Everything looks great. My spring was pretty good also. Lots of rain (almost to much) and cool temps.

Your garden is ridiculously, incredibly beautiful and I just love it! You took great pictures of it too! I love seeing roses all tangled and growing together like that, as it makes for an absolute explosion of color. Stunning!

Gorgeous! And in a zone 5? Wow! Thank you for sharing!!

Wow! IT is like a rose paradise. Just breathtaking.

nipptress. . Your roses are beautiful and look very healthy. I am having my morning coffee with breakfast and usually look out the window to see a rose or roses blooming in my garden, but my first flush is over, the temperatures have been in the 100's , so I do not expect a show this morning, but I got one anyway! Yours!! Thank you so much for posting your lovely photos.

Also, and I am sure there are those who would agree with me, THANK YOU for posting the names of the roses. I know there is not always time for that, but I am so happy to see the roses actually growing in a garden, to see the shape of the bush, the size, color, combinations, companion plantings....I could look at those kinds of pictures for hours. Now, when they create a way to transfer the fragrance, well... I guess I will really be in trouble at tht point.

Your garden is drop-dead lovely, with a wonderful profusion of gorgeous roses. It just couldn't be any better!

Thanks for sharing. Love the assortment of so many different roses. We are so lucky to have digital cameras. Enjoy and keep taking those pictures!

Wow! Don't think it be any more beautiful. You must be thoroughly enjoying all the beautiful blooms. Thanks for sharing.

So, so beautiful! Thank you for all the pictures!
I, for one, would love to see even more photos! :)

Lovely gardens & roses! I am so glad you included all of those pictures

You are a master of roses!!! Just a beautiful garden and so lush and green. Roses are resting here, so your pictures were just what I needed. Your "rose jungle" is a work of art. Lesley

I cannot think of anything to say that hasn't been said, except WOW!!!!!!! You must feel so happy everytime you walk outside.

My roses look good this year too, but nothing like yours.

LOVE seeing your spring flush photos! Here, we're already into the summer slumber...and I'm missing my rose blooms! Everything looks so healthy, and I'm happy for you that you had such an amazing flush!

Tammy

Fantastic pics! :) I'm happy for you too!

Beautiful pictures of gorgeous roses, Cynthia!

What beautiful roses-- thanks so much for sharing and inspiring!

I love your riot of colors, your jungle of roses--overgrown and healthy and all tangled up in each other--fantastic! I'd say it was more than worth the wait!

Kate

Oh so beautiful. How many are there? We all know how much work this takes. Especially in zone 5.

Thanks everyone for the wonderful complements on the roses! I am humbled by your kind words and am so glad to share this spring's profuse explosion of color with you! I am glad I could provide a breath of fresh rose blooming for those of you in warmer zones whose roses are resting. I was out all weekend deadheading madly and pruning down the overflowing monsters and it looks a little more sedate and less jungle-like, but still a joy.

We had a garage sale this weekend, and between my husbands' 1954 wagon and my roses, we were holding court with the folks that stopped by. I gave several tours (oh, twist my arm!), and at least one person in the neighborhood who was convinced roses are "too hard to grow" was encouraged to try them. I sent her to hmf and the Roses Unlimited sale and I think we may have a new convert! The real selling point in this case was showing her you don't have to spray in our zone to have nice roses, although things are going to get a bit ugly when blackspot season starts.

Susan, I can't begin to estimate how many roses are in each of the photos, since they tend to overlap each other in times like these. When I was pruning out many of the droopy branches, I'd find another smaller rose or two getting ready to put on a show. I tend to be a zone pusher and space pusher, putting roses closer than they're "supposed" to be, but if David Austin can plant several of the same rose closely together to make a fuller plant, I figure I can do the same thing for different roses. I have somewhere between 700-750 roses at present, but I haven't done the early summer survey yet to see what has actually survived the winter and stayed alive.

Desertgarden, I'm glad you appreciate seeing the names. I have to admit, though, that part of my incentive is to make sure I remember which ones are in the photos myself. You don't see me chiming in very often on the "which rose is this" questions, since I often have to rely on rose tags even in my own yard.

Now that we're heading into the hot dry blackspot months, we'll see how everything holds up, but at least it has a healthy happy start. Thanks again for your appreciation - it's wonderful to share all this with folks who understand roses!

Cynthia

Cynthia! Thank you for the early "Fireworks". Holy Cannoli your gardens are beautiful. Congratulations.

Scott in PA

Cynthia, your roses are very, very beautiful. A pleasure to see. And yes, thanks for taking time to give us their names. Lou

I, for one, love the "rose jungle" look of dazzling abundance, and you have achieved it in a most gorgeous way. That photo of Quadra was just icing on the rose cake. You are truly a rose artist. Diane

Your garden is gorgeous Cynthia! Mine too is fresh and healthy after last year's drought. Your patience and fortitude have payed off with a lush, lovely and bountiful rose garden.

Thanks for sharing the images.

Rick

lovely roses, so healthy and beautifull not to mention extreemly happy looking!!

amazing job, congratulations!!

Absolutely beautiful!! Thank you so much for adding the names of the roses, very helpful.

Thanks again everyone for the wonderful complements! I have absolutely no skills whatsoever at the visual arts like drawing or sculpture, so it's nice to think I may have a knack for visual skills in the garden. Holy Cannoli (chuckle) - I'll have to remember that one, Scott.

