What a fun weekend!

Wonderful and educational speakers (see listed in most recent Newsletter), a very interesting and fun Friday night presentation complete with potpourri making and herbal taste testing with Envi Botanical!

The room was filled with beautiful cut roses. Many of them from the amazing garden of Ann Wells – who serves as Secretary to the IL IN District.

There were so many roses for auction that you thought it was spring. And the plant swap was very popular. Most everyone went home with a new rose or a new companion for their garden. Big thanks to those who found the roses and took care of them so we could have them for the meeting and to those who participated by sharing plants from their garden for the plant swap!

2024 and 2025 SILVER AWARD WINNERS WERE ANNOUNCED

About the Award (from ARS Website)

Each District of the American Rose Society may annually award the American Rose Society Silver Honor Medal to any ARS member who is an official member of that District who, in the opinion of the District Awards Committee, has provided meritorious service to the rose and its culture, for efforts expended in support of the American Rose Society and its objectives within the District.

2024 Winner: Teresa Byington, Current Social Media Chairman, Website Administrator, and Past District Director. 

Member of the Indianapolis Rose Society – CURRENT SOCIAL MEDIA CHAIR

2025 Winner: Teresa DowNham, Current District Treasurer
Member of Indianapolis Rose Society – Current President

Click on images below to start gallery feature or to enlarge image.

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🌹🌹Next up is our March meeting. If you have speaker or activity ideas, please contact Sonja here. Stay tuned for more details!

SAVE THE DATE

We are planning to reactivate in-person District meetings this upcoming year with the Spring meeting being planned for March 26, 2022 at the Irwin Community Center in the Homewood-Flossmoor Park district. Our hosts will the John Pais and his team from the Sauk Trail Rose Society. The center is located at 18120 Highland Avenue Homewood, IL 60430. Please keep the date of Saturday, March 26, 2022 open to attend the meeting.

Complete details will be available in the upcoming issue of the Illi-Ana which should be available in December.

Please share this information with others. If you have questions contact me here.

Roger Brueckman
IL IN District Director

Rose lovers from around the country met for the first American Rose Society National Convention since COVID began. Something rose friends have been looking forward to for so long! Social media was full of happy faces from Milwaukee. Those who couldn’t make it were eagerly awaiting pictures! Because of the new technology, the American Rose Society was able to connect those at home with real time live feeds of special events.

Our district was well represented!

Click on photos to open gallery to see enlarged images below.

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WINNERS!

Congratulations to Joel Anderson who received the Silver Honor Medal.

Congratulations to Tom Bolden who was named Outstanding Consulting Rosarian.

Congratulations to Linda Kimmel (Registrar) and Teresa Downham (Treasurer) who received the Presidential Citation for their work on the convention planning team. Well done ladies, we are proud of you!

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Roger Brueckman was installed as the IL IN District Director and Linda Kimmel was installed as ARS Northwest Regional Director.

Mark Nolan won the miniflora class and won the Best of Judges Classes with Lady E’owyn.

NATIONAL NEWS

Congratulations to Diane Sommers our new ARS President and Craig Dorschel as Vice President and to Carrie Bergs as Treasurer. The very deserving Baldo Villegas received the ARS Gold Honor Medal. President of the Lehigh Valley Rose Society, Nate Fisher was named the ARS Rising Star. He was accompanied by his adorable family!

Click on photos to open gallery to see enlarged images below.

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GARDEN TOURS

Convention attendees had the pleasure of visiting three fantastic gardens…

JOE AND CARRIE BERGS’ GARDEN

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STEVE SINGER’S GARDEN

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WILL RADLER’S GARDEN…

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ARS MEMBERSHIP

Membership in the American Rose Society gives you a front row seat to the world of roses, rose news and rose friends. As a member you will receive many benefits … the best of all is the the subscription to the American Rose magazine and if you are not a member of the American Rose Society, it is easy to do so. Check out the benefits here. https://www.rose.org/join-renew

On Saturday, October 3, the IL IN District had their fall meeting – VIRTUALLY. While this is less than ideal, it was wonderful to see faces (or names) in those little boxes that populate on our screens. It funny, but in time we do begin to feel we are in the same room together!

If you were not able to join us, you may watch the recording below. Note: this is a very large file and may take a few minutes to download.

 

WONDERFUL SPEAKERS!

We had excellent speakers with interesting programs.

• Bruce and Maggie Barr: Update on Cream City Roses 
• Dr. Andy Plasz: Preparing for Battle Against Midge, Aphids, Thrips, Japanese Beetles and more!
  
