Nearly Wild.

i was pretty sure i couldn't grow roses-too fussy-too much trouble. Saw the pretty little thing and decided to take a chance-came in a cardboard box that you could just plant in the ground-how easy is that! Not easy enough-poor thing blew around the garden for a few parched months. Finally planted it in the shade of a great old Queen Emma lily. Forgot to water it. Never fertilized it. Never blackspotted until other roses joined us here. Can't say that it thrived but it survived. Still blooms steadily all year.

{{gwi:282239}}

My husband and I bought a milk carton rose at WalMart a 4-5 years ago. Not knowing the first darn thing, they snuffed it of course. In 2006 I went looking for a rose to plant in memory of our baby boy, as some of you will remember. After spending the winter on the rose forum and internet in general, I was hooked on roses. I chose Madame Hardy to be "the rose" as I wanted a white one with excellent reputation. So she was my first 'intentional' rose.

Champlain. I was actually anti-roses when I first started gardening because I thought they took some special skills to grow and that they were all garden divas that demanded a ton of time.

One year I decided to try one and went to the local nursery asking for the easiest fool-proof rose they had. Thank goodness the lady working there knew what she was talking about and steered me toward Champlain.

It really was foolproof and bloomed all summer with no special guidance from me. And it actually survived the winter. Having more confidence, I decided to branch into Austins. Then I got addicted and it's been that way ever since. I eventually got rid of Champlain because he bored me.

My first rose was Sunsprite. I bought it on a whim one Mother's Day, to plant at my mothers headstone. Sounds a bit morbid, but she was such a rose lover and could never grow them. I wanted to get her something that would last longer than three days and thought a poorly planted, untended rose would last a couple of weeks at least.
When I planted it, I knew nothing about roses. I had forgotten to bring water, had no fertilizer, no soil ammendment. The marker was halfway under a large tree. I dug a hole in the compacted clay soil, about 8x8 inches and jammed the poor little thing in. Then I ran back to the car and found a few halfdrunk bottles of Evian in the floorboard to douse it with. This cemetary is far out of the way, with no regular grounds keeper so I didn't expect the rose to last long at all with no one to care for it.
A few months later, my sister told me it was still there, alive, and MASSIVE! It survived it's first year, then it's second, its third and fourth. So far as my sister told me a month ago, it's still there and was starting to leaf out. But the last time I actually saw it was last year and I can't bring myself to go see it again. I have another sister see, an evil one. She's hacked off more than half the canes on the side where the marker sits, no doubt excusing herself by saying that the rose shouldn't cover the marker (or even be allowed to touch it).

The first rose I actually grew and took care of are the three Queen Elizabeths standing side by side in the back yard. They are in their fourth season now and nearly as tall as I am. Even the one that my husband hit with the weedwhacker 2 years in a row and was left with two measley little canes has put out two new canes this Spring, and the one in the middle is putting out a cane as well!

The first one I bought was Our lady of Guadalupe it was a box rose from home depot. Loved that rose! It did well and is still going great. I never pruned it only deadheaded it.lol

Our first purchased rose was the climber 'Dorothy Perkins'. Although a wonderful little band from Heirloom I had no clue what I was doing and planted it in too little sun and killed it with kindness. To the roses credit it held on a long time in only very light morning sun with extreme overwatering from me.

I remember at the time being stunned at how small the rose was upon arrival. I've developed respect for Heirloom and their wee roses since then.

Kate

A boxed Lagerfeld, bought 16 years ago when I signed the contract on my house. Lived in its disintegrating box for 3 months until I closed and could plant it. It is still living, and thriving.

1961 - Crimson Glory and Mirandy

Dad got them for Mom when we moved back to the states (Missouri)from West Germany. I had to take care of them. I was the proudest 9 year old in the world :) I was also hooked on roses from then on....

my first rose(s) was a trio of 3 miniatures I bought, not sure from who. The only one to survive was beauty secret, although I was in zone 4, didn't cover it and it shouldn't of stood a chance. But it not only survived it grew much more than the 24" and taught me that miniature roses doesn't necessarily mean they dont' get tall. It was about 3 1/2 feet tall when I moved. The first non-miniature (since miniatures don't count when counting roses) was peace and while I love that rose, for some reason I've never been able to get them to live past 2-3 years. Yet, much more fragile roses I can keep alive forever. I haven't tried it in my yard here. It would probably do well since I moved up a zone.

