Cynthia: you are my savior many times !! THANK YOU. In June you saved me from killing Firefighter the 4th time. Thanks to you, I took that off from my buy-list, and Roses Unlimited gave me Pretty Lady Rose instead (bunnies killed that along with acidic grass clippings in 2020). I thought about buying Firefighter as grafted since I killed the own-root 3 times, then thanks to your post, I won't attempt it as grafted. Here's how I killed Firefighter as own-root 3 times: 1) 2014 tree-root invaded the 3rd-year own-root Firefighter. I should had moved it, but left it there, so it died when cane-borers took over due to lack of calcium (trees steal lots of calcium and water). 2) Bought 2nd gallon-size Firefighter. Since it's low-thorn waterhog, I experimented planting it next to a rainspout. It died from freezing rain in winter. 3) Bought 3rd band-size Firefighter. I don't trust my zone 5a winter, so I potted it inside my unheated garage. In Feb. the temp. inside my garage was freezing single-digit. My refrigerator broke down, and I was busy storing food inside the garage and I forgot to cover Firefighter with a thermal blanket.

So, check out the roses in the Romantica series. I love most of them, and many are reported winter hardy - this helps even if you keep them in a greenhouse in the winter. I could not link "Romantica" on HMF as I used to because this search didn't v come up. Here are some I have been growing for many years Frederic Mistral - very fragrant, excellent for cutting ( I know that you don't care much about fragrance but maybe your wife love to have a few fragrant bouquet in the house) Rouge Royale (Caruso) extremely fragrant and if you cut it in bud stage it lasts for a week in a vase; very Austin- like flowers except that Austins are not good cut g flowers and Caruso is a very good cut flower Bolero - low growing, very fragrant, quite healthy Johan Strauss - great cut flower, blooms a lot, green apple scent; can have thrip problems Traviata - perfect foliage, very tall, no scent Eden shrubby climber but I am not sure that it is feasible in pot Tschaikovski - accoring to my husband, it is our most fragrant rose; I doubt that but it is beautiful, tall and narrow; not a good cut flower Yves Piaget - looks like a peony; low growing so it is suitable for pot culture; very fragrant Johann Strauss Not Romanticas but Meillands that worth checking out: Pink Peace- this in my hot climate is actually better for cutting than leaving blooms on the bush; flowers last much longer in the house Jardins de Bagatelle Papa Meilland - the best red I ever smelled. ---- Tantau Augusta Louise should be a rose you could like but I just planted in January so I didn't see any blooms yet. It is a HT from Tantau's "Nostalgie' series, bloom looks like petal packed and should be fragrant. Mcgleason or Beth could tell you more. Beth have pictures of this rose. And, !!! Check aout Caramel Antike - that should be a perfect rose for you. By all means do check at Palatine Kordes Freelandeer HT-s -they are florist roses bred for garden use. Nobody knows more about them than Rene, owner of Palatine. OK, I must run

Wow saldut! I bet your yard looks like a dream land! i am just getting started on my rose journey. Had several at my old house that was int the country on 50 acres. Now I am in a small subdivision.. great old established homes. But the smaller yard is def something new to deal with. Really excited about it, but I realize that I have to put more thought into what I plant. We bought a foreclosed home that hadn't been lived in for 4 years. Had to come in and totally strip out the yard. We do have lots of old trees. Flowering cherries down the drive, lots of mature dogwoods. We have an irrigation system, but haven't checked it yet. Way to many other issues to deal with. I had lots of roses at my other house, but our house had been on the market for over a year, so when a buyer came, we had 30 days to close. Jeez, by the time we had our stuff out, I just didn't give a dang about plants...(sure wish I had gotten all my clemetis. & my Eden..not missing the New Dawn on the horse barn!..sob) to top it off, we had to renovate the new house...so moved stuff to storage and moved our selves to a hotel for 2 weeks. Lordy, that was something. My 16 yr old daughter was still in school...had to paint, put in hardwood floors, take out a window and put in doors...now I am trying to put things together while on a budget. Found out last year that my daughter has a learning disability...(another long nightmare drama with the school story) so don't know what the future holds education funding wise!!! lol Gotta hang on and get my last child through! Sorry so long! If anyone has rooted cuttings let me know! At least this house is much smaller and I have been shocked at how much i enjoy it! My hubby stopped all his horse stuff so we downsized.

