The roses I have are Emily Carr, Morden Blush, Persian yellow and Prairie Peace. I am so in love with EC. It has beautiful color and form when it isn't in bloom, and the flowers are gorgeous and everywhere when it is in bloom! Love the color. I love my Morden Blush too, particuarly the partially opened blooms, but I do think it sort of looks like dirty kleenex as the flowers are getting older. My persian yellow seems very healthy, but it hasn't bloomed yet because the stupid deer keep "pruning" it.(it is in a bad spot but I wanted to plant it away from my other roses in case it gets disease) Prairie Peace I just bought last year...it came as a couple of twigs, and it sure has grown! I was so impressed by how it had absolutely no cane winter kill. And it is loaded with buds, can't wait to see them open. Leo, I have a question for you: does PP ever get to be more bushy as it gets older? Should I shape it at all? Right now it seems fairly...scraggly. It has 2 ft tall canes that don't really branch out much. And it is suckering already! Are the suckers PP, or are they something else?

Kitty, no my house is a typical 4 bed/2 bath ranch house on a maybe 7000-8000 square foot lot. I really pushed the limit when I hit 375 roses in the mid-2000s, so I knew I needed to downsize, given my work schedule. It was just me caring for them., although DH retired in 2016, and he occasionally helps. I gave away a lot of rare roses that I now wish I hadn't, but there you go. I think I bottomed out at ~200 roses ~2015, but have gradually bumped it back up. I'm afraid that I'm edging up closer to 250, having bought 22 bare roots this winter. I knew I bought too many (14) from my local nursery and Regan, but then I got a shot in my bone-on-bone knee, and went nuts and ordered 8 more from Edmunds. LOL, I spent the first 31 years of my life in Pasadena, so I'm well familiar with Arcadia and the rest of the L.A. area! Edit: to give my DH due credit, he dug almost every single rose hole in our yard from 1999-2002, before he went on the night shift!

No, I wouldn't dig them up. If your drainage is sufficient, I'd mulch well with the appropriate organic mulch for your climate and conditions. You may want to do a soil test to determine what might be missing before you do anything. But, adding organics to the surface of the soil where they will encounter heat, moisture and oxygen to feed the soil bacteria and fungi so they digest them, releasing Humic Acid and nutrients which will be washed through the root zones and soil should do the job. Depending upon what and how much you used, the issue could well be that there is too much organic material in the planting area and it isn't breaking down appropriately. Remember that organic material buried under ground in landfills generates hydrogen sulfide and methane, both of which kill plants and add to climate change. Putting the organics on the surface where they digest instead of forming toxic gases allows the plants to make the best use of them.

Brandon - I think your film on Modern Roses is the best short description of those classes that I have ever read or seen! Usually people get way down "into the weeds", and discuss exactly how a certain famous rose was bred, or get into some of the disputes around certain roses, etc. This is fine for people who love such things (like me), but I think turns off newbies. Your film is a great introduction to modern rose classes, period. Thank you so much! Jackie