Charles de Mills should do fine for you...I have one. Gallicas don't like to be confined in a pot, and they often won't bloom in one. Give it a spot where it will get some after noon shade and where suckers will not be a problem, it is a suckering fool (a quality I like, it gives me a lot more plants)
Helpmefind.com says it does ok to zone 8....
Plant that rose, and let it go!

Thanks Melva... and if you don't mind answering, how big/tall/wide is it in your garden... and how far does it tend to sucker? I have a problem with underestimating (or in the case of one rose, overestimating) size when locating roses.

Well, I might give it a shot! I am near downtown Austin which might as well be zone 9 because we don't get as cold as the rest of the county. So I always think I'm in an experimental zone... usually lemon trees and mandevilla survive outside in my yard.

I have one that has now suckered as far as 20 feet from the original plant. Wiser people than me have planted theirs with root barriers in place. You can do that with a large plastic garbage bucket with the bottom cut out and submerged to 24" deep, then plant inside that.

My Charles de Mills is 5x3 and the suckers are about six feet from the parent plant...

I have no experience with 'Charles de Mills', but how lucky you are to have mandevilla survive outside over the winter in your yard. Great plant, I grow it as an annual in the garden.

Randy

Lack of winter chill/freezing temps in Austin might spell lack of bloom for your CdM. Here in my north Texas garden, gallicas bloom well, but the winters are very cold.

But there are some who think Charles de Mills is an Hybrid China and as such, it needs less chill than a 'full-blooded gallica'

Interesting. I would never think to place CdM with the Hybrid Chinas...

Greybird, that's cool that you can grow gallicas well.
I've sometimes been tempted to try one old once-bloomer ... Charles de Mills, Fantin Latour, or Hippolyte since they are thought to perhaps have at least some china in their heritage.
Do you live in the panhandle?

Randy

Well, as Charles, and Hippolyte are thought to have china blood, they should do fine. I have many gallicas and some centifolias some of them do better than others. But no, no laughter coming from me. I think Cardinal de Richelieu is thought to have china blood too...not sure about the others.

Randy, I am about 250 miles NW of the metroplex, right in the crook of the panhandle. We get the very hot and cold, lots of wind added in to the mix. This year, all my Old Europeans were heavily budded out and poised for a phenomenal bloom before the hard freeze of April 7th did away with that. Usually, we do not have such a freeze following a period of very warm days.
Do you have much of a chill period in the winter?