You want some shrubs in the vicinity of your roses. Specifically you want shrubs like Bridal Wreath that grow to be a mass of small stems that are the preferred domicile of small birds. (Why?) Because big birds don't care about small pests, but little birds feast on them.

The small birds are so subtle in their coloring that sometimes they are hard to see unless they are moving. A well watered bird bath is also useful.

Wasps or yellow jackets also go for the smaller pests. (I have resisted learning the differences in the wasp/yellow jackets and their kin; they've gotten me too many times and it hasn't mattered much which ones they are).

Ann thanks so much for this information---I happen to have a lovely large Bridal Wreath which I love but never knew how valuable it can be----
Florence

Hang in there. When I first moved here (Roanoke) I had no idea what blackspot and other fungi could do. Or Japanese beetles. Or how much I had to amend the clay soil. I did't know about maple tree roots. And then there was RRD. Rose slugs, caterpillars, canker, chipmunks....I'm no spray; I just water, feed, and cross my fingers. They make it or they don't. It took a good five years and I was almost to the point of throwing in the trowel. Then suddenly, it all began to happen. Everyone who lived got healthy, grew, bloomed, shrugged off bugs and BS. This year, my garden looked like something out of a coffee table book. Gallicas that sat as lame little twigs for three years now are five feet tall ad madly suckering. Climbers that didn't climb are climbing. Noisettes that limped their way to 3 feet are suddenly six feet.

So, lower your expectations and jack up your patience.

You're doing fine.

You know there will be (eventually) a sort of "shakout" during which you will find some roses aren't suited to your garden. EVERYONE goes through that. Don't worry. It'll be OK.

Follow Ann's advice (and others in the area) about companion plants. Once the birds and the good bugs find your garden, things will get better.

Jeri

Ok. Thanks. I knew I could count on you all for encouragement.
I have LOTS of birds. Little birds. I have several feeders, moving water, still water...I plant with butterflies and hummingbirds in mind. There are 6 massive oakleaf hydrangeas planted on the other side of my fence...
So I have lots of spots for critters and try to create a nice habitat.
I think what has bummed me out is that the HT's I bought last year (which I now know had been pumped full of stuff and sprayed etc) were so glorious in bloom and this year there has just been a thud...
I mulched with composted manure early winter, amended soil, added compost, added mills rose mix...
coaxing bands along with weak fish tea...
I guess I feel like I've just given my "all" and the roses didn't give back.
Although I have to give credit to Lavender Lassie and Lady of the Mist--3-4 years old and gorgeous this year--both blooming for the first time.
I see lots of little birds hoping around in the back beds. I read in one of my old books to put out "leavings" for the birds to encourage them into the areas where you want them to feast on insects....
I did see a crow raid a robin's nest, taking two eggs. That really made me angry. The crows seemed to have nested in some nearby tall trees.
I will look for Bridal Wreath. And I will jack up my patience.
Thanks again.
Susan

What everybody else said. Also years vary, some better than others, each one unique. This year I have a lot of fungus disease because we've had a very rainy, cool, gray spring. Some roses are duller colored than usual. A lot of the Teas and Chinas look unhappy. (However the once-blooming old roses are in heaven.) So the state of your garden could owe something to the weather this year.
What catsrose said about the power of time is totally true. I've seen in my own garden what happens when a rose takes hold. It takes several years, but when it happens, it's amazing.

Just another agreement on giving it time.

Last year the garden looked HORRIBLE for all the holes in the leaves of the roses. This year we have some rose slugs, but we also have some rather happy wasps.

And the towhees are happy busy hunting all day. Got a kick out of one that has a nest in the plum tree in the back yard. I just scrubbed out one of the bird baths the other day. The little guy was in there taking a soaker bath. That bird was WET, saw me and hopped over and made it from the edge of the bath to the tutor I made for RdV and shook and cleaned up enough to fly. Then flew back to the nest.

I love to watch them bathing. I have robins who just get down in the deep part and really dunk themselves. Great fun.
The goldfinches are starting to arrive too. Won't be long until hummingbirds are here.
I will try to focus on the good, be patient and accept that I have done my best and the rest is up to Mother Nature.
Thanks you all.

(You'll know you are a gardener when you let thistles bloom because Goldfinches love them so much and then madly cut the heads off for the good of the rest of your garden and your neighbors.) (Goldfinches are also major potential predators of Box Elder Beetles, and an alternative to the IPM suggestion that to get rid of Box Elder Beetles, cut down your Box Elder trees.)

