I believe the USDA zone for South Dakota ranges from 5A to 4A. I grew Scentimental here in Las Vegas over a decade ago and it thrived. I believe Scentimental is rated down to 6b for cold hardiness and will likely require some serious thought regarding winter protection if you are in the zones listed above; especially since it will still be new and less established. Will you be placing it in the ground or in containers and moving it inside during the winter?

This post was edited by desertgarden561 on Mon, Aug 19, 13 at 21:09

I grow both Dolly Parton and Scentimental here in hot, humid Alabama. Dolly is my daughterâÂÂs all time favorite rose and has one the best fragrances of any rose I know. SheâÂÂs a showstopping, bloom machine here. Loves our weather, but have heard people in colder zones donâÂÂt have as much luck with her. Dolly prefers hot, sunny days and warm nights to be her best. I probably get more compliments on her than any of my other roses. Everyone gushes over her saying theyâÂÂve never seen rose blooms as big as hers. She gets tall here and likes to bloom up high. I deadhead some canes hard between flushesâ¦cutting them back at least a couple of feetâ¦so that the next flush will have some lower blooms for me to smell more easily. She makes a great cut flowerâ¦lasting about a week in the vase. Scentimental is my favorite striped rose and in my top ten all time favorite roses. You may need to be patient with her, though. She was one of my worst first year roses. Shut down blooming and completely defoliated the first summer and no detectable fragrance to me. By her second year, she found her fragrance and handled the summer heat much better. SheâÂÂs thrived every year since and is just beautiful. Both roses will blackspot in my humidity if not sprayed. We have mild winters here, so I really canâÂÂt say on the cold hardiness of either rose. Below is a pic of Dolly from this morning (thatâÂÂs a 6 ft fence behind her):

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And one from July:

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And one from June (she really never quits blooming here):

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And here's Scentimental:

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Hi coryla, and welcome! You've picked some beautiful roses. As desertgarden said, in your zone you will need to do some winter protection for them but we need to know if they are in the ground or potted to give you the best advice.

all my roses will be in the ground. my local nursery who i bought 2 of my rose bushes from have rose cones for winter protection but they also advised me to use fall foilage to protect the roses as well. thanks for the input thus far! i will be posting pics of my roses when they bloom for everyone on here to see!

Coryla03, I do not garden in a cold zone, but I know that folks lose roses every winter; even with winter protection. There are also gardeners who push the limits and are very successful. Are you in the northern or southern part of the state?

Scentimental is rated 6b, so if you are in 5a, that rose is rated two temperature levels above your zone. The situation is worse if you are in zone 4. I apologize if you are already aware of this and I am preaching to the choir.

Maybe someone from your zone will chime in with specifics regarding getting a 6b rose through the winter; or maybe the cones and leaves are standard protocol and exactly what is required?

Lynn

Coryla, the ground is the best place to winter them. I hipe that your nurseryman told you to plant them with the bud union below the soil level by about 4 inches. That protects the grafts.

As far as the ratings go, those are often just a default setting. If you go to HMF and look at the "Gardens" tab you'll be better able to tell where it will winter. For instance on Scentimental you'll see there is someone in zone 4a growng it. There's no way of knowing what kind of protection it gets unless you can contact the grower and ask but it does give you a better indication of cold zone than just the rating.

Here is a link that might be useful: Help Me Find dot com slash roses

I'm in east central sd. i remember my gma growing scentimental and it thrived for quite a few years. i wanted rock & roll but lost in the ebay auction so i went with scentimental for choice b. :)

Hi! Sorry no advice here, I'm in tx and our winters are also very mild. Aside from that I'm a newbie. Im sorry for your loss. Im starting a rose garden for my grandmother also! Mostly so she can just sit back, relax, and enjoy life while someone else (me) does all the hard work. I think she's earned it;-) but also so she knows her love and passion for roses will continue for generations to come. So I wish you the best of luck ! I will keep you and your family in my thoughts and prayers, and hope you get all roses your heart could possibly desire!!!!
Lol, did you bid on ur rock n roll from riobay roses? Thats were I placed my bids for rock n roll and All American magic (yellow&red striped); I lost on both too :-( who knew ebay was so cut-throat!!! Lol!!!
Wishing you best gardening wishes,
Lyna