My actual "first" rose I never found out what it was. We had moved into a mobile home park when my husband got out of the Navy in 1989. There was one rose bush there next to the PGE meters, and I dug it up and moved it. It died tho. So I decided to buy some roses and try them.. I knew nothing about them. I had grown some monster veggies in VA before we left there, but no flowering plants.

I bought several 2gal potted roses at KMart. The first ones being WHITE MAGIC, CARROUSEL, BLUE GIRL, GARDEN PARTY and I cant remember what else. WM died. BG was awful, never did much. CARROUSEL ended up being rootstock and the only plant that is still alive after all these yrs is the "GARDEN PARTY" which ended up being MON CHERI. That was how my obsession began. Trying to ID this mismarked rose. It sent me on a mission to find every book or catalog I could on roses. First to find out what it really was, and second... to find all these roses shown in the books and listed in catalogs.

My first one was a Tiffany, I think. I remember it was pink and very fragrant. It was a body bag my mother-in-law got me. I didn't know any digging technique or how to care for it. It did survive though and then succombed to black spot. We then moved, so I'm not sure if it survived.

My first rose was back in a apt I had about 13 years ago. I love yellow roses at the florist so I picked up a yellow rose plant at homedepot and put it in a little pot on our balcony. It did bloom occasionally but the blooms were nothing like the florist blooms I had imagined and it slowly died. (pot was probably too small,never fed it, etc).
Then in our first house the owner had put a strip of 5 rose plants on the side of the house. I never did find out what they were but I had fun tinkering with them. Though they always got mildewed, rust, bugs, etc.
I finally learned if I wanted a "florist style" rose I needed to buy hybrid teas. So in my next 2 houses I planted those. Still got the rust & mildew but when I did get good blooms they were what I was looking for.

Finally this year I read "otherwise normal people" about rose exhibiting. It tought me so much about the rose world. the feeding, the spraying, even about hybridizing. And I finall joined this board. Now I have over 50 bushes I'm growing all kinds of roses (austins, HTs, floribundas, minis). And I even got a trophy at a rose show.

I just hope my roses get even better. It feels so good to finally grow the roses I dreamed about!

One of my first roses was Rosa Banksaie Lutea and another unknown huge pink climber never been able to ID with a large variety of minis. Other than them can't remember which was first. These were from Sequoia Nursery in '86.

Well, it's no stretch to remember my "first" rose, since it was here when we moved into this house, only as far back as December 2006.

I didn't even know it was back there in my compost corner, under a tree, until I almost dropped a load of yard trimmings on it. When I realized what it was I got excited, and when it bloomed the first time and that heavenly scent wafted across the yard to tickle my soul, it was l-o-v-e. There is still some debate, but Rose de Rescht is a prime candidate for the identity of this gorgeous creature. I don't think I will know for sure until i get her moved out into the sun and pruned up properly.

I knew this house was begging for a pretty climber or two, so I ordered two Blue Girl climbers. I was completely ignorant, and neither lived, never broke dormancy.

I did a little research and came up with Zephrine Drouhin as replacements, but still didn't know much; they survived anyway, and grew like madwomen. No blooms, though. I did a little more research. Talked to some friends at a homesteading board I used to frequent, saw a photo of a gal from Maine's roses, and fell HARD. That was the beginning of my obsession.

It led me to Heirloom Roses and all their gorgeous photos. I was shocked there were so many different kinds of roses. Imagine my additional shock to find out that those were a mere sampling of what lay in wait for me in the wide world of roses.

Now I am like a kid in a candy store, but my enthusiasm gets a healthy tempering every time I have to dig a new hole for a new rose. Can anyone say "reality check?"

But I ended up here, and have learned how to be practical in my rose-growing, and all sorts of tips that have already saved me a lot of heartbreak. (How to look for and squish rose slugs, for one, and karl's tips on planting potted roses and keeping the rootball intact, for another.) I still have tons to learn, but am looking forward to the journey.

Tiffany, way back when (about the time the movie came out), with Audrey Hepburn, Breakfast at Tiffany's.

I was at the most expensive nursery in town when I spotted Sterling Silver in a 5 gallon pot. I had to have it.

I took it home and placed it gently on my front porch. In full shade. To protect it of course... I stared at it in awe and wonder... After the bloom died, I couldn't figure out why no new blooms came...

After some reading I realized that roses are actually a 'sun' flower and so in the sun it went... full sun, from full shade. Well two weeks later when I went to check on it, it was brown and dead. Apparently roses like water as much as sun...

