I nominate Le Vesuve. Yeah, Le Vesuve could be quite massive. La Roseraie du Desert's website shows it on their list.

Sherry

Here is a link that might be useful: If only sweat were irrigation...

Thanks, Sherry! Sadly, I fear that 'Le Vesuve' is a cursed rose for me. Currently I have a minute plant, and in keeping with the history of this rose in my garden, I'm afraid it's already fading. I would love to be surprised by a different outcome.
Melissa

I'm putting Le Pactole in a center of the bed situation. Mine is still in the pot but have been told it's a bloom machine and can get very large. La Roseraie du Desert has this one, too.

I love my Chestnut Rose, it only blooms once (and it is very beautiful), but has beautiful foliage and bark the rest of the year. Even in dry spells mine always looks near perfect. :) It can easily get taller than 6 feet.

Louis Phillipe is massive here and always healthy. Ditto Bon Silene. She's been in the ground a little over a year and is probably 5 1/2 feet by 6 wide. Mrs. Dudley Cross has only been in the ground since the fall and is already close to 5 feet. At this point, her foliage is sparse, though. I don't know if that will change as she matures. She also may not be getting enough sun. She's in afternoon shade, morning sun.

I second Floridarosez9's suggestion of Louis Phillipe. I've been calling mine Cramoisi Sup., but I feel sure we're talking about the same rose. Mine is a bloom machine and smells wonderful. Always healthy for me too. :)

The Alba roses get huge but I dont know if they would do good in the wet weather.

How about Mrs. B. R. Cant? Largest-growing Tea I'm aware of. Or Mutabilis -- also gets huge.

Malcolm beat me to it with Mrs. B.R. Cant. Mine is still a baby but the flowers are already quite a good size and it's one of the largest tea roses. The foliage is quite beautiful too. It's the blooms however and the size of the rose that really speak to me. I love Mutabilis too and would never be without it but for me it's not really spectacular enough for a centerpiece. I have mine against the light-colored wall of the house, as a background shrub for the front garden, which I really like.

Ingrid

Mrs. B.R. Cant is a great rose. Also, Marie van Houtte will get very large, I think even in your climate. You mention Maman Cochet, which is a wonderful plant, also Mme. Lambard gets large and is tough.

The Alba roses get huge but I dont know if they would do good in the wet weather.

I believe I've read before that the Romans grew Rosa x alba, and I'm going to remind melissa of Alba Maxima (but she probably already grows it).

(I used to grow a very content Alba Semi-plena (aka "The White Rose of York", hence my Garden Web name) until a freaky winter (50's & 60's repeatedly through January and then sudden below zero weather the 2nd week of Feb.) killed it, a rose usually hardy into zone 3. :(((((((

I live in a wet-ish climate, plus from May - Oct. it got 30 mins. of lawn sprinkler every morning, something I would have stopped if I could have. It managed well enough despite the damp. It also grows well in England.)

These are all great suggestions. I know this because I already have the roses mentioned, some of them in multiples, especially the great big ones like 'Mrs. B.R. Cant' and 'Bon Sil�ne'. Sherry, I'm afraid my baby 'Le Vesuve' is indeed dead. This is at least the third try for me.
I want a Tea rose here because this rose will be surrounded by other Teas and Chinas, and that Tea foliage and, I think, big blooms and massive cane structure will be dominating and fit in with the group aesthetically.
Clanross, I love the Chestnut Rose too, for all the reasons you give. Mine is growing out in the middle of my garden "meadow". It can romp there to its heart's content, and its species character makes it look right in the spot: in our area, old abandoned fields often have a thriving dog rose or two in them.
York Rose, you're right, 'Alba Maxima' has no trouble with wet winters, or with anything else for that matter. Dog roses, supposedly one of the parents of the Albas, are native and common in this area, and the relationship shows in how comfortable Albas are in conditions here. 'Alba Maxima' is one of the very few old roses I've seen growing locally. I've been enjoying 'Alba Semiplena' lately. I have it down in a rather nice spot in the bottom of the garden, and was admiring its foliage and flower coloring last year when it bloomed. I'm planning on putting three plants of peony 'Duchesse de Nemours' around its feet, dividing up a plant I've had for a few years, and am hoping for splendid results. We gardeners do a lot of hoping. White foxgloves would be awfully nice as well, don't you think? But I don't know where to get any.
You all are causing me to lean towards 'Mme. Lambard', of which I have a plant (that I can take cuttings from), or 'Maman Cochet', always assuming I can find it. I also have a plant of 'Niles Cochet' I could take cuttings from: would that be suitable? I would still like to get feedback on the habit of 'Alister Stella Gray' and whether it can be grown as a shrub. But my heart tells me that it's not flashy or structured enough to play the role of centerpiece.
Thanks, everybody! I appreciate the suggestions.
Melissa

