You cannot judge the bloom quality from the very first bloom on a rose. Roses take 3 years to mature. Some roses will have different characteristics depending on the season, temperature, time of day, etc. Fragrance is also variable. What is strong to one person can be nothing to someone else. Let your plant grow up to be an adult, then judge, please.

I will do that, contact Caltrans. A moment of serendipity reminds me that their offices must be just up the road in Baton Rouge Sacramento. :) There are lots of whites, pinks, and reds. Big huge sprawling bushes. Near Vallejo, on the way to Napa, there's an unknown white one--growing alongside a drainage ditch--that is most literally bigger than a house, maybe two houses. (note to self, stop and check it out) Knockout or Carefree Beauty? No, that much much I know, these are not remontant roses at all. These would be ramblers or species roses. The way they survive adjacent to blistering concrete and asphalt coupled with months of no rainfall at all is just simply amazing and very gratifying. This afternoon, coming back from Berkeley, I spied a wonderful, vivid, yellow single just this side of Fairfield. At first I thought it was a mass of California daisies but quickly realized that those bloom nearly perpetually and have been full for sometime I was moving at freeway speed but got just enough of a second glimpse to realize they were roses.

That's what John Starnes told us. And he's the person who knew those roses best. It doesn't surprise me. I've seen it happen in other places. They don't want the roses in the way of "maintenance." They don't want the roses to obscure the tombstones. And the roses CAN -- there is some legitimacy to that concern. (SEE BELOW) But if you respect the history, and the people, and the families who buried them, you should, I think, respect their choice, to put roses there. Jeri

Is it in full sun? What is your soil like? Regularly watered? Mulched? If well watered and fertilized, modern repeat-flowering roses produce a new round of bloom every 6 to 8 weeks. Some are a bit faster than that, and some are slower.