I share your sadness. I have discovered 13 infected roses in the past three days! I found two three weeks ago and suddenly it is all over my place! Ann in TNB tracks this. Email her on her mypage in case she doesn't see this post.

Ronda, I do remember you and always loved your postings about your lovely roses and garden. I am so sorry. Hope that Country Dancer, and the others, stay healthy.
Anita

Oh, Ronda, not your hill!! I remember the photos you posted here when you proudly showed all the work you'd done, and how beautifully the roses filled in. My heart breaks for you.

This time of year I am constantly on the lookout for RRD symptoms. I took a cane showing early signs off of 'Glenn Dale' a couple of weeks ago ... I'm being optimistic about saving it, I know. I have yet to save a rose that showed any sort of infection in fall. I wonder if it's possible for roses that show spring symptoms.

RRD sure sucks.

Connie

I empathise with your loss even though I have not suffered from this terrible disease. I lost a beautiful Cercis canadensis recently to verticillium wilt and grieve over the loss - to lose so many mature and gorgeous roses at once must be completely heartbreaking. We do not have RRD in the UK (and fervently hope we never do) but what a terrible decision to have to take - whether or not to grow roses for fear of yet more misery. Best wishes and profoundest sympathy.

Rhonda---I remember you---I am so sorry to hear about your roses.

It makes me sad to read about our friends here on GW who have lost so many of their beautiful bushes--

Thinking of you---
Florence

I plant right away. so far no RRD in any of the replacements and some were replaced three to four years ago.

Thank you all for your kind words. I opted for a cane removal to remove RRD from Belinda's Dream in spring and this fall found RRD in so many roses. I am not sure if it had already spread or if perhaps I should have dug Belinda's Dream entirely from the moment I saw the RRD...? I know there are followers on both sides of the fence with... but after my experience I will SP anyting with RRD.

Karl you give me hope. I have a spot behind the birdhouse that just must be filled by a rose. Nothing else will do in that spot. Did you replace any soil?

I'm so sorry, Ronda, to hear of your devastation. I've missed you on the forum, but at least it was because you were just very, very busy and not because you stopped loving roses. My heart has been pounding for Country Dancer ever since I saw your photos and read your raves. I should have gotten her long before now. This disease is such a tragedy and seems to be everywhere. I hope you battle on. Gosh, can't someone just kill all the multiflora and be done with it?? My heart says the more roses RRD kills the more roses we must plant. Yes, your birdhouse needs another rose.

Sherry

Ronda, I too remember you and your hillside garden and can't believe this has happened to your beautiful roses. It must seem like a horrible nightmare. You have all my sympathy and I do hope that you can still continue to somehow grow roses that can withstand this horrible disease.

Ingrid

Ronda, I don't know what to say except that I'm so very sorry to hear your news. I do hope that you are able to keep the roses that remain.

Rosefolly

I'm really sorry to hear about your roses. I know you'll continue gardening, and I hope there will be roses among the new plants.
It's good to see you on the forum again, although with such sad news.
Melissa

What a beautiful garden; hope you can find some to fill in that keep it up. Gardening is sometimes sweet ecstasy and sometimes bitter sorrow, and occasionally both at once.

Here is a link that might be useful: Garden Musings

I'm so sorry, your hill was beautiful!

I don't know anything about this... but if I was in your position, I'd take the most aggressive route to try your hardest not to have to go through this heartache again. (ie, I'd probably replace soil and whatever else I could think of.)

I wonder two where the disease is coming from... are you near a forest with a lot of multiflora or something? I wonder if you can erect some type of barrier or something to help protect your remaining roses? D:

Ronda, I am sorry to read about the loss of your roses. I have recently been informed I'm probably going to lose my home and my roses to a highway, so I truly understand your devastation.

I have been lurking here for many years and remember you and your beautiful roses. I have read Ann's posts about the disease, but I wonder is anything being done to try to eradicate either the mites or the multiflora?

Your sorrow is my sorrow.

Janet

Very sorry to hear about your loss. Hopefully you can come back from this. It sounds as though you are handling it better than I would. Keep on working at it...this too shall pass.

Ronda,

I am new here so, I can't offer any advice. However, I just wanted to say how sorry I am. Your pictures are beautiful and, I can see why you don't want to lose Country Dancer. I really hope you continue growing roses.

Best of luck,
Kitty

Rhonda, I am so sorry! I remember your hill and it looks wonderful in the pictures. Please don't give up. I don't know why I haven't had any RRD yet, it seems to be all around me. I thought I had some years ago, but I'm not 100% sure. I know what it's like to lose your plants. I have a hill with all pine trees that I planted 6 years ago. I lost 2 this year and had to get the rest treated for southern pine beetle. I am hoping not to lose all of them.

Sometimes it does make you want to just chuck it all.

Ronda, I'm so sorry.

