’s shovel pruning?” The most important thing is that it means you can get some great deals on roses!

Here’s how we do it: After pruning our roses, our members dig up (shovel prune) rose bushes they no longer want to keep. Only good, healthy roses. Maybe they have 2 of them. Maybe they need room for a new variety. Or maybe they've just outgrown their space in the garden. So they bring them to the February meeting in a container (no bags, please) for our auctioneer, Terry Swartz, to auction off. Except in a few instances when a “hot” rose is on the auction block, folks get outstanding deals on these roses.

Consider a great rose for $5.00, $10.00 or maybe even $15.00, when the same rose costs $37.00 in the garden center! This is always a very fun event with lively bidding on fabulous roses. Since these roses have already been pruned, Lisa Bunker always brings her cell phone along so everyone can see pictures of each rose up for auction. So bring your healthy roses to the meeting along with your check book or cash.

Don’t miss this opportunity to get a great deal on wonderful rose bushes.

January is the month when we prune our roses to prepare them for the coming year. Our January program will be a demonstration of winter rose pruning for the fabulous spring blooms we are all looking forward to! Terry Swartz and Donaldina Joung will demonstrate their individual
approaches to January pruning.

We’ll plant to have a standard as well as a miniature rose bush at the meeting for this demonstration. Plus lots of opportunity to ask questions and see, first-hand, how to get your bushes in shape for the winter and beautiful spring blooms.

We’ll also have handouts available to show and explain how and why pruning is done. It’s a great reference piece. This is one of the favorite meetings of the year, so come early with all your questions.

   

Photo credits: Slide show photographs provided by Rose Society of Tucson members Danielle Fochs, Lisa Bunker, and Judy Singer. More photographs of Tucson-grown roses are viewable in our photo gallery.