You are in the extreme northeast corner of the state, or you are saying you are in Sunset 4?

I am in the eastern side of the state (about 5 miles from Idaho) but the winters are really cold. I'm supposed to be zone 6, but since we live in a valley, with a creek behind the house, I seem to be in a microclimate of zone 4. Most winters it gets down below -20 F, with the lowest being -27 F. I also have later frosts in the spring and earlier frosts in the fall than most of the areas around me. In Spokane (about half hour away) they're zone 5b, but I have frosts about three weeks earlier than they do, on the average. I think zone 4 old-fashioned roses should do well, as long as I keep them up against the house on the southeast side, out of the wind.

'Isaphan' gets very tall for me in NY zone 4. It is perfect for a cottage garden if you grow it in among shorter plants and allow it to flop on them some.

'Felicite de Parmentier' is much shorter and does make a 3' - 4' shrub pretty well rounded for me. It may be your best choice.

'La Ville de Bruxelles' has not gotten very shrubby in a decade and is usually just a few canes at a time. The flowers are very beautiful. I would say the same about 'Queen of Denmark' which has been very slow growing.

'Rotes Meer' is not old fashioned, having been released to commerce in 1984, but it meets your requirements exactly as to height and size and has the bonus of very good repeat. It make a very dense shrub.

"Invasive" is not really the word I would use to describe Gallicas. Most of them do send out suckers and some definitely more than others. I have found that the growing conditions seem to determine the amount of suckering. Most send out a single runner which can be cut with a spade and potted up for a different location.

'Charles de Mills' has been very slow to sucker for me in one garden and much quicker in another. In the first garden it has stayed in an area about the size of a large dinner plate for a decade and then finally sent out a few suckers. It fits your size requirement perfectly and has flowers that range from exquisite to good, depending on the conditions.

If you were sticking with a truly mixed perennial english border look, probable the albas would be your ticket, most will be big however 5-7 feet, but they arch alot so dont always look that tall. If you get them grafted, they will not sucker, if own root albas, gallicas and rogosas will sucker, depending on what you choose. All three classes have suberb examples of refined fragrance. Albas are generally sweet, they always seem to have a lemony base scent with it, though queen of denmark is more damasky, with that pure rich rose fragrance.

Great Maidens Blush

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BTW I never kept a hybrid tea longer than 5 years give or take, they also kept fading after about 3 years, they are just not meant for my climate(without alot of work), since you seem to live in a microclimate very similiar to the northeast for some reason (unlucky you =) they probable wont work well for you either. (long cold snowy winters with ice/several thaws/freeze cycles yay!)

I really like R. centifolia with its lax canes, wonderful sweet scented roses , It will sucker as well if on own roots.

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Others can weigh in as well. But its up to you , you can mix anything with anything =) There is only one fast rule I figure, and if your happy with something , than its fine =) If your not, then it has to be fixed.

Silverkelt

Marchesa Boccella is a superb rose, with wonderful fragrance. It has done very well for me in my garden setting, and hasn't grown too tall, staying at about 3 feet wide and about 3 1/2 feet tall. (Not sure how tall it would get in your zone, however...)

The fragrance is outstanding, and it repeats well.

Thank you all for the responses.

Palustris- I feel better about the Gallicas now, besides if they do sucker, they'll just fit in with the cottage garden, right? Isaphan and Felicite de Parmentier sound like good choices too.

Silverkelt- Thank you, the pictures help so much. The Great Maiden's Blush is beautiful! You're right, I think we do have similar microclimates. Is it true Albas will do well in partial shade? I'd love to find a rose that would do well on the edge of my shade garden (part sun/part shade).

If you don't want your gallicas to sucker, grown them grafted. A good source would be Pickering.

