Hmmm. Am not really sure what you mean by ' all day'. Plant breeders solved the natural tendency of Portulaca to close at noon or so (or whenever it got really hot) years ago. Portulaca hybrids of today bloom all day long, even in the hottest of climates. Are you referring to the fact that they stay closed in the shade, on cloudy days, or at night?

I can't detect any other smell than pine resin on my mosses, Capitaine John Ingram, Henri Martin, Nuits de Young, Alfred de Dalmas, Salet and Eugenie Guinoisseau. Either my nose can't separate the different scents or I've been unlucky in my varieties.

In my garden the once-blooming European old roses all seem to bloom more or less at the same time: from about mid-May through mid-June. Among roses, some of the ramblers may come later, but I'm not sure. After the big first flowering ends around mid-June it's hot and dry, and not much happens in the rose world until temperatures begin to drop in late summer and the reblooming roses get going. I wouldn't look to roses for blooms or other garden ornament in high summer. Lavender flowers in the summer, if I remember correctly, also trumpet vine; in Washington state some of the large-flowered clematis began flowering when the roses were finishing up. Buddleia is good for high summer. The point is to think of succession of bloom. And summer is so bright and hot and dry here that I don't even want to go out in the garden. Instead I stay under the pergola or find another shady spot and admire my begonias and sansevierias. Some of this will depend on your climate, of course. Good luck in your search. Melissa

vesfl -- my once-blooming oldies are limited, in that I don't have any Albas or Centifolias, and aside from a few young Damasks in pots, the two I grow are 'Botzaris' (which is rather like a very prickly stout Gallica in habit, which also fits 'Leda' and a handful of others) and 'Quatre Saisons Blanc Mousseaux'. I have a few Gallicas planted where they can sucker if they want. Then there's "Nouveau Monde -- in commerce as" and a couple other oddballs. I've lived with them for a few years now, and let them teach me. So take this with a grain of salt. When I say I prune harder after the bloom, it's to sort of "refresh and contain" the roses. If I just dead-head the once-bloomers, they'll put out their new growth from where I cut off the faded blooms, and that new growth will continue growing, uninterrupted by a second flush, for another four or five months. I've been hypothesizing that the number of actively-growing buds is dictated by the extent of the root mass, as if the roots say "ok, we can support this many growth buds" to the top growth. That number can be contained within a few very long canes each with many active buds, or a lot of shorter canes each with fewer active buds. If you cut long canes back hard, lower growth buds which were sort of suppressed into dormancy by those higher up will sprout, making for bushier canes. If that's not enough, more new canes will emerge from the roots, and/or suckers will form. It's as if the roots say "hey, we said we could handle this many, but we're not getting as much food coming down here....do we need to send up more growth from below?" and they do. I like the Gallicas and 'Bozaris' to be broad, bushy, and low -- maxing at about four feet tall. So after they bloom, I cut the bloomed canes down by half (even if already shortened by a third before they leafed out), remove entirely any with few or no blooms, and if two canes are too close together, I cut out entirely the one that seems less vigorous, or older. From there, they will put forth next year's blooming canes. Because my growing season is longer than yours, I anticipate how big they'll be by Winter and keep that in mind when I'm deciding how much to remove. For you, reducing their length may not be necessary -- they may have only two months of active growth after blooming before going dormant in your area. I also find that doing this prompts suckers to sprout -- if they're in the way, I remove them as I find them. Otherwise, I leave them. The Gallicas were planted where I wanted them to sucker, but 'Botzaris' suckers get in the way, so I dig them out. Then there's "Nouveau Monde -- in commerce as" which I grow as a big climber against a raised deck railing, and a little into a tree. This rose was described by Vintage Gardens as belonging to "growth habit #3", which meant growing into a big, suckering haystack. Its main bulk fans out about fifteen feet wide and nine feet tall. All of its top-growth emerges from one cane emerging from the soil line. It has never sent up a sucker, and the only other cane it had was its original baby cane, long since pruned away. This remaining cane is over an inch in diameter now at the base. It grew up, then I turned it 45 degrees to the left, which prompted laterals, and those laterals were further turned, etc. This meant a LOT of actively-growing buds -- and probably what is suppressing the emergence of any new canes or suckers. So, in this case, I actually want to keep this situation going, because I simply can't fit any more of this rose in its spot -- new canes or suckers would not work. Before it leafs out, I just remove the dead or diseased parts, arrange the stems to where I want them to go, favor the stronger of two that are too close together, cut anything too thin to support a bloom, then snip what's left back just a bit to make it all fit. After the bloom, I cut it back harder, but only the parts extending beyond the top and sides of the railing. All the stuff below I pretty much leave. October 2013 -- six months after coming as a band. Note the cane going up against the railing -- this was trained to the left as it continued growing. Note the new shoots that seem to be coming from the roots -- they're not. They are laterals on that cane against the railing. Note the thin, twiggy bits down front -- those are the baby canes, which I later snipped away. Here it is in May 2014 -- baby canes still there, but all new growth you see along the railing began as laterals on that first new cane. There's also a clematis growing into it. May 2015 -- see how laterals upon laterals are growing? I got that starting because when the laterals went up and over the railing too high, I started tucking them back down to between 45 degrees and horizontal, in the opposite direction of the cane which sprouted the lateral, prompting those laterals to make laterals, and repeat. Lots of top mass suppressed more new canes and suckering. The baby canes are still there, but I cut them off after the bloom. April 2016 -- ok, now it's really getting huge, and still all of this is laterals upon laterals upon laterals.....from one main cane. If you look in the second pic, you can see that I've already cut the longest canes, which were long enough that they were arching toward the deck floor from their weight. Snipping them back made them stand upright. I then shortened those laterals, and trained them horizontally (or nearly so) against the top of the deck railing (after these pics were taken) And late May 2016 -- you can see the lateral-upon-lateral effect going on. Elsewhere, 'Duchesse d'Angouleme' (the one aka 'Wax Rose') is being trained the same way, but it's growing much more slowly than did NM-ica. Same idea, though -- one main cane, trained sideways, causing laterals to sprout, those laterals also trained sideways, those also sprouted their own laterals, etc. All that top growth is suppressing new canes and suckers below, so no worries about it taking over. So, long story short, I prune them after learning what they want to do, what they can do, and bending that to work for what I want them to do. :-) ~Christopher