So I gave up on roses and was a master pelargonium grower for several years... until we moved into a house that already had roses. Big beautiful blooming roses. I fell in love again and was adamant that I wasn't going to mess them up. I watered them faithfully every day and deadheaded them every night. I was shocked when they got bigger and bigger and bloomed more and more. I was hooked.

The first rose I bought after knowing what I was doing was Pure Poetry. It was so gorgeous that when we moved again I took it with me. It is still here 10 years later, in the front most visual spot. Surrounded by my 150 other roses, it will always have a home... (If I can stop Dr Huey from trying to take it over...)

I'm glad roses gave me a second chance :)

I'm glad roses gave me a second chance :)
*****

Me, too, since I have learned o much from you (and others!)

Thanks to all you smart rosarians who constantly share the same information with newbies over and over and do not judge or tear down.

Amen to that, Greenhaven. My shelf of rose books haven't taught me nearly as much as I've learned Âand continue to learnÂhere.

I remember clearly my first rose--a floribunda called Eutin. Actually, there were 13 of them. Where I came up with the idea of making a border of 13 roses, I don't know, but I went to my local nursery/garden center, pleaded total ignorance of roses, and bought Eutin on their recommendation. Back in the 1960s, it was kind of the easy-grow Knock Out for that generation.

Like the rest of you, I'm not sure I even realized I needed to water roses, but somehow the 13 Eutins grew and bloomed for the four years I lived there. I liked Eutin so well that every place I have moved since, I always got at least one Eutin for my garden. My current gardens sport three Eutins plus 60 other roses.

Kate

...Now I am like a kid in a candy store....

I always use that "kid in a candy store" phrase too, Greenhaven...I always want to try at least one of each rose that looks yummy!

First 2-3 were J&P boxed Graham Thomas and Heritage, and then Teasing Georgia. Mother's Day 2001 I think. They looked like peonies, and I didn't know that the average person could really grow something so gorgeous! GT & Heritage both died their first winter, but now we have many other "modern" roses of all kinds, and one or two Hybrid Perpetuals as well.

:0) Phyl

I remember the elderly people across the street from us when I was a kid had 'Peace'. It was a beauty. They had a gorgeous garden. I remember being amazed that their back yard was not all lawn (like everyone else in the neighborhood had). They had a bunch of roses, vegetables, fruit trees and hibiscus with just grass pathways in between, no lawn.

Even though it wasn't mine, I think of their 'Peace' as my first rose, the first conciousness I had of what a rose is all about. Perhaps this early impression led me to aquire the gardening habit. They had moved to California in the 30's I believe, when they were newlyweds long long before, and had a totally different way of living back then...back then you took weekend road trips on two lane highways (with no traffic!) and brough home cactus from the desert to plant in your own garden (yikes!), or went to the beach and camped out right on the sand for free...and had the whole place to yourself...long before Southern California became so crowded and expensive. They were from the cold snowy midwest and California was a paradise to them and they enjoyed every bit of it.

I think back to them showing me a 'Peace' bloom for the first time. Everything is so much bigger when you are 5 years old and I remember it seemed as big as the sun.

I live in a much different California then they did, but I have a 'Peace' rose in my garden, just as they did.

I also received my first rose from Roses of Yesterday and Today. I ordered several but the only rose I remember is Mutabilis, which is the rose I wanted most of all after seeing a beautiful specimen at the UC Berkeley Botanical Rose Garden. That started my love affair with old roses which has not waned in over 20 years. Mutabilis is still my favorite rose.

Ingrid

Virgo. Didn't last too long. Wrong zone.
A really nice white rose. (about 35 years ago)

JFK - in 1995 when my newlywed wife laid down the law that I needed to find a hobby besides hockey. Bought 10 roses, including JFK from one of those collections Springhill Gardens sold. A few years after planting these I accidentally sprayed with weed killer when I thought I was applying fungicide. All died except for JFK. The rose is still going strong, and about to bloom any day now.

P.S. GO WINGS!

My first rose was a potted Mr. Lincoln (2005). I dug a hole, plopped it in and not being pedantic while doing so, managed to break half the stems in bloom in the process. By the end of the season it became a one-cane-wonder. The next year I SP'd it because who knew you were suppose to winterize them.

Jeff

Some of you did quite well with your first roses, but for the rest of us I'm thinking there must be a market for "practice roses." I can't think what they would be, though.

LOL at "GO WINGS!"

