Hmmm Ken you do bring up a valid point. I wonder if I should get them on Fortuniana. I have a jude the obscure on fortuniana but its brand new still and in a pot. I am planning on putting it in the ground. I might see how that one does before ordering my new austins (was going to get them in sept after the summer heat passes). I can get them from cool roses. I went up there last week and they had some amazing looking austins but none were for sale (except Jude which i think they sold me out of pitty since i wanted one so badly LOL). I'd be more than willing to invest the $$$ on them if i know they will perform well here (its about an hour drive to cool roses from here). Otherwise its really a crap shoot. I order the ones I like that they say do well here and just hope for the best. (That's why I'd like to order them from chamblees, they are half the cost as ordering from DA itself or from cool roses). Ahhh the dilemma! No space and i want them all!, but I always FIND a way to stick more roses in my garden. Even if it means growing them in planters on stands. Like my husband says i ran out of room on the ground so no I'm going up up up.

The roses they were selling in Canton were the leftovers from the huge Tyler Rose Festival in October. The ones I bought from in front of the Tyler store looked great but they were full price....I guess they lowered them to $15 because I saw them in Canton in November and they were full price. Mine still look great. I havent had any virused ones from DA and I have ordered from them for a number of years. I had a few in full all day sun and this summer did the young ones in but Mary Rose, a large DA I got for $2 a few years back from Teas Nursery in Houston [yes, $2! They made a mistake but honored the price as thats what I was told] It is one of the handful of roses that survived in that bed in this horrible summer we had. I have just sent in my spring order with DA. I decided to not get any own roots as I just wasnt sure enough of how they would perform. Maybe those of you who are trying the own roots from DA will let the forum know how they do. Judith

Many mauve roses aren't vigorous on their own roots, but they can be small and still happy. I don't need monster roses in my small garden. One mauve rose that does well on its own roots is Wild Blue Yonder and it is in stock at Heirloom Roses. I learned the hard way that mauve roses tend to burn in the heat. A spot that receives morning sun and afternoon shade should work nicely for your rose. Are you in northern or southern California? Although I try not to do it often, Heirloom Roses is very nice about changing orders if you should change your mind. Have fun :-)

Hi Saki Glad these comments were helpful, and we're always eager to help a beginning rose grower feel confident with their roses. The photo you posted is a lovely and very mature specimen of what looks like two or maybe even 3 climbing roses all splayed out horizontally along the fence. You can see one "fan" of canes spreading out from just right of center and another fan spreading from the left 1/3 of the photo. I can't tell if the cane stretching straight up in the center is part of a third plant with a few lateral canes or not. This effect is definitely a great thing to strive for, but I'd be totally depressed if I tried to get all my climbers to look like this, since not all climbers put out as many primary canes coming straight out of the soil as this one does. I'll show you two contrasting climbers for example. Colette looks the most like the photo above with several canes coming straight out of the soil that I'm encouraging sideways on my fence. Do remember that climbing roses have to be secured in some way to the fence - they won't climb on their own like clematis or other vines will. Mine is probably 3 years old, and you can see that it has three main canes out of the soil (I usually call them primary canes in a climber, but they come out of the base and I presume the terms are the same thing). Mine is own-root so there isn't a graft from which these canes split off, but if I'd buried my graft the 2-4" that is recommended in cold zones, it would look a lot like this too. Now, the reason you distinguish between primary canes and laterals in a climber, is that your blooms aren't mostly going to be directly on those primary canes that you bend sideways. Even in a young climber like this, you can see that the blooms are in smaller off-shoot canes that branch off vertically from these horizontal main canes - we call these lateral canes. The main/primary canes are toward the bottom of the fence, but the blooming laterals stretch up a good 2-3' higher than the primary canes. The more horizontal you can stretch your canes, the more likely the rose will put out laterals all the way along the length of those primary canes. That means you can have a fence full of blooms from only a few primary canes, even if the rose puts out a limited "fan" of canes. As Colette ages, she might put out more base canes, but I doubt I'd get the rich "forest" of canes in the photo above even when she's mature - particularly in any climbers that lose cane over the winter. Still, I'm confident she'll fill this part of the fence in another 2 years or so. Here's another rose that for me grows in a somewhat different habit. I've only seen one primary cane off the base of my Lunar Mist, and it's more like 4-5 years old. I bend it sideways in the same way as I do the Colette above, and it sends up laterals all along the length. Same principles of laterals and primary canes as above, it's just that the base of the rose is at one end of the array and the blooms arch off to one side off the primary cane that I've bent sideways. You can't quite see the base of Lunar Mist here, but it's off to the right and below the picture here, below where the clematis is. My New Dawn never got mature in the poor location under my oak tree, and we'll see what the new grafted version wants to do now, but at the moment it just has one big cane that I've stretched sideways like the Lunar Mist above. Climbers are very different when young vs. when mature, though, so you have to be patient with them. It usually takes at least 4-5 years before a climber has built up enough root structure to support a robust blooming rose, and not all of them will build this kind of fan structure very widely. Some will be more of a "rainbow" like my Lunar Mist. Regardless, the principle is the same and we encourage more growth of canes from the base in climbers as we do in any rose, with adequate water, maybe some alfalfa to encourage basal breaks, and patience, patience, patience. The rose will "tell" you what it wants to do over time. Just be sure to bend the young canes sideways when it's young, as robust climbers like New Dawn can get pretty stiff and woody in their primary canes over time, and they're much harder to bend. Hope that helps. Cynthia