Scentimental has been cane hardy for me without special winter protection, although it's in a south facing bed in front of the house so it's protected from the wind. It's grafted on Dr. Huey with the graft buried well below grade. I heap an extra bit of mulch around the base in late November and shovel snow upon it when I can. I've seen it growing quite well in two other New Hampshire gardens, both of which winter protect with mounds of hay. Don't be discouraged if it seems like a weakling at first, that seems to be the nature of this rose. It may take two or three years to really shine but it's well worth it.

hehe yes i sure did bid on rock & roll thru rioroses on ebay! are his plants in nice condition upon arrival?

Lol!! Small world! Bummer u didnt win either:( His roses looked really good. For me the post office seems a bit lost around here, since im in a small town it took them 2xs as long as it should have. The post office sent my shipment to Fort Worth then Austin (im closer to Austin) then back to forth worth and back again to Austin to be sent here. Yea, I know ridiculous! With all that , the only problem my roses had was they started to get a bit dry. But I potted em up immediately and they haven't skipped a beat, several have buds getting ready to open! Yeah! I cant wait! The only thing I dont really care for is he seems to put antitranspirant on the leaves, he says so they dont lose too much moisture during shipping. My grandma says it doesn't work and the roses dont like it so I just wash it off. They're her roses so I just do as I'm told ;-) Good luck. I hope u win one!
-Lyna

HI Coryla

Welcome to GW, and you have a nice collection of unusual colored roses to get you well and truly hooked. At least half of my 700 roses are ones that are not "supposed" to grow in my zone, so like everyone else is saying, don't presume the worst because of their ratings. At the same time, I've also killed (and repeatedly killed) about as many roses as have survived, so there's no way of telling which roses will like your conditions until you give them a try.

For cold zone survival, you've already gotten some good advice. Odds are the roses you got are grafted, so if you didn't bury the graft well below soil level when you planted, you can either gently settle the plant lower in the soil now while it's still fresh and/or mound up some soil around the base of the plant to cover the graft (the knobby bit where the good canes sprout for the rose you want). Most of us in cold zones will do some of what ratdogheads talks about to aid the roses in winter survival, adding several inches of some organic material (hay, mulch, oak leaves) to the base of the rose to protect the lower cane. If you have consistent snow cover in SD, that helps winter survival too. Presumably you have the same fluctuating temperatures and high winds we do over the winter, and keeping some sort of NATURAL cover secure at the base of the rose once the ground is frozen will help reduce the effects of both of those factors.

You might rethink the styrofoam rose covers as a first choice as winter coverage for a couple of reasons. First, natural materials breathe better, and don't retain unnatural moisture (snow and other natural materials are fine). More roses die in my yard over the winter from canker associated with trapped moisture and fungus than from the cold itself. Also, make sure not to do any winter protection at all, whatever the method, before the weather is good and truly cold and the ground frozen. Otherwise, you build a haven for mice and other critters to gnaw off your rose all winter, or for humidity to do the same in less obvious fashion. I wait till the day temperatures average in the high 20's for at least a week. Roses can handle some cold, even the hybrid teas, and actually need some of that cold to go into their winter semi-dormancy. Lastly, the really unfortunate thing about those rose cones is that to fit them on a mature rose you'd have to cut off several feet of perfectly healthy cane in early winter to fit them on the rose. In cold zones, you want to keep as much healthy cane as feasible going into the winter, so there's still some good rose cane left in spring after you prune off winter damage.

It's your choice - I'm sure some folks have used the cones as well as any other protection method without problem, but your odds are much better with the more natural materials.

Cynthia