New Rose Bed - Need Suggestions

15 years ago

My 8 year old rose bed suffered near 100% loss due to drought and lack of attention while I was ill. Things were getting all woody so I'm looking at this as time to start over again and prune properly going forward.

Have about 15 slots for roses. Prefer hybrid teas (yes, I know I'm insane).

These are the absolutes going into the bed: Tiffany, Gemini, Opening Night, Veteran's Honor, and Signature.

Would like at least one English rose (love Gertrude's smell but ouch the thorns).

Fragrance is mandatory. Would love it if it was resistant to black spot but given my zone nearly impossible.

So have at it! Would love to hear some recommendations.

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Comments (6)

tulipsmiles
15 years ago
I bought Heritage last year (it's an Austin) and never new how much I would love it! It's gorgeous in shape, it's fragrance makes me melt and it is quite disease resistant. (so they tell me) I just love it and am super happy I bought it. Good luck with your new bed. Glad your feeling better!
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iris_gal
15 years ago
Chicago Peace - my favorite rose-pink-peach blend
Just Joey - unique salmon
Marilyn Monroe - yummy apricot
Pope John Paul II - gorgeous white
Sonia - cameo pink, florist
St. Patrick - the only yellow HT for me

If you consider floribundas there are some lovely ones with blooms as elegant as an HT.
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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
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alla_pa
15 years ago
Violet, I'm sorry to hear you were ill. Hope you feel much better now. I love HT and English roses too. My favorite HTs are:
Veteran's Honor (you've already chosen it)
Bronze Star - huge "glowing" ruffled flowers, powerful and beautiful fragrance in any weather, blooms non-stop for me, foliated all the way to the ground; my favorite.
Yves Piaget - large, peony-like flowers with intense fragrance, summer heat does not slow down flower production in my garden, it grows wider than taller (5'x 6'); disease resistance is good for HT and improves with maturity.
Peter Mayle- huge fragrant flowers, very tall and bushy for me; disease-resistance improves a lot with maturity.
Belinda's Dream - though it's a shrub rose but Tiffany was one of her parents.
Pope John Paul II - a good flower producer, very nice fragrance, my PJPII is not mature enough to evaluate its disease-resistance.
Sunset Celebration/Warm Wishes, Electron, Prairie Sunrise, McCartney Rose have good disease-resistance.
As to the roses with an old-garden-rose flower form, there are so many beautiful Austin's and OGRs to choose from. To name a few, I'd recommend to take a look at David Austin's Pretty Jessica and a bourbon Souvenir de la Malmaison.
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plan9fromposhmadison
15 years ago
This time around, you may wish to opt to plant only own-root roses. These start out smaller, but just keep getting bigger and stronger....very unlike the grafted hybrid teas we're accustomed to (which start out great, then go into slow decline).

I think most of the bad rep hybrid teas get is due to the fact that they are usually sold as grafted plants. And I suspect that antique roses are perceived as being more disease resistant because they are generally grown as own-root plants.

If your roses are own root, the next time they are faced with adversity (drought, a hard freeze, their owner's spending the whole summer in Tuscany...), they may die back, but will rebound surprisingly well. Grafted roses have a short lifespan and limited growth potential. Own-root roses can live for centuries, and can eventually grow much larger than their grafted counterparts.
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maele
15 years ago
If your summers are hot, definitely St. Patrick. Also, Just Joey is gorgeous, and if you like the look, Double Delight. I only like solid colors, but DD is special enough that I make an exception.
Take a look at my post "Austins... hot, dry summers", everyone has been very generous with their suggestions.
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henryinct
15 years ago
I would say beware of California roses ie., roses that do well there but not in colder zones. Ask for recommendations from those in your zone. Rule number one should be zone hardiness. I can tell you St. Patrick does not survive for most people in cold zones, Z7 is borderline so expect trying times if you want to succeed with it.
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New Rose Bed - Need Suggestions

Comments (6)

tulipsmiles

iris_gal

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