We have a friend, Edie, who resides in Houston. She wanted to meet up with us before we leave Texas, and it was her suggestion that we meet at the rose garden outside of Brenham. She had heard that the gardens had a rose festival this past week-end, so even though we missed that, we could still see the gardens. It does seem to be an odd time of the year for roses, but cooler weather is starting up again which gets the roses blooming after they had died back during the hot summer.
As you can see in the picture above, the roses are doing well with the fall temperatures and lots of rain. The emporium/nursery has a wide variety of roses for sell as well as many native plants, old-fashioned perennials, herbs and wildflowers. Some are in pots ready to be sold, others are planted in flower beds located through-out the 8-acre old homestead. There were many beautiful plants and flowers everywhere we wandered on what we later learned was an old homestead.
When the nursery was started in 1984 there were the ruins of an old stone kitchen on the grounds. The old homestead of Mcknight- Hairston was rebuilt around that kitchen. Outside the house there is a period cottage garden as well as perennial garden. Mike and Jean Shoup, owners of the emporium, created the nursery with the idea of combining both historic plants and buildings.
There was another home which we could visit while we were at the emporium, a home built in 1910 and moved to the emporium. The "Champneys Green" cottage was named for the rosarian John Champney who introduced climbing roses in the 1800s. As a side note here, it was as early as the 1850s when commercial nurseries offered a variety of flowers and trees for sale.
The nursery also has a children's garden which features characters from the Beatrix Potter books. Not sure which picture I will conclude this posting with, I took so many awesome pictures it was hard to choose! I guess my favorite was a potted begonia, it was sure tempting to bring it home with me.
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