Rosefolly

I grow Apothecary rose in a large bed where I can mow all around them. I wouldn't get any grafted roses, but if you do, bury the graft 4 inches deep.
All your choices are pink, so far. Alba Maxima and Madame Plantier are good, so is Alba semi plena(the White rose of York.)
I'm guessing you can do better than I can because you have a lot more moisture. I have thought for years it is the dry spring wind that causes cane loss. The chinook will come in in the spring and canes that made it through the winter start to turn brown.
There are lots of types that live every year, lose their canes to the ground, and grow back, but you get few blooms or none because they bloom on old wood. Most climbers I have tried, for instance.
I'm thinking you might do better. New Dawn is a repeat bloomer that blooms on old wood. I would start with some good tough roses, though, and work your way up. Growing roses out here is a matter of planting it, then seeing what develops.
I'm thinking you might try Hope For Humanity for a red. It is a Canadian rose and never stops blooming. Rugosas are good, too.
Bourbon roses like shade. I moved Zephirine Drouhin to the shade. Though it lives just fine, it is not the massive blooming rose it is elsewhere.
How big is your lot? some of these antique roses can get five feet wide.

All roses do best with at least a few hours of direct sun. but Ive seen alba maxima grown under trees with nothing more than dappled sun. It still bloomed every year. So wont alot of rogosas, again, without some full sun, they wont look thier best, but Ive seen them survive on 2-3 hours of sun and bloom.

4-5 hours of direct sun for most of these albas will be ok.

Silverkelt

I do like pink roses, but I have a few red and a Tamora, if they make it through the winter. I have lot of sun in most beds, just wondered if I could put a few Albas in my partial shade garden. It's hard to find plants that do well here that look good in the shade. I can't do rhodedendrons because of the horses...toxic for them.

While there is plenty of room here, I'm trying to keep the roses in a bed large enough to hide behind lavender and other deer resistant plants. Most of the deer here are shy and don't come into the yard, but we have a little doe (who now has twins) who like to come eat apples and wander around once in a while. She's very sweet, but she found my roses last spring and I had to move them to the front of the house. I put blueberries in their place (did it all one afternoon) so when she came back the next time, she ate the blueberries and apparently didn't like them. She hasn't tried eating much since then (except the apples) and left all my vegetables and other flowers alone.

Also, do Damasks take more sun than other roses, or do they like a little shade in the afternoons?

I agree with Palustris : Félicité Parmentier is a good choice.
For the cottage garden, I would add :
Celsiana (my favourite old rose)
Duchesse de Montebello (very nice with its green eye)
Félicia (very romantic)
Salet (long flowering)

But also, Yolande d'Aragon if you want a stronger rose colour.

Have a look at my old roses album : http://a-little-bit-of-paradise.over-blog.com/17-album-1406140.html

Celsiana :

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To plant with old fashioned roses : geraniums, geraniums and geraniums...
You have a great choice. I recommend you especially Blue Cloud. If you cut it after flowering, it will flower again.

Isabelle

Here is a link that might be useful: A Little Bit of Paradise

You're close to Northland Rosarium where the owner, Carol Newcomb, is knowledgable about your conditions in addition to carrying many roses that are suitable for the kind of garden you're planning. Her roses are well-priced and in great condition. I hope you'll share photos of your garden as it grows. Here's a pic from my garden with Hippolyte in the foreground, New Dawn in the middle, and Mme. Plantier in the background with Aloha above. I find that there are roses I HAVE to grow that, at full size, are too large for the available space. Mme. Plantier is one of those and my solution is to remove canes when she comes into the path. She never complains, just keeps on blooming. And the scent...yummmmm!

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Sue

Here is a link that might be useful: Northland Rosarium

Isabelle- Le jardin est tres formidable! J'adore les roses anciennes! Cuisse de Nymph et Celsiana sont magnifique.

Is that really your garden? I love the arbor with the table under it...do you have grapes and wisteria on the same arbor? What a beautiful place to live. Thank you for sharing the photos :) Merci!

Seattlesuze- I am about an hour away from Northland Rosarium and I hope to visit next year and get a Therese Bugnet rose and maybe a Celsiana. I'd like to get a La Ville de Bruxelles damask rose and a Great Maiden's Blush, but she doesn't carry either one.

Any ideas where to find Alba roses? I'd also like to get Felicite de Parmentier and Queen of Denmark.

LL, I'd check out Rogue Valley Roses, then Pickering, then High Country Roses, all carriers of roses that will fit your requests for some if not all roses listed in your last post. How patient are you? I have a spare Great Maiden's Blush and if Carol comes to our next Heritage Roses Northwest meeting in February in Snohomish, WA, I can have it ready for her. She could either carry it to Spokane if you can arrange that with her or make cuttings from it and have it in her inventory. You might contact her to ask her if she can bring in those roses you want. They're all fabulous roses and I believe they'd add revenue to her nursery as well as making her customers extremely happy. I know they're roses that are essential in my garden.

