The white Polyantha 'Marie Pavie' and her pink sport 'Marie Daly' work well in containers, and would probably fair well in your zone 5 conditions. These are mildly fragrant to me; others detect a fairly strong fragrance. Other Polyanthas you might consider are 'The Fairy', 'Clotilde Soupert' & 'Katharina Zeimet'. Another that would probably do well in your conditions is the Hybrid Spinosissima 'Stanwell Perpetual'. That one might require some attention to keep it within bounds, but I have seen it grown very effectively in a container. The China 'Old Blush' is another variety that's attractive as a container plant. However, it would require winter protection in your area.

My top 5 (plus a runner up): Quietness Marie Pavie Aunt Honey Julia Child Belinda's Dream Heirloom Marie Daly, although an 'Earthkind' Rose does get BS enough to defoliate about the bottom 1/3+ by the end of August, Why it is 'Earthkind' and Marie Pavie is not, needs some explaining to me. Marie Pavie is the better rose of the two, IMHO. More restrained growth, more flowers and slower to rush through a blooming cycle, and some very little BS on only the bottom 1/5 and then only at September's end. I do not believe there is an entirely BS proof rose. Even the Knockouts can show some BS, but usually only under extremely stressed growing conditions. Even if a rose who was well researched, was found to have glowing disease issue reports, and it proved to be BS free in your garden for 10 continuous years, it can have a bad 11th. year for BS and throw the owner into a tailspin. Generally such incidents are glitches with things returning back to normal in subsequent years. What usually causes such an episode are extremely favorable conditions converging at that time so favorable for BS that no rose could show full resistance. Such events are encountered very rarely, fortunately.

I've never looked up my sunset zone before. I see I'm in zone 39, interesting! I think my advice, besides what you've already mentioned, Lynn, would be to give them space. In my lust for more roses I crowded mine together and regret it now. A lot of mine are tied to trellises so they don't cover neighboring roses and they can't become the robust shruby plants they should be. And be patient. I've found that the Austins and OGRs take time to establish and build up they're structure before they really start to strut their stuff. It took at least 3 years and sometimes 5 before they really gave me those big beautiful displays of blooms. Oh, and easy on the pruning. Let them just grow the first few years and don't prune them at all except for dead wood. After that you can shape some but don't whack them back. I thought they needed pruning like my modern roses but they actually don't like being pruned much. When I stopped pruning them like HTs in the spring I found out they bloomed way better for me.

I've finished the Eddison book. A lot of wisdom, well-said, but not very applicable to me for several reasons. She says that gardeners are perfectionists. Anybody who sees my garden, or the Sacramento cemetery, knows that I am not. I do strive to grow every rose as well as possible, but I am a "good enough" gardener. I can focus on the things that please me, and block out the things that do not. Eddison's lowered standards probably are still much higher than mine! Being such a perfectionist, probably there are few roses that would have suited her. She likes hot colors, which would have driven her to modern roses. She says in the book that probably the only more labor intensive garden than a sunny perennial border is a rose garden. I'm pretty sure that she'd have made roses a tremendous job, deadheading them every day just as she does the daylilies, and feeling the need to spray or fuss in pursuit of "perfection." I do think that Albas or species roses would be fabulous in her garden, but don't think such a thing ever occurred to her. (She does mention grubbing out wild multiflora, a good thing!) Eddison gardens on a scale that few of us have the space, finances or energy to do. She had help all through the process, too. She has woodlands, shade gardens, sun borders, etc. She describes her "little" woodland garden as 175 by 70 feet. That's about a quarter of an acre, huge by California suburban/urban standards. She talks about pruning being terrible for the hands, and choosing plants that don't need it. I'm blessed with very little arthritis so far (nearly 60 yrs old), and wonder if decades more of wielding secateurs will take an inevitable toll. I had some bursitis in my hips, which was keeping me awake at night, but no longer have a problem now that I do water aerobics several times a week. Being in the water has made my hands, back, shoulders, etc feel better, as well as improving my overall disposition! She advocates container gardening as being an easier strategy. I've been intrigued by the differing views of containers in this thread. In hot, dry Sacramento, watering containers is a major chore. I also find wrestling things into/out of a pot is a problem. I just had a plastic pot shatter from old age, and its Japanese maple has grown into the ground. I asked my husband to build a box around it, because otherwise I'd kill the tree (and my back) trying to repot it. Overall, I don't think that containers are a strategy for MY old age, unless I end up somewhere with only a balcony. I've never read her other books, but do love how she writes, and she truly is a real gardener, even if her garden in Connecticut has very little resemblance to mine. Hostas and primroses are tatty and short-lived for me. I have to say that she seems largely oblivious to the fact that many people garden in different climates from hers. Reminds me of those maps of NYC, where Manhattan is very large and everything to the west is miniscule. One thing that I love about this forum is how it's made us all very aware of regional differences. Anita