• Roger Brueckman: 2021 Rose Introductions.

NEW CONSULTING ROSARIANS!

Joel Anderson our Consulting Rosarian Chairman shared the exciting news that we have 5 new Consulting Rosarians! All attended the virtual CR school that ARS offered this year! 

• Anne DeVries
• Pei-Fun Hurst
• Tom Mann
• Sharon Shipp
• Susan Smith

CONGRATULATIONS! We appreciate your hard work and celebrate with you on this great achievement!  

If you would like to know more about the CR program, link here. 

FYI: There will be another ARS Virtual CR school coming soon. Joel Anderson will keep us informed of those dates. For more ARS information, go to Rose.org or follow the ARS on Social media.

DISTRICT AWARDS!

Another highlight of our time together is celebrating our district award winners:

Congratulations to Frank DeVries of Sauk Trail Rose Society who received the Outstanding Consulting Rosarian Award. And, outstanding he is. His knowledge and enthusiasm for sharing his love of roses are to be celebrated. Great Job Frank. And, thank you!

Congratulations to Roger Brueckman, who was given the highest honor from our district … The Silver Medal Award. Roger has faithfully served nationally, regionally and locally for more than 18 years. He currently serves as President of the Belleville Rose Society and as an ARS Regional Director. Well done Roger! We appreciate you!

Roger, you are in great company… some of our more recent winners:

LOOKING AHEAD…

Now we look ahead to 2021. While we hope for in-person meetings, we are grateful for these new virtual tools that connect us from coast to coast and around the world.

Be safe. Be well. Hope to see you soon.

Teresa Byington
IL IN District Director

New Beginnings

New Beginnings can be scary, fun, daunting and exciting. I find myself in the later… EXCITED. 

EXCITED that our excellent outgoing District Director will become a new Regional Director. 

EXCITED that I have the opportunity to work with all of you and get to know you better. 

EXCITED to start a new website and open our world of roses a bit wider. 

EXCITED that together we will plan opportunities to learn more about the roses we love and share our love of roses with others through conferences and rose shows. 

EXCITED to hear your ideas for the district. As I assume this new role and continue in my roles as President of the Indianapolis Rose Society, Co-Host of the Rose Chat Podcast and garden blogger, I have personal goals that govern what I do. 

• I want to represent the rose, her people and her organizations with love, excellence and integrity.
• I want everyone that comes to us to be warmly welcomed and fully informed to take their next steps whether with the organization or in the garden.
• I want to provide multi-generational resources whenever possible.
• I want to provide entry points for people when they walk through our doors physically, with programs and resources or find us via social media, websites or blogs. I want our information to be shareable, linkable and searchable.

I love people and I love roses and I’m EXCITED for more opportunities to bring them together.

Teresa Byington
Indianapolis Rose Society President
Incoming Director of Illinois Indiana District

OUTGOING DIRECTOR’S MESSAGE

This is my last message to the District as District Director. I want to thank my entire board for their great work helping to build our District into a larger and stronger organization. Changing the District to assume the financial responsibility for our District’s meetings has expanded the participation of more local societies to sponsoring a District meeting.

We did not lose any money at any District meeting. At the same time we kept the costs to the attendees within reason. The financial statement for the year is found later in this issue. Our total ending balance for the District is over $16,000.00 which is great.

As you are all aware Teresa Byington has been installed as our new District Director. She will bring her “can-do” attitude to this position. Her strong social media background will spearhead our District to become even larger and more active. We have many ideas for our future meetings.

BOTH OUR MEETINGS FOR 2019 HAVE BEEN SCHEDULED.

SPRING:

The spring meeting will be Saturday, March 30 in Logansport, Indiana. Additional information on this meeting is listed in a recent issue of the Illi-Ana. (Download here.)
SPEAKER: Dr. Mark Windham of the University of Tennessee will be with us and will present three 20-minutes classes on diseases, insects and pesticide safety. 

FALL:

The fall meeting with our normal District rose show will be held on Saturday, September 7th at the Richland Community College in Decatur Illinois.

Please reserve both of these days so you can attend the meetings.

Roger Brueckman
Illinois-Indiana District

Roger and Linda Kimmel presenting Andy Plasz with the Silver Medal at the Fall District meeting in Indianapolis.

-Linda Kimmel

If you have never attended an American Rose Society (ARS) National Rose Show, you have no idea what you are missing. The best exhibitors in the nation gather together with the best roses in the nation, creating a mecca of roses. There are roses of all shapes, sizes and colors, more than the imagination can comprehend.

