Holds ‘Rosalia’ celebration of first flush of growth

By Lauren Young

Staff Writer

Bag End owner Jay King was always told he wouldn’t be able to grow roses in Cazenovia. Today, he’s growing 40 different varieties of them.

As King and his wife, Anne, prepared to move over a decade ago to the top of Fairchild Hill in Cazenovia from their home in the historic Sedgwick neighborhood in Syracuse, they were warned by nearby long-time gardeners that they wouldn’t be able to grow roses like they had in the city.

“My wife had wonderful roses in the city,” said King, who owns a rental 1795 antique barn home for private family getaways, gatherings and vacations in 15 acres at 1702 Route 20 West in Cazenovia. Named “Bag End” after the home of “Lord of the Rings” author J.R.R. Tolkien’s famous Baggins family, the Kings purchased the property from their late friend R. James (Jimmy) Hubbard following the termination of the Remington, or Ledyard family, trust.

Anne was a member of the Syracuse Garden Club, a chapter of Garden Club of America. She planted – but struggled to maintain – a garden of modern Hybrid Tea Roses.

“Famous, old-time gardeners out here [in Cazenovia], like Peggy Hubbard and Sally Thompson, said ‘Anne, you’re not going to be able to grow roses out here,’” said Jay. “And my father, who, you couldn’t say something like that to without him accepting it as a challenge, said, ‘That’s ridiculous.’”

So, for Anne’s birthday, Jay’s father, or Grandpa Joe, collected a dozen of his favorite Hybrid Tea Roses to give her, ranging from the Chicago Peace Hybrid Tea Rose to the Queen Elizabeth Rose.

“Among [Grandpa Joe’s] well-known obsessive focuses were two periods when he intensively studied, pursued, acquired and grew modern Hybrid Tea Roses,” said King. “We planted them for one season — they were gorgeous. And then they all died. So, we thought we couldn’t do it. We couldn’t grow them out here and for years and years we didn’t.”

Until one day, while hiking up Route 20 along the Oran-Delphi Valley, King discovered a patch of Beach Roses growing in “the most inhospitable conditions” by the side of the road. “I thought, if they can grow there, they can certainly grow here,” he said.

After King and his son, Brad, gathered about 30 runners — stem-like growths from the base that help spawn new buds — to transplant on the northeast side of Bag End. When the roses emerged from dormancy the following spring, King said that nearly every one of them grew — “then began to spread, resulting in a 10 to 20-foot deep rose hedge.”

King did more research on the rose, discovering that it was part of a family of “world-famous cold hardy roses” – the Rugosa Rose.

“I got interested in the history, and the history is just so fascinating, it’s so rich,” he said. “I started researching the cold hardiness theme, but as I got into it, I found that almost all of the roses that were cold hardy were the old-fashioned roses.”

On June 20, King held a celebration to honor the “first flush” of super hard old-fashioned roses at Bag End, drawing inspiration from the Rosalia, an ancient celebration of the rose held during the Roman Empire.

The first Rosalia, “a couple thousand-year-old tradition,” was first celebrated “somewhere in the Roman Empire before 800 A.D. – or in other words, before they codified the Bible,” said King. “The stories associated with roses are just wonderful, and as a historian I started doing the research on what could survive on our hilltop.”

One of King’s roses in particular, Harrison’s Yellow, is notorious for its ability to survive long travels.

It was the “first American-bred commercial rose introduced in 1830,” said King, and was also called the Susan B. Anthony rose as she grew up with the bright yellow roses in Rochester and traveled with them, said long-time family friend Dave Kellogg.

“It travels well because it transplants and grows easily,” said Kellogg. Because of its ability to do so, it also garnered its nickname as the Pioneer Rose.

“The historical roses tend to have a nice aroma, because that was what was really important back then,” he said. “Today it’s more about the size of the bloom.”

So despite warnings from nearby gardeners about the inability to grow roses in Cazenovia, King wants residents to know that they, indeed, can grow roses in Cazenovia.

“A message I want to send to people in Cazenovia is, ‘Hey, you can grow roses,’” said King who currently has 40 varieties of cold hardy roses on his property — a term for flowers referring to their ability to tolerate harsh winters, droughts and resist diseases. Most bloom continuously and require low maintenance.

“The Rugosas are my favorite family,” said King. “A lot of them are associated with the Empress Josephine,” who was the first emperor of France Napoleon Bonaparte’s wife. She had varieties of the roses from across the world in her Malmaison gardens. But as “fashion-oriented” gardeners eliminated antique varieties from their gardens, King said “many of these roses vanished from gardeners’ consciousness.”

“Only fairly recently have some people launched efforts to find survivors, identify them and promote them again,” he said. “These lost roses are often found in cemeteries and around former slave quarters and abandoned homesteads.”

Inspired by one particular Regosa Rose — the white Rosa rugose alba, and memories made with his late mother, King even calls his rose garden “The Nannabet Rose Garden” in memory of Elizabeth “Nannabet” King, who passed away in 2011.

King recalled a time when he had received an assortment of these roses by mail and Nannabet came to visit, offering “moral support” as she sat outside and watched King plant the Rosa rugose alba roses with a glass of Imperial in hand.

“I think that Nannabet, who always appreciated simple, but beautiful, things would find this ‘a little bit charming,’” said King.

He begun the project in 2012, ordering the first 20 bushes and building 10 raised beds. In 2018 he built five more beds and planted an additional 13 roses.

“All the roses have their own unique fragrances – everyone’s different,” said King. “The whole history of roses, up until the 19th century, was all based on valuing their fragrance and medicinal qualities.”

“We appreciate [Jay’s] roses – it’s a labor of love,” said Raquel Huckans, a family friend of the Kings, along with her husband, John, who attended the Rosalia celebration.

Gardeners themselves, the Huckans grow lemon, kumquat and fig trees on their property in Cazenovia, as well as many perennials, biennials and even garlic.

“Jay has such enthusiasm,” said Dave Kellogg’s wife, Barb. Though not a gardener herself, she’s an artist who “just loves looking at and enjoying the flowers.”

“[Jay] is a very special person,” said another long-time family friend Eileen Thompson who lived near the Kings for many years in Syracuse. “He’s a great historian and loves to preserve things.”

King said the end goal at Bag End is “to collect as many cold hardy varieties as possible and to take advantage of the tendencies of many of them to send out runners — and plant them all over our 15 acres.”

For those looking for selections of hardy roses, King said he buys his roses online from High Country Roses, a plant nursery in Colorado.

“They have a really good selection of antique roses,” he said.

Bag End is located at the top of the hill to the west of Cazenovia Lake at 1702 Route 20 West in Cazenovia.

For more information about the home, visit its listing on HomeAway.com or Madisontourism.com.