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Neighbors
January 2016
Society’s Rose Auction blossoming with choices BY CHRISTINA FUOCO-KARASINSKI
Ryan Regehr likes to talk roses— especially to folks new to Arizona who think they can’t grow the beautiful flowers here. “We run into a lot of people from the colder climates who think you can’t grow roses in Arizona,” said Regehr, a member of the Mesa-East Valley Rose Society. “We don’t freeze. The roses never have to be covered. We have to deal with the heat in the summer. They slow down in the summer, but we have three to four great bloom cycles and the roses don’t die or have to be cut back like they do in a colder climate.” Regehr is serving as the chairman of the Mesa-East Valley Rose Society’s Rose Auction at 12 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 6, at Mesa Community College’s Navajo Room in the Kirk Student Center, 1833 W. Southern Ave., Mesa. This year the auction will take credit and debit cards. For more information, visit www. roses4az-mevrs.org. “We have roses from Mississippi already,” Regehr said. “We should be receiving roses from Tennessee at any time that are very unique. We have roses that you can’t buy anywhere in Arizona. “We take and get roses from
distributors all across the country and then we pick the best 100. The top 100 of the roses we receive will be on auction.” A sort of Barrett-Jackson for rose lovers, the auction features 100 flowers, but the accompanying sale could have anywhere between 10 and 75 roses. The organization will not know how many will be on sale until the day of the event. “We will also have local suppliers who come in with fertilizers,” Regehr added. “So they’re not just getting the roses themselves. They’re getting different supplies and pruners—anything that has to do with roses.” Adding a new spin to the auction is the availability of books for sale. It will feature a variety of miniatures, something, Regehr said, that cannot be purchased regularly in Arizona. “It has a smaller bloom and a lot more of them,” he said. “It doesn’t mean [the bush] is smaller. They can be 5 to 7 feet tall. The miniatures have more color, too.” Also among the roses being offered are a wide variety of minifloras, polyanthas, hybrid teas and shrub roses. “Each one has its unique attributes,” he said. “A spray of floribundas is just a beautiful spray. The miniatures have nice form. The hybrid teas are more fragrant
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The rose auction will benefit the volunteer-run garden at Mesa Community College. Submitted photo
and are bigger. All of them are cut and brought into the house. “My passion for the auction is to introduce people to the miniature roses. I love the color. I love the size and the pure amount of blooms.” All proceeds benefit the volunteer-run Garden at Mesa Community College as well as the Mesa-East Valley Rose Society. The garden, Regehr said, is impressive. “It’s one of the premiere gardens in the United States,” he explained. “It’s a test garden, so roses that go into production are tested there.”
The garden is open to the public for free, which is unique for an attraction of that size, he said. “If you have roses or thinking about growing roses and are afraid to grow them, on Saturdays anybody can go to the garden and learn to prune or take care of roses,” Regehr explained. “There are people there to answer questions, so you can go and prune roses, mess up the roses there and they’ll show you the right way to do it. Then you can go home and do it in your own garden.”
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