The old awards pretended that a rose needed to grow well in ALL climate zones - that is ridiculous! We all know that each different climate type has roses that love it, hate it, etc.

So, my idea would be to have geographical or climate type categories - cold Winters & hot humid Summers, Cold Winters & hot dry Summers, Cool Winters & hot humid Summers, Cool WInters & hot Dry summers, etc. - you get the idea. Then the awards would be WAY more useful - I do not know any gardeners whose garden is in ALL climate zones at once!

Jackie

Jackie

I would add that the rose should be sold for a minimum of 10 years before it is eligible for the award & still be readily available in commerce. If you look at the list of AARS winners there are a lot of them that have disappeared from commerce or are very limited in their availability. We voted with our pocket books that they weren't that great of rose to begin with.

I have to agree with wieosarian. A lot of those past awardees were winners in the trials but losers in my garden.

See Zimmerman's blog post linked below for the current trial gardens. IF each reports individually, then regional climate variation MAY be SOMEWHAT covered. I doubt that any trials could be perfect in this regard.

About delayed awarding: well, if we realize that they are only trial garden awards.... Plus I, even with disciplined patience, don't want to wait 10 years to hear about a new rose.

Here is a link that might be useful: Meet Our New National Rose Trials

To be honest, we quit paying attention to those trials years ago. Their results just weren't relevant for us.

It is as Jackie says -- roses that are great in one climate may be drech in another. And then there's MICROclimate.

I don't know how it is in other areas, but California has a multitude of Microclimates. A rose that excelled in an AARS test garden at the base of the mountains in La Canada can be a real bow-wow in my conditions -- even tho we're not that far apart.

Tom Carruth would come around to speak about the new roses coming up, and because I whined about it, he took to telling us when an otherwise glorious rose was a wreck in a coastal climate. Now, THAT was valuable input!

Jeri

Jeri is right - I have drooled for years over the gorgeous pictures of Zephirine Drouhin. HMF says it is hardy in zones up to 10b, which usually means will do great in my climate (AND no thorns!).

HOWEVER, we are only 4 blocks from SF Bay, and when I planted a ZD years ago it was really amazing - it was solid, solid, white from mildew 100% of the time - I am not kidding - solid. Never seen anything like it. When I sprayed it religiously, it improved to maybe 50% white. So, it was one of the only two roses I have ever shovel pruned, and I made a mental note that heat zones are NOT the only criteria to rely on!

Jackie

Jackie, increase your temperatures quite a bit and you can add rust to your mildew on ZD. It was second only to Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, Paul Neyron, Tamora, Simplicity, Rose a Parfum d'l Hay and the other early hybrid rugosas. Miserable.

Well, what about folks who do pay attention to rose trials?
What do you think?
Do you know that the AARS is defunct - that the 2013 AARS rose is the last All-American Rose Selection ever? (History may show that its last was its best; time will tell. I suspect in years to come that Francis Meilland may be nicknamed La Nouvelle France).
Do you understand what the ADR standards are?
Do you understand how potentially different the results of these trials will be?
And if so, what about the question in my initial post?

"What do you think?
Do you know that the AARS is defunct - that the 2013 AARS rose is the last All-American Rose Selection ever?"

Yup, I know.

We will do just fine without the AARS. Most of the "winners" evaporate from commerce shockingly fast, which suggests that they aren't the "grow 'em anywhere" treasures the organization would have us believe. It was an industry-promotion machine, and in many ways little more than a marketing tool, IMO. We no longer need that kind of entity making choices for us.

If anything, the comments above clearly indicate that the rose growing community has learned that regional assessments shared on a personal level are far more valuable, and that our microclimates can be a determining factor. It has been my experience that a neighbor one mile down the road from me, with the same soil, light and cultivation can have a very different experience, cultivar to cultivar, than I do. The AARS is completely useless in helping growers at that level.

It was common for J&P to pull their roses from the AARS trials when they were the top scoring varieties so they could introduce them as their exclusive, Rose of the Year. They made more money selling their ROTY than they would permitting their best rated rose in the trials to be sold by everyone. In those cases, the "AARS Winner" for the year was actually second, or even third best. Presumably, the ROTY varieties might actually be better than the AARS winners, which ain't saying much...Kim