About your other question, I think Chamblee, Roses Unlimited or David Austin are all first-rate nurseries and I would not hesitate to order from any of them. My personal preference is for Roses Unlimited, but I don't know if I have a good reason for that preference. I just love opening their boxes and seeing the roses already in bloom. On the other hand, I have to wait until after mid-May to get them--which is 3-4 weeks later than I usually plant, at the latest, my other roses. It is very upsetting to discover RRD in your garden--it's happened three different times in a three year period in my gardens, but fortunately only one plant per year--but still, that is upsetting. I'm no RRD expert, but I don't think you need to worry very much about plants close by "catching" the disease. If the wind blew the mites off of the roses that got RRD, it probably blew those tiny, tiny critters half-way into the next county, not a couple feet away to the next rose. At least in my garden, the roses near by the infected rose never exhibited RRD symptoms. The next year when another rose came down with RRD, it was way on the other side of the back yard. Same thing with the third year when a third rose broke out in symptoms--way far away from the two previous ones. I don't know where my disease-causing mites are blowing in from since I live in the middle of a small town, but I'm assuming it is from the wild stuff growing outside of town, not from other roses in my garden--since I immediately get rid of any infected rose in my garden. As the other posters noted, spraying will not help the problem. As upsetting as RRD is, I think you should just go ahead with your garden plans, assuming everything will be all right--since there is not much you can do about RRD other than destroying the infected plants. Good luck. Kate

The ARS is funding a three year study at the University of Tennessee. Objectives include trying to develop an ELISA test and studying the spread within garden conditions of a garden composed solely of a single cultivar (way out in the country where there are no rose gardens down wind). They have as RRD source plants severely infected plants of the same cultivar. I haven't heard the results of the first year, yet. ----------------- re R. rugosa. Early on, in the garden we followed at Lincoln Memorial University, there was also a plantings of many Pink Grootendorsts near a building that had been the Dairy. They did not get sick for several years as the modern roses planted immediately downwind of multiflora-rich field whose plants were at least 30%infected with RRD. At one time we found some strange swellings on the PG canes, and they made the rounds of a number of Plant Pathologists; no idea what their problem was, but it was just the swelling. Then five or six years in, a plant got two canes that were even more thorny, whose new growth spiraled, whose leaf margins were different and whose blooms were messed up badly. Now I wish I had made scans of the canes, but we were busy with other plases of following the disease as it spread. The problem with the declarations that certain roses don't get RRD is that no one has ever taken the spectrum of all roses species and planted them in different USDA zones and left them in high disease pressure areas for a five to seven year period. What I've seen this winter, when where I live is zone 7 low temperatures, is that the plants with RRD have grown through winter....at least the parts with RRD have. The uninfected canes have gone semidormant. There's so much that we don't know. Here is a link that might be useful: Rose Rosette E-book

Oh, Ann. I would wish all your roses immunity from now until forever, especially the most treasured ones. They are much more than garden plants. The sneaky relentlessness of this contagion is enough to make a rose gardener stark raving mad! Here's hoping for our friend science to point toward a light in the tunnel and for everyone in horticultural and agricultural fields to recognize and act on this very real and voracious threat. Thank you so much for all your contributions to our learning on this forum! Erasmus, I applaud your method and thoughts on RRD spread. I think you are spot on about vigilance. Wildfires start with a cigarette, firecracker or downed power line. Identifying and properly removing and disposing of the first spark can go a long way toward containment as we work toward eradication. Any large monoculture planting can cause huge ecological problems, and a swathe of roses which potentially hosts RRD can become one of the ugliest of ornamental disasters! No plant is maintenance free, but installing roses--Knockouts or any other "disease resistant" variety--in an unsupervised area is especially foolhardy. The marketing implication "plant, water, whack and ignore" can produce devastating consequences for the entire community and far beyond. Genetics may eventually unlock extremely useful information for future breeding and cultivation, but it's not going to alter the current course of this disease. Installing plantings of roses without continuous educated oversight and care is just asking for trouble. Even individual roses strung across private gardens can creat pathways of infection. Residential gardeners, along with every landscaping company and nursery, need to receive four alarm information about RRD. And then there are the unaddressed fields of "wild roses" which are not closely monitored by the highway or agricultural depts. In order to truly contain and eliminate this epidemic, we need to treat it like the plague it is. Observation, containment, elimination, eradication. Carol

I also meant to say that the RRV infection pictured in Our Lady occurred in 2008. So she has gone another 12 years after the cane was cut off. This was not the only RRV rose I've done the cut back to with success. About 10% of my RRV roses with ONLY ONE cane involved recovered if that cane was cut down to the crown immediately upon observation. That means that 90% of the time new growth will also sprout with symptoms showing you that the virus has spread throughout the rose and the whole rose needs to be removed. In the cooler months obviously the growth is slowed down so symptoms may take awhile to emerge.......I say this so that people who have roses that are not easily replaced have a glimmer of hope. I know too well about the decimation RRV can cause. Most are not aware that Tulsa had the 2nd largest rose garden at one time in the United States. When RRV first hit it wiped out 80% of their roses and continued to kill more. Now there are just a hand full from what they used to have. It was a devastating blow to a garden that was installed by the WPA (older folks will know what that organization was). It mowed mine down as well. So if you don't want to mess around with it I understand more then some.......................Maryl