I don't have enough experience with teas, etc. to give any advice, but do want to say that I'm finding this thread very interesting,since, like myself, Melissa lives in Italy. BTW,I suspect that for me, too,as for Melissa, the warm-climate roses won't get as big as they might in California or the southern USA; maybe because it rains so little during summer? regards, bart

Bart, I suspect that has a lot to do with it; I'm always amazed at how fast things grow in the eastern U.S., where it does rain in the summer. Also chilly wet winters like we've had the last two years cause a lot of dismay among the Teas. I've had a couple of fine roses get cut back hard by disease (canker?). Our heavy soil can get finally too heavy even for roses when it rains for months on end. I hope to see improvements over time as my hedges grow and the soil is enriched with organic materials.
So how's life in your part of Italy? Spring is springing out all over here in Piacenza. The Mediterranean peonies are getting fat buds, and the lilacs are preparing to flower. And of course the earliest roses are forming buds. It's a nice time of year.
Melissa

Melissa, I can suggest to you:
'G�n�rale Schablikine'
'Bloomfield Abundance'
"Park's Yellow" (of commerce)
'Mr Dudley Cross'
Branchi's "Odorata"
'Beaut� Incostante'
'Baronne Henriette de Snoy'

Ciao :o)
Maurizio

I know nothing about teas but something about biennial white foxgloves. They are very easy from seed. Most will come true but after a few years of selfseeding you must check the undersides of the leaves of seedlings for red veins and discard those as they will grow up purple. My plants are rather skinny with the flowers to one side but there are better varieties with very fat flower stalks, thick with flowers.

Grazie, Maurizio!

Marianne, I tend to forget about seeds, thanks for reminding me. I had foxgloves self-seeded into my Olympia garden, and over time somehow the white kind, which I believe are normally regressive, gained the upper hand and were the majority there. They grew under an apple tree and with trying to reach the light they grew ten feet tall; and oh how beautiful they were.

Melissa

mmm, seeds sown in May will grow into fat little plants ready for planting out in September. Most seed companies will sell seed of just the whites - there are also much smaller ones (Snow Thimbles) I got from Nicky's nursery. Finally, the Camelot strain, available in white and cream, are reliably stable and perennial.

I can also vouch for Alba SemiPlena for size, hardiness, and beautiful giant vase shape with arching canes that send up laterals loaded with blooms.

My showiest big rose is a rugosa hybrid, Polareis, which has a huge and long first flush, is never without some blooms, and has at least a second and in a warm fall a third flush.
Several years ago, after several hard frosts that killed everything, there was a spray of blooms in early December.

Polareis is also completely free of bs, mildew, etc, and has beautiful very intense green rugosa foliage. The only drawback - serious thorns.

Since you didn't say positively that you wanted to keep the bed all teas and Chinas, I will suggest Teasing Georgia. I have that plant in the center of a bed where it fits the bill very well. It is one of the shrubbier Austins, not as prone to bs as some, gets huge and round, and has hundreds of blooms. I find the color very soft, and it goes well with most other roses. It has some tea fragrance. Frederick Mistral is another very large growing plant..looks more like a rose tree than an ht.
Does get some bs. But nice size, fragrance and rebloom. Maggie is a large growing shrubby Bourbon with great rebloom. My Felicia is very large and bushy. I love Comtesse de Provence..mine is a big plant with great rebloom. Very beautiful. For teas my largest are Mme Lombard, my old plant of Mrs. B R Cant, and my old Duchesse de Brabant. What about Fortune's Double Yellow? I want that one but am afraid it gets too big.

I remember seeing the wild foxgloves on the Olympic peninsula when we went camping there. Lots of huge Oriental poppies in people's gardens too. I thought it was heaven on earth.

Just looking over this thread, which I like a lot. Maurizio's suggestions are great! I forgot about Mrs. Dudley Cross... I have Teasing Georgia too...it is MASSIVE.