Over time you will discover that some of your roses improve while others do not, and may even look worse. Gardeners react differently to this situation. Some remove the less healthy cultivars and replace them with other ones, sometimes repeatedly until they have ones that please them. Others embrace what they have and accept it. (I am of the remove and replace school myself, but not everyone reacts as I do, nor should they.)

What others are telling you is true. Monocultures constantly teeter on the brink of epidemic and collapse. They beg for chemical intervention to prop them up. Roses like any other plant grow best when surrounded by a wide variety of species. Plants that are native to a particular area are especially valuable because the native beneficials already have a relationship with them. I am not advocating a garden of exclusively natives unless you want to do that, but it can be useful to include some.

It is true that even a healthy system cannot always withstand a powerful new invader. Think of the chestnut blight that destroyed the vast chestnut-dominated forests of northeastern United States a century ago. Still there is nothing you can do that will make your roses more robust and resistant than to invading insect or disease than having them be only one of many different kinds of plants in your garden. The birdsong that comes with this diversity is a wonderful bonus. I sometimes think of an abundance of birds as the surest sign of a healthy garden.

Rosefolly

Well gosh. I have a ton of birds....
I don't know about native plants growing with my roses but I do have lots of companions:
thistle, nepeta, salvia, phlox, cransebill, verbena boniarensis, butterfly bushes, honeysuckle, chamomile, rosemary, allium, thyme, alchemilla, monarda, iris, daylilies, clematis, delphinium, columbine, mullein, oriental and species lilies, milkweed, fennel, eryngium, dianthus, oregano...

I'm in year four and the culling is beginning. For example, as much as I've tried to keep my Louise Odier healthy, she just hates it here. Shes large, but her color and blooms are horrible, and shes always covered in mildew or blackspot, that is, if she even has any leaves. Same for some others, they dont want to live in my humid clay soiled area of the Country? Well, so be it, away they go!

You mentioned Darwin...well I look at my culling as natural selection :)

Tammy

pbrr, hypochondria by proxy is one thing but if it slips into munchausen by proxy let us know and well arrange and intervention! ;-0 Thanks for the chuckle!

A few miles away and I'm right there with you with the rose slugs. If it wasn't so disappointing it would be simply amazing at how much destruction they cause and and how quickly it happens. I remove the little buggers by hand from each leaf daily on my 12 bands and most of them are STILL pretty damaged. (Kim, the 2 ALM seem to have the most resistants to them so far!)

My husband wanted to do something about the "damn chirping in the chimneys" and I told him absolutely NOT! That chirping is a family of 3 adults and a brood of swifts and supposedly they can eat as many as 12,000 flying bugs in a day and some of those might be sawflys. The poor hubby looked at me with squinty eyes and realized it was really the same reason he can't take down the wasps nests in the eaves over the garden. :-)

But ann I'm crushed about the thistle. I've been hand removing them from the field in front of my house (this is NOT a fun job.) I hate thistle in my pastures and I don't think I can get over it...maybe a nice thistle feeder for the goldfinches is order?

I even tried to get my daughter's chicken interested in eating the slugs--by trying to feed them to her as I picked them off my bands. I envisioned a trained slug eating chicken working her way through the garden. Unfortunately she had more interesting possibilities calling her. As funny as it might sound I was desperate enough to think seriously on this!

Sigh. At least there is someone to commiserate with.

It might be that the mild winter we had in TN is the reason behind the slug-fest.

I have had OGRs put on a couple of feet of growth this past winter and I had really figured that they had reached their optimum (roots into clay soil determined) height.

I like the list of companion plants (even though many aren't natives). To that I'd add more compositae for fall (and for fall beneficials). I'm still trying to find the very old fashioned single asters that were my Grandmother's fall garden staple.

The other thing that I've let come into my garden (where I lost my wonderful James Galway to RRD) is milkweed. Now trying to keep milkweed where I want it isn't easy, but it pulls out 'real good' when we have wet weather.

Ann, yes! I love those weeds that pull out "real good". I chose milkweed for the butterflies. Fennel too, although it seems to be growing very slowly.
Subk, I'm glad I'm not alone (misery loves company right?).
We did have a very mild winter and I'm thinking that may be the issue with the gallicas?
Leda, the damask is growing like...a weed!
Susan, who is feeling much better now. Thank you all.