Pic of Mike
Beauty blooms through the garden-pot entryway to the Antique Rose Emporium Nursery and Gardens. The eight-acre grounds in Independence lushly teem with color, from purple sages and white irises to orange and yellow lantanas. Crepe myrtles provide abundant shade over meandering paths, and the air is filled with birdsong while bees and butterflies flit between plants. Roses peek from pots, climb over graceful archways, and add deep reds, delicate pinks, and gentle yellows among their annual and perennial companions.
The Antique Rose Emporium Nursery and Gardens, designated a 2012 Hall of Fame Garden by the Great Rosarians of the World, has shared its blossoms with the community for close to 40 years. There, visitors can enjoy an outing with family, find gardening inspiration, and soak up nature’s elegance all year round.
The Secret Garden
When rose emporium founder G. Michael Shoup attended Texas A&M University as a master’s degree student in horticulture, roses were furthest from his mind. The flowers had a reputation for needing constant gardening attention, making them a less than ideal fit for his landscaping business. However, his search to find native Texas plants in order to create a niche in a competitive industry soon changed his mind. As he explored the countryside, he discovered wild roses growing without human attention in older communities, cemeteries, and abandoned homesites.
Shoup found that these roses made excellent landscape plants. They were unlike the modern, difficult-to-grow roses, called hybrid teas, which were primarily produced to become cut flowers. Many old garden varieties dated prior to the first hybrid tea’s
introduction in 1876, and generations of natural selection had made them strong and hardy. “There was a whole new world out there in roses,” Shoup says. “They were very different [from] what was being promoted in our modern society. … They were truly roses that were from the past.”
The old garden roses also had fragrance, unlike many modern roses. “It’s crazy to smell a rose and it not have any fragrance. You might as well be looking at a rose in a book,” Shoup says. “The rose that has fragrance ties you to it, and it’s more of an emotional response.” This response helps people connect with roses in a more meaningful way, he says.
Shoup began collecting these native roses in 1983 and sold them through a mail-order catalog to reach a wider audience. Soon, people wanted to come see the flowers themselves, and the gardens were born.
Garden Art
Today, the emporium receives more than 50,000 visitors each year — up to 1,000 per day on spring weekends. Garden-goers can enjoy the beauty, walk around with family, and have picnics on the grounds, Shoup says. The gardens are also a popular location for bridal portraits, and couples can exchange wedding vows in the chapel or outdoor pavilion. “It’s one of my greatest joys to see the gardens being shared,” Shoup says. “The vision, the reflectiveness that a garden creates is important for people to experience, and that’s what we try to create.”
The emporium’s variety of displays and plants demonstrate the versatility of roses and are intended to inspire others to embrace creativity and become artists through their gardening, Shoup says. “[Roses] are truly a component of the whole garden, ebbing and flowing through the seasons in different ways,” he adds. “You’ll not find any rose gardens here. You’ll find gardens with roses in them, and it’s a very big difference as to the way these roses are used.”
The emporium also helps people with their growing endeavors through its garden retail center, which sells roses, annuals, and perennials along with supplies like
seeds, pots, and tools. Currently, the emporium offers more than 300 roses in a range of colors, growing styles and fragrances, including 30 varieties bred by the emporium. Several of these have won awards, and Shoup plans on introducing another 30 varieties in the next year. The roses can also be shipped throughout the U.S. and are mailed at the appropriate time for the climatic zone, Shoup says. In Texas, fall is the ideal planting time, and the most blooms are produced in March, April, and May, he explains.
For Shoup, numerous qualities make roses the ultimate garden plant: fragrance, durability, repeat blooming ability, longevity, diversity, and a rich history. “People love the rose,” he says. “It’s the queen of flowers in people’s minds.” But misconceptions about the difficulty of growing roses still linger, he adds. As he continues to sell his roses, he says he hopes to continue changing people’s perceptions on the flower as they find success growing them.
“There’s a rose for everybody,” he says.
antiqueroseemporium.com.