Hoov, your story reminded me of a cute story an 80-year-old CR told me recently. When she was a young bride, her husband had gone abroad, in the military and she was staying with her parents. They had gone to Europe for the summer and she was housesitting. A friend called to invite her mother to a rose show. She was stirred about the thought of a rose show but she had nothing to show. The neighbor lady (her mother's friend) had accompanied her mother to Europe, happened to be a rosegrower. My friend "borrowed" a rose, (I think she said it was Mr. Lincoln) and took it to the rose show. She won a queen and she never looked back. She started joining rose societies and entering competitions and at age 80 is still an avid rosegardener. Fortunately for her she lived in California a good bit of the time her husband was in the military so she knew what it was like to grow very pretty roses, very quickly.

You bet I remember - a housewarming gift when I moved to my current digs 14 years ago, Peace. All I did was stick it in the ground and occasionally prune out dead wood for the next 12 years. It never had much scent, and the JBs mutilated it every year, but I didn't much care - after all, it had NO noticeable fragrance! After 12 years Peace, a JB magnet par excellence, had the dubious distinction of also being my first rose to get SP'd.

The first rose I actually spent good money on was Perfume Delight, whose delightful scent grabbed my attention on a foray to Lowes two years ago. Until then I had never known a rose with "knock your socks off" fragrance. It was the beginning of my continuing project, to get a rosy aroma completely around my home - if I can get the JBs under control!!

Rick

My grandfather claimed he moved from CO to CA so he could grow roses all year. One of my earliest memories is of him digging up his back yard in Berkeley to plant the three newly introduced QE's. There have been other "firsts" since then. But when I decided that I really did want to become an antique rose junkie, that this is more than just gardening, but a passion, a cause, a lifestyle, I started with Mutabilis. For me, Change has been the only certainty.

My first rose was Mirandy. I was about 12yrs old and my mom had over 200 roses. She let me buy my first rose and helped me with its care. I remember I entered, with my mom, a rose show and won a ribbon. I am now 50+yrs old. I also had Eclipse, I think it was my second rose. It is no wonder that I love roses with my mother as my mentor!
Linda

My parents and grandparents and their parents all grew roses, so my interest started very young. We had Eutin,Charlotte Armstrong, Peace, climbing Blaze, Mr. Lincoln,and more, and I remember wishing they bloomed more than just around memorial day. At my first college apartment, I planted a Peace rose. I've moved many times and every place had roses. Hopefully I'll stay here where we moved last week, because I have over 250 roses now. Even though they are not the best roses, I still plant Charlotte Armstrong, Peace, Blaze and others just for sentimental reasons. My parents still grow roses, and I love buying them newer ones that bloom longer and have better disease resistance. They are thrilled with Julia Child and Double Knockout and the climber Blaze of Glory. I love being able to research roses on here, then find the great sales and ship the roses to my folks and know they will grow for them better than ever before.
Since I've had kids, I have made a point to grow Tropicana, Mr. Lincoln and Tiffany at every house we've lived in. My girls will grow these roses when they buy houses, I'm sure.
So here's our firsts:
Grandmother: Seven Sisters rose, Parents: Eutin, ME:Peace, Daughters: Tropicana
Cindi

Cindi, does this mean you moved into a house that already had 250 roses in the garden (what a find!)? Or did you move them in?

I'm enjoying all these stories about roses with a bit of family history thrown in.

Mine was Tropicana given to me as an anniversary gift 18 years ago. She has moved from house to house with me and almost got shovel pruned this year dur to black spot. BUT, a few very kind people on here told me what to do and she is once again beautiful and blooming her bright head off!

I started out with 5. Peace, Christian Dior, Queen Elizabeth, Angel Face and The Fairy. With as little care as these got and the way they grew and bloomed, I was hooked.

We bought a house at auction 2 years ago. It has acreage with ponds and sickly, broken elms and cottonwoods. We spent the last 2 years transplanting and landscaping, and then finally, last week, sold our other house and officially moved here. I planted all the roses...except one which is most likely a Dr. Huey. I don't have the heart to cut it out because the previous owner was real proud of it. I moved every rose I could from the other house before we put it on the market. (plus hundreds of iris, hosta and daylilies) I have left plants in previous moves and it is heartbreaking when new owners don't value what you create. It figures-- this time around, real gardeners bought the house, and they were thrilled by the roses I left them: climbing Eden on an arbor, Coral Dawn on a pergola, Jeanne l'Joie, Fourth of July, lots of minis. The climbers were all too big for me to move or I would have taken them also. They were in full blush when we left, and the buyers were impressed. Our house was on the market 10 months and realtors kept telling us the lush landscaping scared away potential buyers. People just don't realize flower beds with established plants and groundcovers demand far less maintanence than thirsty lawns. The roses I had were no-spray, and I had soaker hoses hooked to an automatic sprinkler system. It doesn't get much easier than that.
Most of the 250 roses came from the wayside, parks, HD sales I've found on here! I have really good luck with bare roots. I'm evolving towards Austin, Buck (Earthkind) and old garden roses, but I did put in 2 beds of HTs. I have one berm that has several Mr. Lincolns plus newer red HTs, which my daughter dubbed the Lincoln bedroom. Didn't mean to hijack your post---I will try to figure out how to post pics and start another post because I want to show people the 42 body bag roses I got on walmart clearance in March--all are blooming right now. They are the oldie but goodies like my folks had 40 years ago. Only 1 was mislabeled. I need to get outside and spray that bed since we've had 9 inches of rain this week. I may decide later to just keep memories of the old HTs, and only grow the ogrs and Earthkinds that look good without chemicals.
Whew! Call me windy today!

STERLING SILVER. I was 7 or 8 and convinced my mother to buy it for me because of the picture in the catalog. It arrived bareroot and I remember thinking it was dead. Mom assured me it wasn't. We planted it. It leafed out, grew a little, give up two blooms and then promptly died. I was devastated, but oh what blooms! I didn't even mind that they weren't the wedgewood blue color depicted in the catalog. The first bloom was a beautiful shade of lavender, had perfect spiral form and was literally drenched in perfume; the quality of the fragrance has to date only been matched or surpassed by a few cultivars. Sigh ... I've never been able to grow it successfully but it was the plant responsible for igniting my passion for roses.

"practice roses" - that's what my first three were. in the 70's, I went to Kmart and they were having a sidewalk sale. I had never had roses, but had memories of a big (to me at the age of 7 or 9) yellow rose that a great-aunt had in her front yard. Each year she would cut in down to the ground and the next year it would be back...huge and covered with blooms. So of course my favorite color rose is yellow. Unfortunately when she moved, the new owner bulldozed the house and every thing else including the rose! I think about that rose every time I go by that place.

But back to Kmart sale, they had bagged roses for 50 cents each and I thought I would give them a try - wasn't much money to lose! Astoundingly I picked out a Tropicana, Mr Lincoln, and SnowFire. Tropicana became a bloom machine - loved the color and fragrance so much that it is the only rose that I have ever had multiples of! Mr Lincoln succumbed about 3 years ago and I lost the original Tropicana about the same time. SnowFire did not make it through the late freeze last year - I loved this rose too, sometimes the blooms would take my breath away with their beauty. those roses were a really good deal! And so began my addiction - I mean hobby! LOL!

My first was Tropicana. I was amazed by the color. Not your average rose that you see in the stores. I can't to this day explain the color of this rose. I was happy to see it comeback 2nd year and so on,, because everyone said roses are so hard to grow.

Oh yes! My first rose is the reason I am growing roses now. In 1999 when we moved to PA and had about 1.3 acres of un-landscaped ground on a steep hill, I asked my son (the real gardener in the family) to help me with the design. He brought a rose in a pot as a gift. Not being a gardener and not knowing what to do with it, I stuck it in the ground next to the house in a tiny bed bordered by a sidewalk IN THE SHADE. The poor thing was in addition ignored. By the end of the summer, it looked pretty sick. I moved it to the other corner of the house and decided to create a bed around it. Here it is today.

{{gwi:282240}}

Actually this photo was taken last year, but it still looks the same.

Barbara

I sure will later today when it opens. Just about there last night.

It was a rainy March day in 2002 and I went to the local nursery to buy a rose. The guy who volunteered to help me thought I was nuts. Gee, so what if there was some lingering snow on them?!

I had my first orders in to Edmunds and J&P but could not wait until the end of the month. I had prepared the bed the previous fall. Had even dug the holes and filled 'em with amendments. I was crazed to start my first rose garden. Amazingly, this was before I had even read one of Patrick's posts!

The attendant walked into a grouping of black pots that had been out all winter and found Chrysler Imperial and Sweet Surrender. They were both on my list which I was reading out loud as he was searching. So what if they looked completely dead.

I believe I planted CI that night in the dark. And the rain. SS was the next weekend. Both are among my favorite HT's. DW had a Sweet Surrender bud on the nightstand when she got home last night.