In the interests of honesty, since people have enjoyed the names of the roses, I have to correct the name of one of the climbers at the back of the fourth picture (with my shed in the background). It's Antique 89, not Handel - see why I don't chime in on rose ID questions? I have both of them, just forgot where they were planted. I tried editing this on the original posting but I didn't see the option listed.

Anyway, glad you enjoyed the pictures - I love sharing this enthusiasm!

Cynthia

Your roses are absolutely stunning! Thanks for sharing the photos....they are a wonderful companion to my cup of coffee.
Molly

Thanks for reviving it Sara-Ann.

Cynthia, your garden is a joy to behold.

Trish

Yes, thanks Sara-Ann. I had forgotten this thread, and what a treat it is to see it again. I would give a major body part (right arm?) to have such a spectacular show of blooms, so healthy and sumptuous. Thanks, Cynthia. Diane

Cynthia, I meant to ask...do you still have your Ascot rose? Can you tell me how large it is and what you think of it? Diane

I got rose jungle fever! Wow!

Thanks for bringing this thread up again.

Kate

I absolutely love seeing it all again. I must not be "orderly", and the idea of orderly roses compared to this bountiful beauty seems ridiculous. This is how roses are meant to look. For me Edgar Degas steals the show, assuming I've read the descriptions correctly.

No, I'm wrong, ED is bicolored, so it must be Petal Pushers, a rather mundane name for the sumptuous pink rose in the right foreground. Does anyone know whether that is the correct name for this beautiful, old-fashioned looking rose?

Wow - thanks for reviving this, Sara Ann. You've been so good at posting to give us all chances to show off our roses by colors this year that we got plenty of rose eye candy already this year. I appreciate your warm comments as always, everyone - Trish, Kate, Molly, Diane, Sara Ann, Ingrid, and it's both fun and discouraging to look back at how wonderful the roses were in 2013.

Coincidentally, I'd also give a major body part (OK, maybe just a major amount of blood loss) to have any single rose bush whatsoever look that good in my yard this year. Not that this was such a bad year overall, but the rose stars were few and far between. Everything (virtually) got pruned to the ground after winter and it really strikes me how much difference it makes to have surviving cane vs. no surviving cane. The rose puts all its energy into regrowing cane, and forgets to bloom, except for spots of isolated blooms here and there on scattered bushes. For the most part, my better bloomers were the newly planted roses that didn't have to regrow anything and still had the flush of youth. They say it'll be a relatively milder winter in these parts with plenty of snow, so I'm hoping for another year like that one in 2016.

Now for the questions - Diane, I still like Ascot and it tends to hover in the 4-5' range for me. It's a reliably healthy bush, but it seems to be one that appreciates some surviving cane, like most of my roses. Here is a closeup from 2013 of Ascot showing those luscious big fat reddish blooms:

In contrast, here's the one solitary bloom cycle I caught for Ascot this year (and I went out faithfully every week all summer). Pretty meh - washed out hot pink with more like semi-double blooms. Still rock-solid healthy leaves, just in recovery mode like most of my roses. Nevertheless, it's still a keeper in my world for the sake of the photo above:

Ingrid - sorry for being confusing in labeling the medium pink rose in the first picture. Petal Pushers has small mum-sized blooms in regular profusion (it was one of my more reliable bloomers this year) but it's toward the back near the grey shed, obscured by other roses. The prominent one falling over the fence is one I forgot to label - the Delbard rose Dames de Chenonceau. It's a totally reliable rose for me and not bad for blooms this year. I'm sure with your warmer climate it would do more blooming, though I'm not sure if the multiple petals would make it more vulnerable to drought or not. I dearly love this rose, as well as the Champagne Moment/Lions Fairy Tale to its left in that first photo in this thread. Here's a closeup from July this year of Dames de Chenonceau. I think Roses Unlimited carries it if you're tempted, Ingrid (smile) - this looks like your style of lovely subtle colors. It does tend to flop though - I had to lie on the ground to look up for this shot.

For comparison, here's Petal Pushers from June of this year. This is what I usually see when I catch this rose, as it's a notorious droopy rose and doesn't climb very high.

When I'm motivated to lie on the ground for a photo (not all that often, considering all the stray rose thorns also on the ground), this is what Petal Pushers looks like, also from this year. Yep, this one makes me dizzy and I can't exactly tell which way is up:

Anyway, thanks for your comments on this blast from the past, and may our next rose years be good ones this time!

Cynthia

Your first picture took my breath away!!! It was such a shock to see the profusion of color. That's exactly how a rose garden should look IMO.

You really know how to grow roses!! Stunning!!!

Carol

Cynthia, thanks for answering my Ascot questions. I'm sorry your rose took such a hit from the cold--quite shocking to me. I hope Ascot continues to recover. What is your rose grafted on? My two are on multiflora and were from Palatine. I need to talk to you about them sometime without hijacking this thread.

The funny thing about 2013 was after I read what you had to say about that year and your fantastic rose show, I thought back, too, to that summer and looked at some pics of mine. In spite of record heat (up to 113 out here) that went on forever, we also had a wonderful garden year. I had record crops of my hot peppers--lots o' habs. And the roses were great. So odd that your rain and my heat produced some wonderful results. Here's to a 2016 that's just as good. Diane

It's simply wonderful to see all your lovely roses bursting into blooms at the same time. What a sight to behold! Your climbers are unbelievably magnificent! They are so worth the trouble.