Why do we exhibit and judge roses? Because it is just a lot of good fun and camaraderie. I continue to learn something at every show, whether exhibiting or judging. It is always a manageable challenge and you meet such nice people.

Bob Martin, ARS President, wrote in an article, titled “Why We Grow Roses”, a description that beautifully sums up the spirit of rose exhibiting:

“Winning is great, as any rose exhibitor will tell you. But better yet, as most rose exhibitors will quickly add, is the wonderful opportunity that a rose show provides to meet people who genuinely love roses. Rose exhibitors are, with very few exceptions, great people. They come from all walks of life sharing only the common love of roses. They will tell you everything they know to give you the chance to do better than they. The warmth and friendship of rose show exhibitors lasts well beyond the fading of the memory of your trophy and will bring you back to the rose show again and again.’

Of course, many of the winners were from California, not surprising. Roses grow bigger and bloom more in California due to the wonderful amount and intensity of the sun. Californians’ do not have to contend with winter kill, but they were suffering from a severe invasion of chili thrips and have humongous watering bills! No matter where you live, one can expect some challenges to growing roses. But astute rose growers will overcome.

Since a picture is worth a thousand words, I would like to share a few of my rose show photos. First, congratulations to Andrew Plasz, Libertyville, IL for winning the Mini Duchess Arrangement Award. (Mini Roses: ‘Incognito’ and ‘Showstopper’)

‘The Squire’ is a beautiful dark red shrub rose, hybridized by David Austin, exhibited by Linda Clark, San Diego, CA, anointed “Queen of Shrubs Award”.

‘Sparkle and Shine’ is another winning rose hybridized by Christian Bedard of Weeks Roses. Bright yellow blooms, disease resistance and hardy. This specimen won the “Queen of Floribunda” certificate, exhibited by Justin and Lilly Ekuan.

One of the hottest new hybrid teas on the market is ‘Ring of Fire’, hybridized by Chris Greenwood, exhibited by Mr. And Mrs. Carl Mahanay. ‘Ring is Fire’ is a vibrant eye-catching orange color with good exhibition form and holding power. We sold this rose through our local rose society (Indianapolis), everyone that purchased it, had glowing reports.

I cannot forget the Gold Awards in arrangements. In the large arrangement class, three containers- modern design of ‘Love and Peace’, ‘Peace’ and ‘St. Patrick’ claimed the top award by Barbara Gorden.

In the miniature division, a traditional mass with ‘Joy’ claimed the Gold award, exhibited by Cherry Hoover.

Rose shows are fun and rewarding, if you get a chance, attend, even better, exhibit!

“Part of adulthood is searching for the people who understand you.” – Hanya Yanagihara

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For more about the conference and to see garden tour pictures, read on here.

SCHOOL DAYS / Reading, Writing and Roses, our Illinois Indiana Conference and Rose Show, has come and gone but what a weekend we had. Teresa Byington and Linda Kimmel served as co-chairmen of the event with a large cast of others who helped make it all happen. Thank you to each of you! To see the list of chairmen, click here.

FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS: 

Friday night was our Rosy Social Hour where we had the chance to meet new friends and catch up with long time friends while munching on rose flavored treats and drinking Rosé. (Thanks to Teresa Byington and Eloisa Garza for the fun treats.)

THE SCHOOL BELL RANG EARLY!

ROSE SHOW:
Saturday started early at 6 am. The cars and trucks filled with roses came into our room. Fortunately we had a cargo door since is was raining cats and dogs. Even with all the people and all the activity — the room was filled with calm as the creative juices started flowing. I wish we could have a video of the whole process.

We had masters. We had novices. We had watchers. We had helpers. 

All at their tasks — helping the rose be her very best self.

HORTICULTURE:

Our room was filled with beautiful roses! Below are two masters at work! Thank you John Hefner for serving as Rose Show Chairman with all of those duties and along with your beautiful partner creating rose perfection and winning 8 out of the BIG 9 awards. Oh my. I wish every novice in the world of exhibiting could observe their artistic gifts. Donna was not only working hard on the roses, she handled our finances and many of our decorations. Yes they are rose super heroes.

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ARRANGEMENTS:

There were tables of beautiful arrangements by William Carlson, Mary Ann Hext, Linda Kimmel, Renee LaFollette and Andy Plasz. Adding to the fun, three of our novices, Teresa Downham, Carolyn Lloyd and Trudy Struck did a group arrangement.

To see the full list of winners, click here.