I have to agree. But I don't know if I can label my wusses complete and total wusses. I see these wonderful pics and reviews where they aren't wusses. :-P
Heck, I have roses that are red in my garden and and people report they are pink, orange or yellow in another town! Example, my Moonstone is a wuss. Supposedly a very hardy rose! Or my Midas Touch full wuss.
My 3 "I don't know what they are" are doing great! Maybe we shouldn't know?

Allison

Are you referring to cold hardiness or just general vigor? Funny thing.....all my moderns are doing just fine, thriving in fact. And I live in a humid blast furnace. I figure if you can survive and thrive in a blast furnace, you can't be too much of a wuss :) Isn't it a matter of the right rose for your area - how many posts have there been on the love/hate relationship between those that have Austins that do well for them and those that hate them because they don't.

I can't grow most of the OGR's here - it's too hot - but I wouldn't call them wimpy for it.

It's really a stretch to label the enormous group of roses that comprise the so-called moderns as weak...my opinion, of course.

Happy Gardening!

Lynn

If you are talking about hybrid tea roses, my understanding is that breeders with the major companies have geared their efforts to selecting roses from their seedlings that would be best for florists to sell as cut flowers.

Some major criteria are classic bloom form, thick, sturdy petals that would transport well, long stems and few thorns.

Florist roses are grown in controlled conditions inside greenhouses, so cold-hardiness and resistance to fungal diseases are not heavily considered.

More recently, some companies have considered the market for roses as landscaping, and have offered roses that are more disease resistant and easier to care for.

Jim in zone 5, Allison and me in 9/10 and Lynn in hot-summer 8/9 -- it's best for us to brainstorm with local rose experts, experiment and see what works in our gardens and get rid of what doesn't.

And Jim, many of wussier antique roses have gone "extinct" -- the ones we still have are the ones that have stood the test of time.

Sure some moderns are "wussy." And some are vigorous and a delight to own.
That was true a century or two ago, when our current Old Roses were Modern.
The stronger cultivars survived to become Old Roses.

A century or two down the road, the weaklings among OUR moderns will probably have been lost, and the stronger will have survived to be the Old Roses of the 23rd Century.

Jeri

That title was a sweeping statement. Sorry about that.

I should have said for me in my climate and soil. Come to think about it roses are a rarity around here. As a part time assessor I make the rounds of houses in our town and I could count on one hand the number of gardens with roses let alone a rose garden.

I was out today and it was a beautiful day to be wending my way on the tree lined roads. One house had two roses!

Every rose I have are on their own roots either by design or have gone own root due to the bud union being planted deeply. I go through no great pains to winter protect them. Oak leaves blown in by Mom Nature or shredded and directed to the beds when I mow them in the fall are the only protection they get.
True, those not cane hardy will die back but they come back quickly each spring after pruning.
After experiencing similar results as you, I've long since stopped buying roses that have shown they are not winter hardy. I'll buy an occassional mordern rose and allow it to go own root to see if it will be hardy but no longer get upset if it doesn't. I've come to expect it from them and it's a pleasant surprise when one does prove to be hardy.
My yard is filled with many more shrub roses and rugosas that morderns. Not expecting morderns to deliver hardiness has made my life easier and less fustrating.

texaslynn, there's a big difference between our cold winters and your hot summers. Consider the fact roses are grown commercially in Texas. There are no large commercial fields of roses growing in Indiana or New York. While you can supply water to get your roses over hot dry spells, water on our roses in the winter will just freeze. To make matters worse, beside the bitter cold in winter we can also suffer hot dry summers, so roses here have to be able to take both climates.

My garden is filled with a mixture of OGRs, Bucks, floribundas, mini-floras, minis, and hybrid teas. Some are grafted and some are own-root. At last count I was up to 234 and growing.

I mainly grow hybrid teas here in Zone 5 Illinois,and like Karl in Indiana, our weather extremes can vary. Last January we endured a stretch of -22F temps with very little snow cover. My roses only have oak mulch at their feet and oak leaves that get blown in.

Come spring, my only losses were 3 Bucks, Dragon's Blood from RVR, and one shrub from ARE....I did not lose one HT. Not too bad for wussy roses, I would say.
-terry

I have about 170 roses of mixed kinds. Some modern roses, some old ones.
If they are vigorous and healthy, or not, depends a lot upon your climate, the quality of the soil, and the exposition.
Sometimes moving a rose to another place works miracles. The same sun that might kill a hybrid musk is a joy for a chinensis.

This said, I think that many old roses had to survive without all pesticides that are available today, so there was a natural selection of some kind. Many modern roses can survive thanks to advancements in chemistry, but would not survive one day in a no-spray natural environment (as such, I avoid them: I do not spray).

After all, isn't it the same with human beings?
Our grandparents and their grandparents were all born in times were fragile children died, as there were not medicines like today. Those who survived were all very tough. I was -like a HT- a fragile child that would have died in a no-medicine, wild environment.

I have to stick up for my morden Sunrise, I have a particularly harsh environment here no snow cover and below zero winds in winter ,and I do very little protection. My Morden has come up strong and healthy every time.And it blooms all summer although the japanese beetles like it right now.

