IMO the reason to have gone with spireas is for small bird habitat. (But spireas will scootch in almost anywhere and really tolerate abuse)
And, an Amen, Sister, to the potential tolerance of teas to drought and poor soils. I am beginning to believe that they actually like drought because it helps them harden up for winter.
Can you give a wimter home to some slow-to-break-down leaves like oak or sycamore? Just to fill the places in amongst the stems? And have a blanket to throw over for the very cold times.
From my experience, I think that getting them to year three and 'normal' sized canes is the key to getting long lived tea roses in my garden.

Thanks Ann! So great to hear from you. I have LOTS of oak leaves, I chop 'em up with the mower and compost them or use them for mulch or start new beds with them over newspapers and cardboard all over the gardens. And with all the leaves I have I still get composted leaves from the city to mulch all my bed both spring and fall, I've got some coming this week. So you could say I'm a big fan of composted leaves, and so are my gardens!

I've never given spireas their props, too many memories of suburbia in the 60s, but they truly are workhorses in the garden. I only have one "Lemon Princess" in amongst a foundation planting. They used to be the darlings of the gas stations and malls of middle America but I guess have been replaced with ornamental grasses and Knockout roses!

BTW, the roses will have a backdrop of nandina, so I think the blooms will look great against that dark green foliage.

linrose,

My experience has been that the teas got through the winter easily, it was the cold/warm/cold/warm/cold early spring that caused canker in many of them.

I am seeing, however, that each year most are gaining respectable size.

Robert

Henry Mitchell used to grow them in Washington, D.C., and he mentioned a gardener who grew them in even further north, if I remember correctly. Mitchell reported that the key was to protect them from cold winds in winter. I will add that they love a wall, though cold sure has not been an issue here for the last few years.

Amen to the drought tolerance, at least in clay soil. One of my Mme. Berkeley's is blooming after three and a half months of drought and no watering, and both plants of Bon Silène. Some of the Teas are largely defoliated, yet they still manage to look serene: this is a strategy, not approaching death. Just as well, as there's no rain to speak of in the two weeks' forecast.

Melissa

DC is zone 7, not 6b. I would put a lot of leaves for protection. I grow many teas but duringfirst winter they usually dieback to the ground here. I didn't have much success with fall planting:(, but spring planted ones are usually OK here. Wall and leaves hopefully will help. I agree with Robert, that it is not the cold itself, but canker caused by temp swings is so detrimental for young teas here. Usually after 2-3 years they are not so tender.
Olga

I knew I should have consulted a climate zone atlas. Those of us who have always gardened in the zone 8s of the world have a noteworthy innocence about cold. The cold wind advice still sounds good to me.

Melissa

OK, thanks guys. I guess I'll save some whole oak leaves to cover them this winter, then hope for the best next spring. I've lost some teas and noisettes to canker over their first winter but I admit I did nothing to protect them. We usually have a warm week midwinter that messes everything up, plants and humans alike. Either way, I think they'll be better off in the ground than coddling them in pots where they really don't seem at all happy. We had a nasty infestation of sawflies this spring that almost wiped out all my potted roses, but the ones in the gardens were mostly untouched.

Hopefully they'll like being in their new home, the soil is great and they'll get full sun. I really love the teas I already have in the ground, Georgetown Tea and Mme. Lombard (and Mme Jules Gravereaux on a trellis) and I can't wait for more.

I grow tea roses on a hill top at elevation 1100' in east TN. To my immediate northwest there's a 3000' mountain ridge that has a wide wind break ( about a mile + wide separating it into House Mountain and Clinch Mountain) and there are times that I think winds hit here in direct line from the Canadian Continental Polar air mass. My teas can take those cold winds. It surprised me that the bushes remained so large aftet winter. (But then, I had HTs as a go by.)

I don't see much canker on my tea roses. I might see a spot around a premature leaf, but that canker doesn't spread and gird canes. The lateral buds seem especially strong and capable of replacement on these ones (with an attempt to homage Yoda's the force is strong with this one.)