I would try them first. As others have said, it depends on other factors. Is there some extra shade from a tree or another building? Do you live where it's sunny or is it often cloudy? They may be just fine, or some varieties may do quite well and some may need extra light and you can get a light for those. The size of the window is a definite plus. (The window light is definitely an option but may not be necessary.) Optimara Texas is one that does just fine in my windows. Harbor Blue is another. Fredette's Risen Star, Taffeta Petticoats, Snuggles, and Feather. Okay, there are some to try if yours don't like it and remember that violets, like cats, generally don't like change :). They may take some time to adjust. Good luck! Diana in PA (also Optimara Modesty, although I keep 2)

urk, well it is something of a mixed bag on this side of the pond. After we all faced hosepipe bans after months of drought, it started to rain in April and has not stopped since apart from 1 freaky weekend of real summer heat (for England, 26C is almost tropical), So, blackspot has definately arrived early along with many, many evil beasties, Even so, some roses are quite stupendously lush as is (almost)everything else, especially weeds. I don't get around to doing much staking and boy, am I paying the price now, after another wet and windy week - giant foxgloves leaning drunkenly into oceans of massive ox-eye daisies and giant sowthistles which appeared practically overnight. So, I am finding myself somehat glutted with abundance, a tad anxious as I am really not keeping up with tropical levels of growth (East Anglia is the dryest part of the UK and water has always been much more of a limiting factor than heat or light) and the awful spectre of early blight is looming - although my tiny tomatoes are so small, any self-respecting blight spore will surely move on to leafier pastures. On the other hand, the tree-like potatoes are presenting a much juicier target. On a more rosy note, the multifloras (Ghislaine, Goldfinch), hybrid musks and the wichuranas are full of promise - just starting a full-on bloom cycle but the chinas are emphatically not happy with our cool wet spring (Mutabilis is a ghastly skeleton of mildewy and sparse foliage and Sophie's P and Cramoisi are looking glum. Bourbons are not having a great time either whereas a couple of rather 'meh' modern floribundas and climbers (Arthur Bell, Penny Lane, Meg) are having the time of their lives - I may have to make more of an effort generally with watering - after doing the veggies and rudbeckia type perennials I misguidedly planted (My ahem 'prairie'), I am dying of boredom from standing about with a hosepipe (there are shared standpipes at the allotment so soaker hoses and timers or sprinklers are not allowed).The slugs and snails are epic. Have resorted to sluggo for the first time in my life. It is a terrible year for butterflies too - almost as rare as hen's teeth.

Property taxes can be high here in NC too. I think Gaston county has a lot of crime. Charlotte is wonderful, that's where we go to do decent shopping/dining. Charlotte is definitely where it's at as far as I am concerned. Wilmington is nice but too close to coast, hurricanes. Personally I like Asheville a lot. Lots of art and culture there including hippies. I don't have a clue about the schools in any of the areas I mentioned. I live in Hickory, NC, small city with the traffic of a large city, yuk. Winston Salem is also nice. Greensboro is near and High Point although I don't know what High Point has to offer. Carla

The Damask ancestry that included R. phoenicia was based on the writings of Hurst, who made his suppositions based on trying to tease apart features in Damasks and match them to other species. Until that genetic study came out a few years ago that indicated R. fedtschenkoana was a parent, it was never considered before. So I'd disregard the R. phoenicia bit. As to how it happened, I think it was Doug Seidel who wrote a piece about how R. gallica, R. moschata, and R. fedtschenkoana could have met up. Summarized..... R. moschata is not really a true species, but a particular clone of some species from the east that has been maintained in gardens for something like a thousand years. It and R. gallica -- especially something like 'Officinalis' or maybe 'Tuscany' or 'Conditorum' -- would have also been grown alongside R. moschata, since both were used in herbal "medicines" for a long time. The story Doug wrote mentioned something about some faction -- maybe church related -- that was either cast out or moved voluntarily from Europe to areas near Bulgaria or Turkey, and would have likely brought these roses with them, along with other plants, for their "physic gardens". In doing so, the earlier warm-up time would have allowed for R. moschata to start blooming with some overlap with R. gallica -- back in much of Europe, there would have been a gap between -- which could have resulted in R. gallica pollen hitting R. moschata, which generally doesn't set seed from its own pollen. Seeing hips on R. moschata, people may have thought that they could plant them as another way of getting more R. moschata -- not realizing that R. gallica was the daddy -- and the resulting hybrids would have been added to the list of things grown in those gardens. In that area, R. fedtschenkoana is native, and some bee could have carried pollen from outside the garden in. It all sounds improbable, but remember that the period of time would have been centuries, and the R. moschata X R. gallica hybrid could have had multiple generations of being raised by seed before being fertilized by R. fedtschenkoana. Even improbable things will eventually happen, given enough chances and time. R. moschata starts blooming after getting sufficient heat, then keeps going. In much of Europe, that meant starting in August. In warmer areas, it'd start earlier. R. fedtschenkoana has sprinkles of blooms on and off all season -- never really having a full flush at a time. It probably sets buds in response to water, responding to periodic rains that can come at any time during the growing season. 'Officinalis' is a cultivar, but was given a Latin name as was custom at the time. It doesn't breed true from seed, so it's neither a true species nor proper "form" botanically. Many old cultivars have Latin names that give the appearance of being species, but that's because after Linnaeus came up with a system of naming things, people used it for any little difference they found. Alba roses may have originated in Europe, or maybe closer to the Middle East where the Damasks happened. They might have been "weeds" that happened in the brush, when Damask pollen landed on native R. canina, or perhaps R. canina was used as a rootstock for Damasks, and a sucker bloomed and was fertilized by its Damask scion, and seed dropped in the garden. Rose traffic wasn't one-way, so that it was in the rose growing fields where we assume Damasks originated doesn't mean that Albas originated there as well, but it's possible. We do know that R. canina is pentaploid, and most Albas are hexaploid. Because of the way R. canina makes seed, R. canina was the mother and Damasks were the fathers. The R. sancta story is a bit muddled. Someone found rose remains in a tomb -- or art or wall painting or something -- and determined that it matched a rose called 'Rosa sanctae'. That's a very tenuous way to make a match. Later -- I can't remember which author wrote it -- 'R. sancta' as grown was found to be this R. gallica X R. arvensis hybrid that occurred in the wild, and even if what was in that old depiction was this same hybrid, it was almost certainly not the same individual clone of it. Since the hybrid occurred in the wild, many different clones of it are out there. And it could have also been something else entirely. R. foetida in the wild is a five-petaled rose. It had a sport known as 'Austrian Copper'. The third form is 'Persiana', which is a double form of the yellow. I think it originated in the Middle East, because when it made its way to Europe, it was heralded as the first double truly yellow rose that could easily be grown in gardens. The only other one was R. hemisphaerica, which often balled, and only had acceptable blooms when conditions were right. To my nose, it smells like R. fedtschenkoana -- which means (to me) like oil-based paint. That's not so "stinky" as just "surprisingly not what I'd expect from a rose." :-) ~Christopher