Thanks for the feedback. I don't believe your map, but I do believe you, so let's go with your description. With the winter chill you can grow the once-blooming old roses: Gallicas, Damasks, Centifolia, Albas; and most Moss roses fall in this class. You treat these like shrubs and plant them with plants that have different bloom seasons for an extended display. Lilacs, peonies, bulbs in the spring, for example, and clematis will probably overlap with the roses and continue on for the summer, along with any number of summer-flowering plants. If you want an old rose look and fragrance with repeat bloom, check out the Portlands and, for a more modern look (with definite China influence) look into the Bourbons, of which your 'Zephirine Drouhin' is one. The Portlands are double, fragrant, and reblooming, and have a considerable look of the once-blooming old roses to them. There are the Hybrid Perpetuals as well, but I don't know them and my few efforts to grow them have been unsuccessful. If you can protect your roses from the wind, so much the better. We get gale force winds through our valley, though, and it doesn't seem to do any particular harm to mine. I think it helps not to fertilize and water them into rapid lush growth. Your soil sounds excellent. I'm a great believer in mulch and organic methods. They work very well with my roses. The old roses are supposed to be thriftier--less demanding of nutrients and water--than Hybrid Teas, and I think this is true. I also don't spray my roses or do any treatment for disease. You'll get a good idea of what will grow for you by looking around at what's growing locally, in conditions similar to yours. And consult with California nurseries specializing in old roses. If winter temperatures rarely go below the teens you could consider Tea roses as well, as well as Chinas and Noisettes. Most are listed a hardy into zone 7; some into zone 6 (USDA). They need summer heat and sun and are somewhat tender. They're old roses (I'm talking about Teas, NOT Hybrid Teas), marvelous garden plants where they're suited, and many are fragrant, usually a Tea fragrance which not everyone's nose can pick up. Other possibilities that aren't old roses, but older classes and marvelous plants are the Hybrid Musks, fragrant, reblooming and glorious shrubs or small ramblers; and the Wichurana climbers, beautiful plants and flowers but generally once-blooming. If you can draw on some local knowledge it would be a great help to you. Mine is a rough outline from a person who doesn't know your area, and so I can only be of so much help. By the way, I forgot the early-blooming species yellows, like Rosa hugonis. They add variety and character to the garden. The species and species hybrids would be worth your while to look into. This isn't exactly a design book, but to my mind the best book on old and species and older roses is still The Graham Stuart Thomas Book of Roses (the title is something like that). With old roses I think what you need isn't really a book on designing with old roses, but just books on garden design, keeping in mind that roses are just another of the shrubs, like the lilac and the forsythia and the barberries. They are most glorious plants, but it helps to think of them that way. I think rose gardens are boring: roses become wonderful when they're integrated into the whole garden. I hope this helps. Good luck! Melissa

Placed my order with Corn Hill! I ordered DOORENBOS (Scotch) DOUBLE SCOTCH PINK (Scotch) STANWELL PERPETUAL (Scotch) MAIDEN'S BLUSH (Alba) QUEEN OF DENMARK (Alba) ROSERAIE DE L'HAY (Rugosa) WASAGAMING (Rugosa) I decided to just buy 2 Alba's this year and no Gallica's, to test-drive whether they will survive in my cold, fairly exposed garden. Can't wait!

I personally have at about 5000ft elev in SW Montana: 1)William Baffin - reachingabout 10' now after 10 years, up and over an archway, with Clematis "Bluebird" threatening to take it over each summer! Low care, rarely dead to cut out, no spray, annual feeding of composted manure and annual Bayer Tree and Shrub application. 2) Adelaide Hoodless: Never much die back but i cut it back pretty hard becasue it is a flopper otherwise - 3-4 ft H & W, a nice recurrent red. 3) Champlain: Took them all out last year - one of the prettiest hardy everblooming reds but two years of dieback followed by recurrent bouts of powdery mildew means they can't stay in my postage stamp size of a garden... 4) Flower Girl: a floribunda with minimal dieback and pretty clusters of baby pink single flowers. to 2 ft. No disease issues. 5) David Austin's Gertrude Jeckyll: Dies back some years but rebounds well to 3-3.5ft and the fragrance from these large mauve blossoms is out of this world!!!! 6) Rosa glauca - red leaf rose to 8 ft H That foliage, those hips!!!! 7) Austrian Copper - a bugger with black spot but needed the orange in that spot - it will go when I expand the grape arbor! 8) John Franklin - a lovely red with the sweetest form in bud and flower, nice clean foliage and overall shape. I don't grow any of the rugosa hybrids that have the matte foliage such as hansa and Belle Poitevin - the flowers are gorgeous but they are particularly resentful of our alkaline soils, even with heavy ammending. That is my current inventory but I have grown others in this area: a quick list...Bonica - lt pink,Graham Thomas - a DA yellow, Henry Kelsey - red climber, Knock out - red, any of the Morden series, Winnipeg Parks - rosy pink with good foliage, Therese Bugnet - nice pink but sometime chlorotic... Looking to try Starry Night as I don't currently have a white and maybe add another DA or 2! happy rose growing to all!

Michaela - all sorts of things! My usual bell peppers, eggplants and broccoli, plus petunias, snaps, nicotiana, annual lobelia and some of the zinnias I hybridized - those will all be started in early March. Later, I'll start tomatoes, marigolds, cosmos, cleome, some poppies and more. Will be winter sowing this year with some seed I picked up in a swap - some fancier echinaceas, alliums, gaillardia and others. Would be happy to swap, though I've already got some foxglove, so I don't need that right now. Hoping the ones I've put in will naturalize - I've got them in 3 different locations, hoping one will take. And I'll be direct sowing, among other things, a whole basket full of zinnia seeds, saved from my crosses this past summer - going to be interesting! Anything in particular you're looking for? - Alex