I'm trying to hybridize OGRs and a few other roses with American wild roses that are resistant or immune to RRD. I had almost incorporated Bonica into the project, since it had been reported to be somewhat resistant in the past, but now I'm glad I didn't.

If you would like to avenge yourself on RRD, you might consider replacing some of the lost roses with hybrids that *may* be resistant, but which haven't been proven so yet. Prairie Fire, for example, is half R. Arkansana, and may have acquired R. Arkansana's immunity. Basye's Blueberry is also half wild (the RRD-immune R. Carolina and R. Virginiana). Thomas Affleck is half Basye's Blueberry, thus 1/4 from immune ancestry. And there are a number of other examples of possibly immune garden roses. If we can find out what roses are safe, we will be much more able to fight it.

Ronda, I'm so sorry. I hope you will replant soon.

I feel your pain to a lesser extent. I had Pretty Jessica in a pot and it was thriving better than any of my other potted roses, then it inexplicably died from the roots up......presumably root rot or the squirrels.

It just irritated me as I bought PJ as a band from Heirloom and after a year of maturing, it just died after doing so well. The other issue is PJ is a rose I can't just pick up down the road and replace like an Abe Darby. Oh well, I will have to get PJ again next year. It's like investing a lot of money right before the Great Depression strikes.

Ronda, I grieve with you. I remember looking at your pics and celebrating with you as you labored so hard to create such a paradise. I too have found RRD again in my gardens on 6 roses. The August winds have been so robust this year and has kicked up mite activity and spread RRD after a few quiet years.

I refuse to let RRD win; I placed an order for more beautiful roses with Eurodesert when the wonderful e-mail came out that Cliff was reopening. I'm not going to let the mites take away my joy and keep me from growing roses.

I have been having the same trouble but to a lesser extent.
Your roses were so beautiful, too. Such a shame. Fingers crossed for Country Dancer.

It sure seems like having roses up against a fence makes them much more prone. The 2 of mine that have gotten it were up against the fence.

I am now watching one more that might have it (Compassion) and of course it is up against the fence.

Is there a particular wind direction that is more prone to be problematic? I don't pay attention to which way the wind blows...happy for the breeze!!

However, most of the roses I lost were lost on the North side of my yard.

Hi, Rhonda,
I remember you most for the meeting at Roses Unlimited when you shared your source for very reasonably priced statuary (near Greenville). Way back when.
I'm sorry I didn't see this earlier. Hughes net had us on punishment Friday because a computer here had downloaded updates Thursday and then we were gone three days without internet and I came back home with a touch of food poisoning.

I worry about your hillside because is is downwind from predominant breezes, and that is the ideal situation for the vector mites to drop out of the air as it is stilled by the fence. Your garden might benefit from spraying with wiltpruf to confuse the mites.
I do disagree with Karl about rapid replanting. His growing season is a lot shorter than ours and our roots really never go dormant; that makes for a lot longer possible exposure. At a very minimum, I wouldn't replant with roses on the same rootstock as those would more readily root to root graft. (There is a paper in press from California on the speed of root to root grafting happening in rose heaven-California.)

I'm not sure why the disease has become so very visible so fast throughout the southeast this year. This horrifically hot summer may have something to do with it.

From my garden I can report that one really bad RRD year is not necessarily followed by another bad year. My worse year hasn't been repeated, knock on wood.

Roses really are worth having, even if they have to be replaced every so often. Looking at other plants, there just aren't alternatives to roses for beauty and for fragrance.

Ann

I'm so sorry!

That really stinks. Without trying to give you any false hope, I see it what looks like it pop up now and again but usually removing the cane in question seems to clear things up (not always though).

Ann,

When you say use 'other' rootstock..... My roses are all own-root. Does that mean I just need to select a different rose or would I need to buy something on a graft?? I miss the rose behind my birdhouse....my hill looks so naked. I would love to, even as an experiment, try another rose in that spot as soon as this spring if that would be feasible. I should mention that the two roses which had it the worst were Penelope (oh my heart breaks) and a Knockout. The Knockout was in the spot I want to replant.

Please let me know your thoughts!

Thanks everyone for your kind words and well wishes. I will never stop loving or growing roses....but I may have to borrow someone else's yard!

Ronda

I would think that they are own root would be a way to avoid ready root-to-root grafting. The test plots out in California were of grafted roses all on the same rootstock and they became interconnected.
I probably wouldn't replant a Knockout where a sick Knockout had been. I think I've seen root to root transmission in a public garden in a huge bed of Knockouts where it started at one side and moved in ever increasing radius across the bed.

Also, I would probably avoid HMusks. They seem to be more susceptible, especially in our part of the world. I grow mine very dry, at the base of a walnut tree and haven't lost any yet, but I know folks close to you who have lost their HMusks before any other roses in their yards are affected (even though the HMusks were planted scattered through the garden.)