There are many exceptions to my Post. But in general Old Roses have proven themselves over the decades. Surviving many different growing situations. I've thought that another test for buying a rose might be its' age since introduction. And then combining that with the number of nurseries selling it.

Something like Morden Sunrise is a special case as it was bred to withstand cold climates which includes a type of soil prevelent in those areas. Now there is another generalzation!

OK, Jim, was your thread title supposed to read modern or moRden?
Freudian slip or not?

Good heavvens I can't spell anymore. Of course MODERN!

Well examples of some of the moderns that have not made it in my death beds. 9 Austins, all individual varieties, also 9 or was it 6 Bonicas, 3 or 4 Lavender Simplicity's, quite a number of Hybrid Teas too many to name, and a lot of Kordes such as Sparrieshoop, Lichtkonigen Lucia, Orange Triumph, Magenta I even tried it 3 times as I liked it so much. Etc.

My real death bed is the end of my vegetable garden where I've moved roses I didn't like or being once bloomers thought I needed a repeater. I must have moved or planted at least 20 roses there. All except a struggling Charles de Mills has died there. Recently I moved a Karl Forester from there that was a tiny rose that never bloomed. I put it in the front of the round bed. Well it became a low very spreading plant 6'wide. Bloomed profusely all along the canes!

I've been meaning to get a soil analysis there but have been too lazy to do it. Or forgetful!

Jim have you tried any Canadian Explorers, Morden, Pavement, Knockout or Kordes Fairytale roses?
The FT roses are very lovely, old fashioned looking and very disease free for me. See pics I posted on this thread...

Here is a link that might be useful: My Fairytale Roses

About half my roses are Kordes. I've yet to try some of the new ones as I'm trying to catch up on the old ones.

I've also had quite a few Explorer's but Baffin is the only one left. Doesn't repeat for me but puts on a good show in June. A nicely shaped bush.

No knockouts and I've never seen one but I guess it is an awful pink.

I have Blushing Knockout but I'm not a fan of the KO roses. Too boring.
I've eliminated almost all my slacker roses.
The best by far have been the Rugosas and OGR.
As for modern roses...Buck rose 'Applejack' is 5' x 5' cane hardy and repeats.
'Constance Spry' is the only English rose that is cane hardy here and very vigorous. I have a few other good Austins but CS is the best. A great repeat climber is 'Louise Odier' although not modern.
'Lillian Gibson' is another must have.
There are roses out there that will work for you.
Check out my cane hardy roses page on my website.

Here is a link that might be useful: Hardy Roses for Z5

When Prairie Star died over the winter, it was the last straw for me with regard to Buck roses. I don't know how Karl does it. All of my roses are own root, too. I have had lots of Buck and Austin roses die on me as well as Generosas and Delbards. OGRs are attacked by bugs which eat the buds so you might not get any blooms and the repeat is generally not very good anyway. It is like being between a rock and a hard place. Earthsong did not come back very well this year. Vigorous modern roses that survive the winter here include Evelyn, Tradescant, Sharifa Asma, Madame Bovary, Prairie Breeze and Martine Guillot. Abraham Darby dies to the ground but has managed to come back. Surprisingly, Bolero is pretty tough.

I might as well put in a plug for hardy Kordes roses.

Robusta, Eutin, Illusion, Immensee (Grouse), Knirps, Lavaglut, Roselina, Fritz Nobis, Parkzauber, Palmengarten Frankfurt, Westerland, Rosarium Uetersen, Alchymist, Karl Forester, Flammentanz, Rheinapark, Dortmund, etc.

Robusta, Park Director Riggers, Karl Forester and Scharlachglut are Z4.

I have 6 Elmshorn's that have always been hardy but this year they froze back to half there size and have not regrown. Formerly a very reliable rebloomer with the unusual trait of not only dropping their petals after blooming but the whole flowering part. Looked clean all the time. An automatic disbudding rose.

I don't get too upset if roses die back to the snow line.
That is pretty much the norm around here in Michigan with most roses.
As long as they bounce back I keep them.
I think recommending roses is *very* subjective as I have grown many so call "hardy/vigorous" recommendations that have failed to thrive for me but since I'm in a rural, low spot and might as well be Z4 I do make some recommendations such as the roses above.
My main problem is roses that do well the first year and then just never do much after that.
I rarely lose any to the winter.
In fact, our most recent winter was the worst in recent times and I swear my roses loved it.
Many were loaded with blossoms, throwing up alot of new canes and grew like weeds this spring.
I secretly think roses love a long, cold dormancy.

Predfern I've grown a ton of Bucks and only Applejack and Prairie Princess have done well for me. Same with growing lots of Austins, Romanticas and Generosas. I don't have any Generosas left, only one romantic (Eden cuz I love it so much) and several Austins.
BUT... sometimes I think you just get bad clones.
Some of the pathetic band roses (twigs) you get are a waste of time IMO. I don't buy them anymore and only buy roses from Roses Unlimited and Pickerings.
I've tried many name brand vendors roses and they've all been shovel pruned.
I haven't noticed that ownroot does any better for me than grafted.
Really, I think its all a matter of "hit & miss"...seeing what will grow well for you in your unique environment.