Bourbons. Such divas! They love our gardens and fulfill our wildest Victorian dreams or they tease us with slow progress and stingy blooms until the very last of our patience is burned out and then finally build up enough presence to erupt into the grandest show in the garden or they sulk while offering just enough meager crumbs of sumptuous and deeply fragrant beauty to keep us hooked and stay our shovels or they simply succumb to blackspot or harsh winters and turn up their prissy little toes after a few years. When they love us and our gardens, they get bigger and better every year and toss around cascades of blooms like those Krista receives for her tender care. Time will tell what each of yours does, Magpie. :-) Carol Zephirine

I have Louise next to mine. It has a big (OK huge) footprint although It did have major dieback this year with our late frost. Mrs J.L. punches out some beautiful blooms and it is hard to pass on, although it is subject to BS. The waaaabits have a major love affair with La Reine despite cages within cages. I do not know, they are all good choices, perhaps different in your zone as has been mentioned. Have fun! F.L.

One big bouquet of flowers and you will have your 20.00 worth. The perfume is just beautiful. Here by Disneyland she can be chest high by seasons end and sometimes higher if I don't trim the plants down late summer for the fall flush. I have a friend who lives nearby and has taken some rooted sections to plant in her yard. She didn't do much to the soil and the rose only gets lawn sprinkler water 3 times a week. That plant is shorter. I don't think I've seen it over waist high. The flowers are smaller, but it still blooms nicely. Leaving it unpruned, you get fewer blooms in spring. For the first years, you need to let it grow and not cut it. It will slowly form a dense bush. Then you can begin to prune it with your other roses. Mine loves horse manure and a good layer of mulch to keep the roots cool. I get an occasional flower here and there until fall and then I get a bunch at the same time but nowhere as many or as large as spring. You can use the flowers for sachets or make scented water with them. Here is a link to the picture of one of my La Reine shrubs http://forums.gardenweb.com/discussions/2132031/shes-the-queen?n=25

Wow, Monarda - I'm amazed that you single out Yolande d'Aragon as highly disease resistant in your zone. Just goes to show how different regions are. I garden in dry Nebraska climate where we still get enough humidity creeping in from southern regions to give us a fair bit of blackspot on any susceptible roses. Nothing like what Mad Gallica mentions of the BS corridor near DC (a multiple meaning phrase now that I think about it), but about half of my roses get some to a lot of defoliation by August without spraying (which I don't do). I'm pretty tolerant of blackspot and most roses get by without it reasonably well. Yolande d'Aragon however holds a special award spot in my garden as being the most spectacular victim of Damask crud I've ever seen (whatever Damask crud actually is). Her leaves from about early July through the rest of the year look like they've been liberally spattered with rusty mud in large splotches. It's by far the ugliest foliage I've ever seen on a rose, and I have seen some BS champs. I rather wish she would just go ahead and defoliate from that mess, but she stubbornly hangs onto these truly disturbing looking leaves all season. I'm planning to move her to my back 40 area of the yard so that she can put out her blooms in spring and then crud all she wants without annoying me for the rest of the year. She's also spreading enough to be too big for her britches where I have her, and she doesn't bloom often enough to keep that prime location. I get a decent June flush then little afterward. In response to the original OP's question about Therese Bugnet, I can absolutely attest to her hardiness and disease free foliage. I never ever have to prune anything from her and she has pleasantly reddish stems that make a nice backdrop for other roses. She's an 8 foot or more clump of arching foliage that requires zero care from me. I can't recall any foliage issues from her ever, and being a rugosa you don't want to spray her anyway. I agree with the trailer trash article though about being pretty uninspired by her most of the time. Her bloom cycle is no more than about two weeks and it's unusual for her to put out more than 2-3 blooms total for the rest of the season. She's the first to bloom and her speed at fading individual blooms is remarkably fast, such that I can miss getting a photo of a mostly nice bloom or spray if I tend to another area of the garden first. Her spring flush is rather "blink and you'll miss it" for me, and this spring I think she had no more than a week at the end of May that she bloomed. If she were in a better spot I might remove her, but she holds her own under a 2nd floor balcony enough to earn her soil. Yes, she gets plenty of sun, it's just a cumbersome place to garden and pretty dry. I suppose she might bloom a little more with more acidic soil or water, but the trailer trash article reinforces my impressions that she's mostly background foliage for most of the year. She's a much shorter bloom cycle than any of my other once bloomers, and Veilchenblau has about four times as much bloom time and visual impact in my yard. I second the notion of trying Soeur Emmanuelle for a large healthy pink, or something like Bliss Parfuma or Pink Martini. They have big fat old fashioned blooms but very healthy foliage for me. Cynthia