Oh yes, the old roses grow and flower beautifully here. Very easy and low maintenance. My favorite rose of all in my garden in fact is the alba Felicite Parmentier. It's a bit early for her flowers this year however. She is leafing out and has buds, but I don't think the flowers will be open until late this month or early next month. I do have past years' flowers of her up on HMF. My gallicas aren't blooming yet, but Jenny Duval is leafed out and has lots of buds. Kraskoje Kawaskole is only partially leafed out. It's a new one for me, in the last couple years or so (own root, Eurodesert via Heirloom), and I don't remember when it started blooming last year. Later than Jenny D. though. Aimable Rouge is from Pickering and has barely started to wake up. My huge damask York and Lancaster always put on a spectacular show. No need to check for buds, when this roses' flowers open the whole garden is enveloped in heady perfume. Who cares if it only blooms once a year, that scent is divine. Madame William Paul is a lovely moss I've had for decades. Reliable bloomer (but only once) in partial shade. Extremely fragrant. Just beginning to flower now. I added another alba this year, Madame Plantier from Pickering and plan on getting more damasks, albas, and gallicas next year, but which ones........ I also want more eglantines, species, and rugosas, but I am running out of space. Ye olde pot ghetto is embarassingly large as it is. Below is the first flower of the year on the moss Rene d'Anjou. Complete with resident spider! From PIckering and grafted on multiflora. RdA repeats very well and smells heavenly (as does Paul Ricault, minus the repeat). Melissa

The number of hours of winter chill, matter with the once blooming old European roses, I live c. 10 miles east of San Francisco, Ca and I think our climate zones may be similar. Temperatures here rarely get below 30 degrees above zero Farenheit, and if so, than at most for a week or so in total, and that every few years, however some of the Alba, Gallica and Hybrid China roses bloom very well here, -de la Grifferaie blooms gloriously for more than a month in spring, and the Apothecary Rose and Alba Semi-Plena have a shorter bloom cycle, but bloom fully. In Oakland, Ca I've grown Celsiana and La Ville de Bruxelles and both are extraordinary roses, for beauty of bloom. La Belle Sultane didn't bloom much for the first two years in my garden but now it is taking off and Luanne, my wonderful neighbor has an older plant that blooms fully and very beautifully. Her plant of 'The Bishop' is the healthiest and most beautiful of the once bloomers in her garden, it produces a bountiful display of red-mauve roses every year. If you want more ideas for Old European roses to grow with borderline winter chill, I suggest that you search the Internet to find out how many hours of winter chill you get each year and compare it with San Jose California and if they are close, then check the website of the San Jose Heritage Rose Garden, They list all the roses they grow. I've seen these blooming at san jose heritage and would grow them where I live: Belle Isis Nestor Felicite Parmentier de Meaux (also grown at the Berkeley Botanical garden) Mme Legras de St. Germain Belle Amour Konigin von Danemark James Mason (a modern Gallica) Gloire de Guilan although the garden is very hot in summer with temperatures in the 90's and triple digits, with few hours of winter chill, San Josee Heritage Rose Garden have dozens of the older European roses, most of these bloom during the weeks between: mid to late May through June most years. Best Wishes, Luxrosa If your garden has as much winter chill as Sebastopol California, then you might look at the list of roses that vintagegardens.com sells, as all of their mother plants are grown on site in that town.

Christopher, it doesn't repeat. I'd never heard of La Diaphane before so perhaps it was never grown in Sweden? My rose does indeed look similar. Mine is quite short but I don't know how it would behave in a better location. I didn't rustle it, it was a gift from someone who did. I dug up other roses myself from this old garden at the agricultural university, an old and good clone of New Dawn, Alba Meidiland, Katharina Zeimet and a huge red single rugosa I am using to shut out the sight of a new house with an orange roof. I get angry whenever I think of this lost garden, an educational garden aimed at both students and the public. There was a large rose garden of old and new roses I got to know for the first time. I learnt so much here as a beginning gardener, for instance from the trial beds with cabbages grown with different manures or none at all, or about composting. I've never grown cabbages but I learnt about feeding plants.

Wow! I stepped away from this thread for a few hours, and when I came back, there was a string of beautiful new photos! Paul, thank you for all the photos! Tour de Malakoff and Madame Hardy are two of the loveliest old roses, and each one is surely a contender for best in class. Tour de Malakoff may be my favorite Centifolia. There's a photo in one of Peter Beale's books which captures Tour de Malakoff, William Lobb and apricot tulips all tangled together. That one photo of violet-mauve-grey TdM ignited love at first sight many years ago. It still strikes me as odd that most people I meet have never heard of TdM...or so many other classic old roses. Even Madame Hardy, whose blooms are about as close to perfection as any white rose ever comes. Your Marbree seedling is both fascinating and completely charming! Its shade of pink falls into that silvery-lavender range that inspires me to believe in fairies, and the speckling just adds to the illusion, as if the fairies gave the petals a good dusting before flying off to tend other flowers, I wish ALL your roses were in commerce! How can this rose NOT be in gardens everywhere? I love the mossiness of "Nutshop" and would be thrilled if you get a chance to snap a picture of an open bloom! If speckled, silvery pink roses are gifted to us by fairies, surely Moss roses are where fairies reside when they are at rest. Carol One of my daughter's fairy houses made from an overturned clay pot: