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Biographical Profile of Alice Affleck
NCNH District Director
Roses in Review Coordinator
District Directory Editor/Publisher

Local Rose Society Membership: North Bay Rose Society

Other Societies & Groups: American Orchid Society, American Sewing Guild

Years Growing Roses: 36

How I Started with Roses: We've always had roses. Mom, Grandma, Grandma's neighbor. It was natural that when I finally got my own place, roses were the first thing I put in. When we moved to our new home in Vallejo in 1979, the size of the garden was a real consideration, and of course the first things planted were roses. Richard saw a notice for a rose society meeting in the local paper, and the rest is history. I got hooked on all the aspects of rose growing: sharing the roses with the public, exhibiting, giving pruning demos.

Profession: Senior Systems Analyst. I do analysis and design of changes to business systems.

Rose Society Offices: Have been President, 2nd Vice President and Secretary of North Bay Rose Society and am currently the Treasurer. Have been North Bay's rose show chairman for many years. NCNH Roses in Review coordinator and NCNH District Directory coordinator. ARS Master Rosarian. ARS Horticultural Judge. Have co-chaired two district conventions.

Alice in Roseland: Notes from an Interview
By Darrell g.h. Schramm

She has been growing roses for about 35 years. But even before that, she was raised among roses, roses in the yards and gardens of her grandmother, her mother, and her neighbors. Despite the fog of San Francisco where she grew up, roses thrived. From her childhood, she recalls ‘Cecile Brunner’, both the climber and the bush. And ‘Belle of Portugal’—“Grandma had ‘The Belle of Portugal,” Alice Affleck said wistfully. She thinks it’s the first rose she remembers.

Like Alice in Wonderland and any rose lover without a garden of her own, she no doubt longed to “wander among those beds of bright flowers” in a place of her own. And so Alice Affleck established her own rose garden, Alice in Roseland.

Among the first roses Alice Affleck owned was ‘Chrysler Imperial’—“planted in the wrong spot,” she added wryly—and ‘Sterling Silver’, one of the earliest silvery mauve roses. “The wrong spot” brings to mind the three playing-card gardeners in Alice in Wonderland who mistakenly planted white roses instead of red; but rather than relocate the roses, they set about painting them red. ‘Chrysler Imperial’ being red, Alice did not have to resort to such tactics.

Her favorite class of roses is the hybrid tea. Alice singled out ‘Black Magic’ (did you know it has a vase life of about two weeks?), the crimson ‘Asso di Cuori’, the yellow “Helmut Schmidt’, a rose that holds its shape; the pink, fragrance-award winner ‘Secret’, ‘Gemini’, a subtle swirl of cream and dusty pink with a kiss of yellow on the reverse; and two or three others. Of other types, she’s fond of climbers, such as ‘Altissimo’, ‘Fourth of July’, and ‘Royal Sunset’. I can hear her insisting, as the storybook Alice did to the Mad Hatter and the March Hare, “There’s plenty of room!” And don’t most of us say the same thing when adding just one more rose to our gardens?

Alice is an ardent exhibitor. Of the roses Alice has exhibited and which won awards, she’s been the most pleased with ‘Polarstern’, ‘Graceland’, and ‘Helmut Schmidt’.

But living in Roseland doesn’t mean devoting oneself only to growing and showing roses. Roses have led Alice on the pathway to a new role; she will soon become our District Director. Since she joined the ARS and the North Bay Rose Society in 1981, Alice has given of her time as a past president of the chapter, secretary, membership chair, judge, a Consulting Rosarian; she has twice served as co-chair of conferences hosted by NBRS, and—well, I’m sure I’m forgetting something. In 2006, the fall district conference named her “Outstanding CR” and “Outstanding Horticultural Judge” of the year. Currently, she also serves as Society treasurer and district Roses in Review coordinator, the latter job which she has done since forever. Outside of her eight-to-five job, it seems for Alice everything’s coming up roses.

Alice enjoys “mucking around” the garden, being outside and among all the color. “It’s good therapy,” she asserts. Her words seem to echo that long ago nurseryman and botanist of early New York who wrote in 1846 that being in the company of roses is “a most soothing and pleasurable mental relaxation.” She hasn’t sprayed her roses for several years. For mulch, she uses horse manure and straw; for fertilizer, she alternates among fish emulsion, granules, samples she’s picked up, whatever is at hand. “I don’t stick to a regimen,” she says. I’ve watched Alice prune a hybrid tea. Now this woman is fast, efficient, decisive, and confident. If she were my gardener, my roses would all be pruned in half the time it takes me.

Beauty and disease resistance, Alice maintains, are the most important qualities in choosing a rose. When I quoted David Austin who stated that a rose is not automatically beautiful, and asked her if she could name a rose she would not praise as such, Alice replied, “ ‘Tahitian Sunset’ can be pretty, but it can also be disgustingly ugly when the color gets muddy and the form gets poor.” In addition to beauty and disease resistance, important in selecting a good quality plant, advice she would give to someone just starting to grow roses is to choose the location for the rose carefully. “And join your local society.”

Alice is a fine example of the benefits of belonging to a rose society. In my interview with her, I could read between the lines of her words: not only does she enjoy giving both her time and knowledge to the members of the rose society, but she also enjoys the fellowship found there. As our new District Director, Alice will have increased her Roseland. It’s rather like adding new roses to the garden—it also increases the work. But that she will be excellent in this role, I have no doubt.

Reprinted from the October, 2009 North Bay Rosarian, Richard Affleck, Editor

Last updated: 1/1/13
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