My list of recommendations from my zone 4 experience for ease of growing, hardiness and no fuss: Alba Maxima Alba Semi-plena Alika Applejack (the only truly *cane hardy* Buck rose IME) Belle de Crecy Belle Poitevine Champagne Arches, AKA Nancy Parker Fantin Latour Felix Leclerc Fru Dagmar Hastrup Great Maiden's Blush Hebe's Lip Henri Martin Henry Kelsey John Cabot John Davis Leda Marie Victorin Mme. Hardy Mme Legras de St.Germain Morden Blush Rosa glauca Rosa villosa pomifera Rose de Rescht Stanwell Perpetual Sydonie Therese Bugnet William Baffin various Spinnossimas, "Scot's Rose", gallicas, albas, rugosas (careful on the hybrid rugosas - some can be very tender.) There are many, many other roses that I do succeed in growing here, but if your newbie growers are looking for less disease problems, less pruning work, and less winter protection routine then I would pare my list down to these. BTW, on your list of possibles, I also grow Morden Sunrise, Alexander Mackenzie, Marie Bugnet and Martin Frobisher and an awful lot of the Buck roses. They don't make the hardiness cut although they're all lovely. I have a lot of die back on each and every one of them each year. I guess as I get older, I'm getting tired of hard pruning and waiting for the "bounce back" - or not. Right now I'm looking at a lot of beds with very little rose left above ground in them, cut back as recently as they were and just starting to re-grow. Not much of a garden at the moment! The season is so short here that a rose which can start out full size is a definite advantage I'm beginning to think. I'm currently eying my collection more critically with a goal of less fuss, more reward in future. (Sorry if I sound pessimistic, but given my current state of mind, your post struck a chord.) Hope some of this somehow helps, Anne

Hi, my name's Tricia & I read through the Northern Forum a lot but rarely post here because I live in Connecticut now. But, I have some experience with the roses being discussed here from living in New Hampshire & so I thought I'd make a post. Hope nobody minds. R. 'Therese Bugnet' will naturally grow into a vase-shaped form with her canes arching up and over. She's never, on her own, going to look like a stout, bushy rugosa...she's got much more grace than that. She'll need about an 8' circle of real estate to really strut her stuff. The canes will be held off the ground enough you can plant small ground covers (like geraniums) at her feet & she looks wonderful. Since she's an early bloomer...she often experiences heavy rains while in full bloom. I have found that her flowers are remarkedly sturdy...I just gave the canes a good shake to get rid of excess water & left her alone. A couple hours later the flowers were always looking pretty good. R. 'John Cabot' (Canadian Explorer Series) is a much larger rose than R. 'Therese Bugnet'. 'John Cabot''s natural form is also to grow tall & then arch over. It's even more robust than R. 'William Bafflin'! To let this rose do its natural thing...give it about a 10-12' circle of real estate & just let those long, wonderful canes grow up until gravity takes over & they gracefully arch over towards the ground. It's a stunning sight in full bloom! It'll naturally grow to about 8-10' tall. OR, 'John Cabot' can be trained to be a quasi-climber. It will require a tall, very sturdy trellis because this rose throws LOTS of canes each year. The canes will still have a tendency to reach for the top of the trellis & arch over the top. I had an old clothes line in my back yard...we removed two end posts & attached a swing to the other set of posts. Planted a 'John Cabot' at the base of each post. In four years, both rose bushes had grown to the top of the posts and arched over the top pole...draping the swing in roses for two glorious weeks in June. Right after bloom, 'John Cabot' begins throwing new, vigorous canes. Tie these up quickly because they seem to harden off faster than most roses & become difficult to work with even just after a couple weeks. If you are allowing your 'John Cabot' to grow naturally...every year (starting with year 3), prune out 3-4 of the oldest canes at the base to keep the shrub vigurous. If you have an "own root" shrub & experiene winter die-back...you can cut 'John Cabot' to the ground each spring & it'll regrow to about a 4' shrub each season assuming about a 100 day season. Like R. 'Theresa Bugnet', it's natural form though is NOT bushy, stout, & short. Think something more like a natural (unpruned) forsynthia that has been allowed to grow unmolested by pruners (although, of course, a rose will never be as dense as a forsynthia)...and that's the effect R. 'John Cabot' has in the landscape. Hope someone finds my experience useful.

Joey: Very good questions. Here are what I learn about own-root roses: 1) Where they are bred and the TYPE OF SOIL & weather predicts where they will be successful. Roses bred in acidic & rainy & less sun England will be successful in acidic & high rain East coast. But roses bred in alkaline & hot & sunny Southern France will be successful in alkaline clay & sunny garden. 2) How vigorous the root is? The newly bred roses ARE VERY VIGOROUS as own-roots, and can survive BOTH Pakistan 113 F hot summer and my zone 5a winter of -20 below zero. Vigorous roots are both long (at least 2 feet deep) and spreading wide. Vigorous roots are also THICK to store water in dry summer/winter. Dee-lish can die to the crown, but the root is so deep that it can go for 1 month without watering, either through a cold & dry winter or hot summer. Dee-lish has a climber as a parent (Graham Thomas). If a rose is bred with a climber in its genetics, it will have deeper root. 3) It's the selection of the fittest. In breeding roses, there will be many seeds ... and only the fittest seed sprout up to be the most vigorous root or to be disease-resistant. The other dozen to 100 seeds either don't germinate, or sprout some wimpy plants that black-spot & less petals, or can only bloom once a year. This answer your question directly, breed roses in your cold zone and see which seed can sprout in extreme cold temp., and which seed has the deepest root to survive the winter. English roses, bred in a colder climate than France: most have climber-heritage or Old Garden Roses' genetics, and English roses are actually favored by hot climate folks in Pakistan due to the vigor of their roots. Deeper root = more weather resistant. I hang out in Facebook Fragrant Rose Lovers group, where most Pakistan posters are. English roses are favored in both extreme hot and extreme cold climate due to the toughness of their roots to survive long periods of drought.

My 2.5 years old Thomas Lipton is the star right now. Looks like the plant is finally established and churning out tons of buds without me doing anything special. All it got was a helping of cow manure mid last summer. The pros are endless- Virtually no maintenance For some mysterious reasons not even the Japanese beetles bother it (other roses are not as lucky) Fragrant leaves- YES I can just rub the leaves gently with my fingertips and the unmistakable rose smell transfers to my skin even when no rose in bloom. Did not know rose leaves can smell so good before planting this beauty. Blooms are at least 3” across. Some even reaching 4”. Amazing fragrance. The entire side yard where the rose is, smelling ROSE right now. Good shade tolerance. Gets no more than 5 hrs of sun for most of the year. Summer sun stretches barely to 6 hrs for about 2 months. Elegant arching branches look tidy. Deer tend to not bother it. Keeps blooming on and off May to October with two distinct flushes that I noticed last year - one in May and the second one in October beginning. Decent petal counts (~40 large petals) to look dense enough and yet has exposed center at fool bloom to attract the bees. Pure bright shade of white. The only negatives are thorns (which is probably why deer don’t eat the canes) and aphids at the beginning of spring. But the aphids also attract all the neighborhood ladybugs. I think it’s one if the most underrated roses out there. Got the plant from Home Depot for under 20 bucks - did not find a lot of information on line when I tried to search for care instructions. After experiencing first hand, highly recommended thus one to anybody looking for a fast growing low maintenance fragrant Ragusa rose. Here are a few pictures from this evening: