Oh Mariannese, how dreadful for you - even here, there have been losses. At first, never having experienced this, I was completely bewildered, wielding secateurs in growing horror. It simply failed to occur to me that the dreadful state of Nahema, Sweet Pretty, Sophie's Perpetual and Crepuscule was down to the coldest, longest spring on record and not some terrible failure on my part. It must be awful, having to walk past glaring holes, like missing teeth in a shiny smile (I got used to that a few years ago too!).
I certainly will not be replacing them (in fact, they would have probably been redundant in shady woods). I have, however, taken note of yours which are tough and hardy. Hardy! who would have thought z8 would be so vulnerable...and like you, poor old East Anglia got all the biting winds and no snow cover.
Selective vision is a handy skill but as gardeners, we are always looking ahead - start indulging in looking at bulb catalogues, send off for rose catalogues and daydream, sow some biennials (maybe with your darling grand-daughter), sniff your fragrant nicotiana - we always get through these set-backs.

I'm sorry Marianese. We are so dependent on the weather and it can be cruel. It rarely snows here but if it does it is in March.

I forgot to add another survivor, Lykkefund, the thornless helenae hybrid, so I shall have three ramblers and climbers in bloom this summer instead of 21.

It's the same disaster in Norway and Finland. A friend with a show garden has lost 100 roses, many of them rare and imported from abroad. She still has about 300 but the garden is her livelihood so it's worse for her than for other gardeners. Rosariums have suffered, too.

UM, a really good bay tree turned brown and crispy too. I have never seen this sort of die-back - whole rows of shrubby salvias, cistus, agapanthus, a huge cytisus (although I was planning on chopping it down anyway but...)and even tamarix. I was somewhat mollified by the tulip spectacular (even though there were rumours that the flowering buds had failed to initiate).
Having seen bits of your very abundant and verdant garden where the rose shrubbery is so essential, Mariannese, this must be especially upsetting.

I am so sorry for everyone that so many roses have been lost. I lost most of my spring flush to the weird weather, hard freeze one week, and then a week later temps in the 90s, but at east no roses actually died.

Selective vision is a good skill to have, Marianne -- it's always something. And everyone probably grows roses that won't survive the historical, but rare, extremes of where they live. Here, all it would take is a winter with temps going into the Farenheit teens, as it periodically does, and I know there are roses of mine that are likely to be lost or very damaged. I try not to think of that.

A winter without snow is the truest and worst test of hardiness. In western Massachusetts, in winters with little snow the mortality would definitely be worse. On the other hand, if the snow laid deep all winter, the plants were protected, but the voles would take advantage of added cover and access to strip every bit of bark and roots beneath the snow line sometimes.

I still remember the spring after one winter of deep snow and feeling pleased to see the perennials and roses emerging from the snow one day. The next day, every plant in 15' of one border was totally wilted and, upon investigation, none of them had roots -- all eaten. The only happy note was that a patch of bracken fern I had been fighting for years suffered the same fate that winter and never returned.

Oh, Marianne. I am very, very sorry the weather has been so cruel to you and your garden. Even average winters/springs can be challenging up there around the Arctic Circle, but the coldest March since 1888! All the meteorological elements converging to the detriment of prized plants. I used to live in Minneapolis, Minnesota, which was over 13 degrees south of Stockholm and even in normal years, I found gardening to be difficult. I am glad you have your stalwart rose companions, like good ol' Stanwell Perpetual, to comfort you. I've always thought that rose-colored glasses should be a complimentary phrase. Continue to gaze through brave eyes. Your garden and your courage are a metaphor for life itself--which is a bag of good stuff and hard stuff all jumbled together. Those of us in other climates are standing beside you in spirit. Maybe we could share in the unveiling of your blooming roses?

Carol in Portland, Oregon

Marianne, I think I would have cried had I been in your place. What a loss that must be to you. I only hope that by summer everything will have filled out enough to hide some of the devastation. I wonder if this is a fluke or the beginning of a colder northern Europe that has been predicted as being part of the global warming scenario. I hope not, but only time will tell. I'm so glad that you at least had a good handful of stalwart plants that did survive. I suppose the thing to do if this keeps up is to plant more bushes of the "good" roses that you know are tough enough to survive.

Ingrid