When roses are in bloom, Winston-Salem residents get a breath of scented air when they walk by Gary Fleming's yard, which abounds with rose bushes. | Adobe Stock
When roses are in bloom, Winston-Salem residents get a breath of scented air when they walk by Gary Fleming's yard, which abounds with rose bushes. | Adobe Stock
If someone had asked Gary Fleming 50 years ago whether he cared much for rose bushes, he’d have said, “Probably not.”
By chance, though, he bought a home in Winston-Salem from people who had landscaped their yard with lots of rose bushes, so tending to them has fallen on Fleming’s shoulders.
“Some of these bushes are 60 years old,” he said in a WGHP report, as they were mature plants when he moved in. “If you catch the buds at the right stage, they are beautiful, and they make beautiful arrangements that you bring in the house or take to your friends.”
The rose is a woody perennial flowering plant of the genus Rosa, in the family Rosaceae, and rose bushes can live for decades when cared for properly.
Fleming, being new to the game when he moved in, had to pick up some tips from others.
“I’ve had to learn along the way and from rosarians in the community,” he said.
Five decades later, he recognizes that caring for them carries a payoff, for visitors, who breaths in the aroma when the bushes are in bloom, and for him. “It’s therapeutic. You come out here … take care of something you know is going to make a difference in the growth of the rose."
He’ll often given the flowers away in season, making a passerby’s day or brightening up a family member. That care doesn’t go unnoticed, and he gets extra joy from that.
“Everyone likes to be appreciated for what they do, their labor of love,” he said. “I like that. Everybody should like that.”
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