Wonderful stories!
My husband always wanted me to try to grow roses -- too much trouble I always said. Then we moved into a new house with a shady side that needed something. Roses, I thought. I ordered 4 David Austins (Heritage, Winchester Cathedral and I don't remember the others). They bloomed once and then just lingered in the shade. My addiction began when I started to think about why they didn't bloom and what I could do about it. Now I have roses in all of the sunny spots in my yard and I'm still amazed at how beautiful roses are with just a little (and sometimes a lot) of care.

We were in Chicago and my husband bought me a boxed J&P red rose. I didn't like digging in dirt or anything getting under my nails and had no interest in gardening whatsoever. He helped me plant it (guess he thought I needed a hobby) and when it bloomed (even though there was no fragrance) I was hooked. I experimented with/killed more than a few perennials and roses but became a rose addict when we moved to TX 3 yrs ago.

my first rose was a milk carton baby that my mom bought when we moved in to our first home in 77. she said i could take care of it and so i was kinda excited at the age of 6. over the next 15 years or so, that thing was two stories tall and massive, even though no one had a clue of how to take care of it other than occasional water. looking back i think it must have been a climber; perhaps a dublin bay... anyhow , fast-forward thirty years to my townhouse that i now live in. we planted a small rose bush on a whim next to a trellis 4 years ago and ignored it for two years. i did everything that one is not supposed to to a rose. i don't even think i planted it right or anything. turns out that it was a climber and an own root at that; a viking queen. i found out two years ago that you need to let them grow and not chop them to the ground. i also found out that they take about four years to even establish, never mind thrive. after accumulating over firty roses now, this rosebush is still the crowning glory in my garden. it is also as tough as nails and laughs at disease and the such.it is a monster now and will not stop growing or thriving in spite of my ignorance early on. i can only wonder what it would be like if it got what it needed from the get go.
this newfound obsession is so satisfying to me. one of the most rewarding things i do now is make my almost weekly pilgrimage to the nursery and pick out a rose that i certainly do not have room for. it is so satisfying to find another beauty to plant. the great thing about roses that many do not understand, is that they almost respond daily to your care or neglect. they are sensitive and will communicate to you and tell you what they need if you will listen. a lot of plants just do nothing after many years, whereas roses change a lot over the course of a season, plus they bloom and put on a show longer than just about anything else. they truly are living plants.

Yes, I remember, it was Oregold. I planted it in a large pot where it lived for years, and later it went into the ground. It was a good rose.

This is my first rose but I donÂt know the name. I planted it in a large pot about 8 years now.

Nattaporn

Here is a link that might be useful: http://www.flickr.com

Hi Nattaporn

Looks a bit like Flelicite et Perpetue, a once blooming climber. There is a reblooming sport of this rose, Little White Pet, often placed among the polyanthas, small very rich blooming plant. They both often have a bit of red in the bud but opening to a white flower.

Taoseeker, this white climbing rose is very good repeating all year round here and strong sweet tea rose fragrance also very large bush about 10 Â 15 feet.
Nattaporn

When I was a kid..you could get a rose by sending in box tops from laundry detergent...was it Tide? I believe the rose was Sterling Silver...it did not do well..we lived in Florida then, in Orlando (actually Windermere)
I did not try roses for another 30+ years...one day at the Garden Center, while with a friend, I veered off, into the rose section...she was aghast..."Roses! you don't even like roses!" I got one anyway, the name was Georgia Peach, an HT and it smelled wonderful! But it died a slow death.
Then my friend and I discovered the OGR's and we dove in, and have not looked back...I remember when I was planting a bed, in the front, a old woman, walking by told me, "Oh dear, roses? they won't do well, you know..."But I told her, I was going to try them anyway...100+ roses later..

Kings Ransom was my first rose at my former house. It was a beauty. Tried to grow another one at my current home and no luck at all!

10 years ago when we built our house I wanted to start a rose garden. I built a raised bed and planted two boxed roses--Chicago Peace and New Day. Both are still there and both are wonderful roses, although they don't have much scent. My next two were climbers that I found at a big box store. They were J & P boxed roses--Dream Weaver and Lace Cascade. They are also still alive and flourishing. Dream Weaver is the biggest BS magnet in my garden, but I'ts worth spraying. I've only killed one rose not on purpose and that was Fragrant Plum. It didn't come back after pruning this year...I think it was canker. I'm up to over 70 roses now and not counting!
Kathy