This Bothell Santa spends his offseason keeping rose bushes in tip-top shape

Summertime is high season for Seattle’s rose growers and lovers. They’re a passionate bunch.

John Harmeling is one of the best-known among them. He’s a consulting rosarian, a rose whisperer of sorts.

During a visit to Bellevue, Harmeling showed KUOW around one of his favorite gardens in the area — the backyard of a friend and client that holds about 85 bushes.

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“One of my favorites is that yellow there,”Harmeling said. “I’m sure that’s Julia Child."

He pointed to a bush bearing roses resembling the color of melted butter. The roses in the garden were at their peak, with swirls of pink, yellow, and orange blooms.

Harmeling knows every bush in this corner; he’s been tending to each of them for the last 35 years. That’s how long he’s known owner Marianne Bundren, who shares his enthusiasm for roses.

“John will confirm this: I usually buy the roses that describe themselves as having an old rose fragrance,” Bundren said. “I admire the new processes, the innovation, but color and shape do not replace fragrance.”

Harmeling agreed.

“You often can’t get that in modern roses because they’re hybridizing for form and color,” he explained. “And one of the fragile genes that gets lost is the fragrance gene.”

Harmeling is a retired history teacher. Eastsiders might also recognize him from Molbak’s, where he was Santa Claus for more than two decades.

He traces his passion for roses to when he was a young boy, working in the summer alongside his grandfather who was the head propagator for a local greenhouse on Vashon Island. When he bought his first home, it became a serious hobby.

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These days his home garden is small, but his rose garden extends all over the region in a way.

At 82 years old, he makes his way around, sometimes in his sporty red car, tending to clients’ rose bushes or rescuing distressed ones.

“Growing roses or any other kind of plant is kind of a good outlet for obsessive-compulsive people,” Harmeling said. “I could come here three times a week and find something to do.”

Some of the roses have ended up in garden shows and local competitions.

Each year, the Seattle Rose Society showcases the region’s best blooms. At Factoria Mall a few weeks ago, judges gently inspected the leaves and petals of each bloom. They ranked the entries based on the flower’s form, color, and balance and proportion.

Seattle Rose Society Vice President Megan Barnes, one of the judges, had her first rose bush when she was about 6 years old.

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“I remember going to the Portland Rose Show, which is the oldest society in the nation,” Barnes said. “You’d wake up at 2 or 3 in the morning, drive down to Portland, get there at 6 to enter your roses. So, we’re pretty hardcore in our family.”

Today, her three children grow roses, too.

“It makes you feel good when you can grow a rose, and it looks really nice,” she said. “Everyone thinks it’s hard to do, and it’s not.”

It does take some patience, though.

While they are generally hardy, a big part of growing roses is spring pruning; it’s important for the plant’s health and flower production. Harmeling said many beginners hesitate to aggressively prune.

“These bushes out here,” Harmeling said, pointing to the bushes in Brunden’s garden, “some of them are six feet tall. In the spring, I cut them back to two, two and a half feet.”

Harmeling shares advice in a column for beginners in the Seattle Rose Society’s monthly newsletter. Or, for $50 an hour, he'll provide personal consultations.

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For Harmeling, it’s not just about sharing his knowledge. Growing roses has physical and mental health benefits. He was an avid skier back in the day until a leg injury ended that. These days, it’s all about roses.

“You don’t usually break legs or arms growing roses,” he said. “You get scratched up now and then, but that’s OK.”