Melissa, I have no experience of Alister Stella Gray, but HMF says it is "very vigorous" and grows anywhere from 6' 7" to 16' 5". One of my books says 15' x 10' in a warm climate and 10' x 6' in a cool climate. I think it's beautiful!
Laura

Linda, I should have said that in fact I want a Tea rose. This bed is supposed to have a hot-weather-plant look, however little that may accord at times with the reality, and so all the roses are Teas, Chinas, or Noisettes. They keep company with Italian cypresses and pines, some evergreen plantings (a difficult proposition here), a yucca, a couple of Mediterranean peonies, and various aromatic plants. I had 'Teasing Georgia' for a while and concur that it's a lovely rose, but the Austin roses just can't take the abuse that the Teas are able to put with and still grow, and most of them have by now been exiled to forgotten corners of the garden to die or recover as they will. Also I love that excellent clean Tea foliage. This bed is in an area of quite poor soil--I keep saying that, don't I?--and it takes a while for the plants to get a hold. When my husband planted a young evergreen oak close by last year, when he dug the hole it looked like he was quarrying adobe.
I know those Olympic Peninsula foxgloves! My own colony of them in Olympia was started from a plant that volunteered from some neighboring garden. Everybody had them there, and of course the poppies. Here the common field poppy is a huge delight every spring.
Sunny, in my semi-tropical bed I need different roses than you suggest, but you're absolutely right about Alba Semiplena, and I'm planning on dressing up my plant with splendid companions, court ladies surrounding their queen. I've always avoided Rugosas, suspecting that they would hate our heavy ground and dry summers; and then cane girdler entered our garden a few years ago, and a friend who has Rugosas tells me they suffer from its attacks worse than any other roses. To tell the truth, they're not plants I can't live without. I couldn't admire them at all until I learned not to think of them as roses; but when I defined them as exotic oriental shrubs for chilly, humid gardens, they fell into place and became beautiful.
Campanula, no thimbles for me! I want my foxgloves to tower. I've never bought into this trend towards miniaturization of plants, and I don't care that gardens have gotten small: evan a little garden needs one or two bulky shrubs. I'll see whether I can find white foxglove seed. Digitalis isn't a staple in local gardens, as far as I can recall. In Washington state it was everywhere.
Hi, Jerome! Laura, I checked Helpmefind as well, but somehow I can't convince myself that ASG's the right rose. 'Maman Cochet' and 'Mme. Lambard' are both looming large in my imagination.
Melissa

Hi, Melissa,I'm sorry I didn't answer sooner;now is indeed a beautiful time of year,and it's not yet so hot and dry, so I've been trying to get as much done as possible before the weather gets prohibitive.It sounds like your soil, etc are very similar to mine.In fact, I have two rugosas (Roseraie de L'Hay and Wild Edric) and neither of them is doing at all well. On this subject, re foxgloves,you might want to do some serious soil emendment before you try them. I suspect they prefer slightly more acid soil;on my land they refused to self-sow. Instead, however, Delphiniums seem to do amazingly well, in spite of the challenging conditions (my garden mainly has to depend on rain for irrigation;my land has no water source). I agree about liking big plants; I, too,can't really relate much to the idea of everything being miniaturized.
I'm so looking forward to learning more about your garden; this forum is good, though so "big" that I find it a bit hard to keep up with! regards, bart

Massive rose, especially if you like white, repeating and single bloom form; Darlow's Enigma.

Here is a link that might be useful: Garden Musings blog

Bart, good to hear from you. Though most of our garden is extremely poor in organic matter, a few spots aren't, and it's in one of them that the white foxgloves would go. I do have the common ones, in a favorable location, and they have reseeded...I'll see whether they continue to do so during a drought year, which sooner or later will come. Delphiniums...well!...I've never been able to grow them; maybe I was trying in the wrong place. We don't have our own water either, and plants have to be able to get through a dry summer on their own. Last winter, though, anything that died was because it was too wet. But so far it looks like we survived the winter without major catastrophes.
Professor, I appreciate the offer to matchmake, but I believe I am now engaged. In any case, thanks for the suggestion.
Actually, I want 'Darlow's Enigma'. Hmmm..
Melissa

White foxgloves would be awfully nice as well, don't you think? But I don't know where to get any.

Yes, that would indeed be nice!

In the USA you'd have the option of buying Pam's Choice (white with purple spotting in the throat), or Apricot Beauty (apricot colored flowers - since Alba semi-plena, & therefore presumably Alba maxima, opens a peachy color before fading to milk white in the sunlight) foxgloves at a mail order nursery, but I have absolutely no idea what (if any) foxgloves are offered for sale by Italian plant sellers.

Festiva maxima would work nicely as a peony around one of those glorious albas, as well as Duchesse de Nemours! (Thumbs up!! :) )

but when I defined them as exotic oriental shrubs for chilly, humid gardens, they fell into place and became beautiful

So true! Rugosas grow wild on the beaches of New England, a climate not unlike their native one in the northern Orient.

Oh, Mme. Lambard!!! One of my favorite roses!

Laura

I love Graham Thomas for its size and constant bloom. It grows to a full 7' high here. As I mentioned in another post, I grow Clematis, The President, through it. The Pres is blue, and a lovely contrast to the rose.