Good luck and let us know how it turns out.

Sue

Sue

Sue- Thank you! Now that Heirloom roses only carries one alba (and it's not one on my list) I think Northland Rosaium could do really well with albas. They're also cold hardy, which would be good on this side of the state :)

Oh, and I'm very patient about getting my roses. I'm just going to put in a few at a time as I get my beds ready. I found out this year when you plant in a hurry you end up digging out grass all summer! I wanted to put in a garden in the front (because we were refinancing the house) and it looked great at first, but I didn't dig out all the quack grass or edge my bed :o Not a pretty picture!

Sue- Sorry, I thought I said this earlier and hadn't. Lovely roses! Madame Plantier looks like one I may have to find room for in my garden.

In the garden around cottage our Rose de Resht and Jacques Cartier do very well. RdR is probably the most cold hardy of them. Some of the Hybrid Perpetuals are very cold hardy, if they do well in your area they are worth trying; Souvenir du Dr Jamain, Magna Charta, and some bourbons Louise Odier and Great Western. There is a white portland that is very hardy, about as hardy as Rose de Resht I guess, Marie de St Jean, very fragrant.

Good luck with your rose research :-)

Light pink Chloris is the alba that gets least sun in my garden because it is completely intertwined with a plum tree. It blooms abundantly and is almost thornless. I have seen alba Maxima do very well in shade in other gardens.

All my 36 gallicas are grafted but Charles de Mills and Belle de Crecy send out suckers in spite of this, must have developed their own roots above the graft.

Marianne in Sweden

Thanks lavender lass. Yes : all pics are from my garden. And yes, wisteria and grapes climb both on the arbor. That arbor and table were built by my husband (lucky me ;).

Here is a link that might be useful: A Little Bit of Paradise

Taoseeker- I am thinking about trying a Yolande d'Aragon hybrid perpetual. Other people in the area have had good success with this rose, even with the cold winters. I'd love to try a Jacques Cartier, but I want to check at Northland Rosarium to see if it's recommended for our zone.

Mariannese- Wow! You have 36 Gallicas? Do you have any pics of your garden? I'd love to see them. I would like to try a Charles de Mills, which is supposed to be pretty cold hardy and maybe a Tuscany and Apothecary rose.

Isabelle- I showed my husband the picture of your grape arbor and table and chairs. I have wanted to do something similar in our back yard, maybe with my antique bricks underneath. He likes the bricks, but didn't really know what I wanted. After seeing your picture, he thinks it would be a great idea! Yea! and thanks :)

Would any of the R. spinosissima roses be worth considering?

I feel very proud of having my arbor on the other side of the Atlantic. Post some pics when achieved. It's just like having a little bit of my Paradise in America : great ;)

York rose- What is R. spinosissima?

Isabelle- Thank you. It may be a while before we can build it, but I will send you pics when we do :)

Rosa spinosissima (aka, the "Scotch Briar", "Scots Rose", and other names).

Here also is probably its most famous hybrid (at least in on GardenWeb Forums):

Stanwell Perpetual.

I've never grown it, but I've read lots of praise here about Stanwell Perpetual.

If Stanwell Perpetual is recommended for northern Sweden I suspect it's hardier than zone 6.

'Stanwell Perpetual' makes a small wiry shrub in zone 6 over time, but doesn't seem to be as shrubby in zone 4. It is well worth growing. I'm not sure if it will be shrubby enough for you, but there is only one way to find out...

Sweet Briar (R. eglanteria) might work. It's listed as zone 4b on helpmefind.com, so I guess it's marginal. The leaves smell like apples. When it's a few years old, the fragrance wafts.

Rugosas are nice. The species ones sucker.

Rosa woodsii is a western native that looks nice when in the sun. It will grow in full shade but will remain small with only a blossom or two. I've seen it on hikes in CA and CO. In sunny spots, it makes a small shrub, up to 4', covered in lightly fragrant blossoms. Helpmefind says "strong fragrance." Maybe it's variable; maybe I'm not sensitive to it. HMF also says the hips are nice, but I've never been hiking at the right time for them.

Mike