Hi Windeaux, I apologize for taking so long to reply to your questions. We had a three and a half hour, unexpected power outage in the neighborhood yesterday which fouled up the ever-wonderful Time-Warner service until about an hour ago. I went out and bought a new modem and fixed it myself. The "caring customer service representative" at Time-Warner stated last night that since I still have TV and telephone, "you are not a priority repair, so it will not be until September 5 that repair can be there." To answer your questions, HMF and its Administrators don't actually have a policy concerning archived collections and gardens. They are primarily concerned with the moderation, development and maintenance of the site, which is actually rather expensive, both in time and money. ALL of the information you find on HMF has mainly been added to the site by volunteers who have selected and added the content. If the information found in the REFERENCES conflict with each other or with patent information, they take the time to point out both that there may be an error in rose literature or even in the patent. The owners are completely open to suggestions as to content, but a number of the archived "collections" are there because I found them interesting; I collected the information and I put them there. (I, too, am a HMF volunteer, but only work on the site when I have time and on projects which interest ME). When I proposed adding archive nursery listings to the Admins, there was a very real concern the archive listings might confuse HMF site users into thinking the lists represented viable, current sources for roses. The roses listed in the archives under the nursery's name still show up on the BUY FROM tab, but on the rose page, they are not listed as commercially available unless another nursery has included the rose in their inventory .... too much programming time was involved in excluding the nursery from the BUY FROM tab. Once we hashed out how to prevent that issue, I was thanked and told to run with it. I am always on the lookout for old catalogs and nursery listings to flush out the history of roses in America. The main concern was not having these archives show up in searches where they may confuse users that the archives represented available business with available stock. There is always the concern about not running up server space (which gets quite expensive), clogging the system and putting unnecessary demands on the programming. All of which gets quite expensive, particularly for a site which has to completely rely upon donations and the incredibly small number of premium members. It amazes me how so many people resent the $2 a month requested support for such a tremendous resource. I guess many believe that anything on line should be completely free because they are unaware of how quickly the costs of server space, programming, moderation and maintenance run up! Many would also be quite surprised if the on line "attacks" from all over the world were publicized. Spammers, thieves and trolls attempt to breach the programmed security very frequently and that takes time and skill to prevent. All of which adds to the already strained resources. I'm amazed how inexpensive HMF has remained when I learned about the skill, resources and cost required just to keep the site open, much less develop and add features and content. btw ... do you support HMF with a premium membership ? Do you have the list of roses Mike Lowe grew in his garden and nursery? If you do, I'll be happy to add an archive documenting his collection, when I have time. I am already working on several projects for the site. If you could/would please send me any such lists as either Word or Excel files, I'll be happy to create and upload them to archive pages. Catalog lists are great, but how much more could be archived from garden lists! A private collection can be many times larger and more interesting than just what was propagated in a given year. I haven't gotten around to adding the information from the Ashdown catalogs yet. It can be QUITE time consuming. I received some major eye-rolling and annoyance over the time it required to study that many ROYAT catalogs and compile the list of over 700 varieties they contained. Compiling and uploading these archives is exactly the same process that is required for a nursery (who already HAS the information, often in forms necessary to upload) to create, update and maintain their nursery listings. It's distressing to me AND the many volunteers who work on HMF how many nurseries can't/won't/aren't able to create and maintain their own nursery inventory lists. There really are many more varieties available than are shown, and from quite a few more sources. I know it requires effort and time, both of which are sorely lacking in many of the nurseries, but someone has to make the time and generate the energy to accomplish it. It behooves the businesses to put the information there and maintain it as it has been proven that an up-to-date inventory on HMF can/does result in increased sales and is very efficient, low cost advertising. We volunteers cannot maintain the nursery listings as much as we would like to do on HMF simply because there are too many listing nurseries, and too many other projects being worked on. HMF needs to have the nurseries participate in maintaining their inventories, both due to the time involved as well as to insure their accuracy. Some users want to help by posting this or that rose is available at a particular nursery, and that is appreciated, but it doesn't help. There is one European nursery who still doesn't maintain their list. From the many "available from" posts to the Q&A, in just a few seasons, this nursery's availability list exceeded 900 varieties! No one removed what WASN'T available, new ones just kept being added from the helpful "available from" posts. You can't maintain the accuracy of a database that way! Lyn G., RoseBlush1 on GW, has spent time fixing problems in content like no one would believe! It's taken her several years of evenings to correct misinformation and mis entries, adding references, not to mention her efforts to keep up with new introductions and registrations. Those are things we all expect to be accurate and simply to be there, but if it had been accomplished by a "paid employee", the cost of the site would be prohibitive. I will be happy to look in to whether the information remains on the server about the Ashdown and Lowe collections as well as Cliff's from Euro Desert. I agree with you the information is invaluable, particularly when attempting to determine whether a variety was ever commercially available here. That can make a tremendous difference when trying to identify a found rose. Archiving Paul's encyclopedia of roses on HMF, I believe, would require some pretty heavy programming incorporate into HMF. That is not only time consuming, but potentially quite expensive. If it was simple and cheap, it would already be archived and accessible elsewhere. Someone has to pay for keeping it available and useable. Based upon how difficult it has been to get people to support HMF, I can imagine what it would probably be like to get support for his encyclopedia. If you know of someone with the disposable resources and who would be willing to support such a project, please get them with HMF to see if it may be something possible to accomplish. Also, the current volunteers all have their own long "to-do" lists, so if you can also find someone who understands the working of a complex database to do the work, that would make it more feasible. HMF is open to anything which may make the site more valuable and useful as a resource. There is a tremendous level of pride for the site, but it genuinely boils down to costs. Someone has to pay for the costs required to accomplish and maintain the requested additions. If they can be accommodated within the current budget and it can be shown to be a beneficial change, the people at HMF are completely agreeable to accommodating the improvements. I'm not aware of any suggestions which have been refused out right. I do know of many which have been put on the "to do" lists and will very likely appear once there are sufficient resources available to put them in place. I'm extremely pleased the only "agenda" I have found is to make the site as complete, useful, accurate and interesting a resource as can be created while keeping it as efficient and cost effective as it must remain. I, for one, am proud that I have had the opportunity to view HMF as it has evolved from its early days to what we see today and have loved participating as a volunteer on the site. I honestly believe that the part I have played over the years has enriched my own rose life and I can now interact with rose lovers from around the world. Kim