I need advice
My small rose garden is full -- I am forbidden from buying more roses unless I am pulling out poor performers. I want to start tackling the shady "non-rose" areas of my garden, seeing what I could do with them.
So I have a row of four roses in the front. Anchoring the row on one side is Jude the Obscure -- he was my first rose and is my first rose love. The fragrance is out of this world, all my neigbors love him when he blooms.
Next to Jude, I have three small Molineaux - they are a couple of years old. It is a good breed, but maybe I got really weak specimens (I bought them from Chamblees who I think sells generally good roses, I am NOT blaming them). There is a slight fragrance (of course everything is slight compared to Jude). But bushes are just teeny tiny. Just a few twigs, with no sign at all of ever being more than that. (Sorry Patrick, I know this is one of your favorite roses, but it just doesn't seem to like my small garden)
So I want to pull the three small Molineaux up, and replace them with 2 (and only 2) larger rose bushes. I was considering putting in 2 of:
1. Jude - Gives an incredible first flush in May/June. After that -- it just sort of depends. Some years, I get 4 decent waves of blooms over the summer, but some years -- I get 3 and they are kind of weak -- not many blooms. The other drawback is that Jude is not very good as a cut flower - a day and a half at most. That being said, he gets to a good size bush (my 5 yr old is about 4 feet by the end of the summer), and he is VERY disease resistant. I may spray for blackspot once or twice in the summer -- and we have really really bad blackspot here.
2. Lady Hillingdon -- Olga grows her very successfully, and she is near me. I am wondering how it is in terms of fragrance, rebloom, disease resistance (I do spray, just not a lot)? How it is as a cut flower? How does it handle the heat?
(the bed is next to the sidewalk and it gets HOT in the summer -- I think that is when Jude tends to shut down on his blooms)
So that I don't seem too negative -- I have had great success with:
1. Lavaglut (a antique looking floribunda -- no fragrance but just never stops blooming -- loves the heat)
2. Souvenir de la Malmaison - a FANTASTIC rose - great fragrance, great cut flower, great rebloom, loves the heat, and pretty disease resistant -- basically the PERFECT pink rose.
3. Rose du Roi -- it is a diva, gets the damask crud as summer wears on, but the fall bloom on it just has this amazing heady knock you off your feet damask scent -- I've taken them to the office and had them perfume the room for a week!
4. Maggie last year on a pillar trellis -- she is looking pretty promising.
predfern
olga_6b
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