Thank you all for such thought-provoking comments. They are really helping me work through this undertaking! Sandy, all of your info is appreciated, and I especially liked your comments, "Your land will actually speak to you" and "The right plant will present itself to you when you're at a nursery sometime." I know these are true, and I need to not be in such a hurry! Your spacing and color info is very helpful, but I have a couple more questions (for greenhaven, also). I've seen lots of pictures of perennials mixed in with roses, or a clematis twining through a rose bush. Doesn't this make it harder to care for and prune the roses, and doesn't it limit the air circulation? I have 3 Carefree Wonders that look gorgeous by themselves. Can I plant them closer together since they are the same rose? I have 3 Quietness (very lovely pale pink) and 3 Winnipeg Parks (a pretty red that looks beautiful with the Quietness). I have other contrasting and/or blending of 3 or 4 single bushes that look good together IMO. Is it possible to have multiple focal point groups, separated by low evergreens or green perennials in the space I have and have it look good? I really like informal gardens more than formal, especially with our setting. I've seen lots of pictures of parts of gardens with roses, or formal rose gardens, but I've not seen any plans showing predominantly rose gardens, interplanted with other perennials. Any ideas where I could look at such plans for roses? greenhaven, DH nixed the manure, so I'll put peat in the planting hole in the 12" of top soil. Thanks for the specific info! sunnyrose, thanks for the heads up on the Roundup. I'll check into it further. alisande, thanks for the pic of the large spruce. This, with greenhavens warning, motivates me to go back out and more carefully look where the sun will fall when our spruce is mature. We got our estimate for building a wall today, so we've decided to bite the bullet and do it. One more thing, any opinions on whether I should have structures for my climbing roses mentioned earlier? Or do you think I'll be ok trying them as very large shrubs in the more open background? Anne

What makes this harder is if you look at the help me find for the really early noisettes/the r. Moschata crosses it really seems that there is either a lot of variety in how the different cultivars express themselves or there are several misidentified photos. I really thought I had found it once- turns out the plant it most looks like to me is dr. Malcom Manners's open-pollinated seedling Xochimilco! Thanks for your suggestions! It's so hard when there aren't really strict botanical pictures of roses available. I keep thinking "well the flowers are close but what do it's thorns look like?"

Melissa, I wish I could say I'm 100% certain, but I'm not. Ditto all that Kes said about changeability photos on HMF, etc. I don't currently grow Tausendschoen (with and e, thanks to Ingrid), so I can't pop out and take photos for comparison, darn it. I wish I'd taken more photos back in the day when I grew more roses. A ton of them came from Vintage, so I feel pretty confident the IDs were spot on. I like Comtesse's suggestion, if you're up for it. Single posts do seem to draw more responses. I KNOW there are experienced rosarians on the forum growing Tausendschoen. There's an old thread on the forum (maybe 4 years ago?) where everyone was talking about and, I think, IDing a Tausendschoen. My memory is a bit hazy, but maybe the post can be tracked down for photos and comments from people much more skilled than I. In the meantime, I find "Bristly"positively intriguing! Carol

Vapor that is surprising that she isn't more popular, I haven't found anything I don't love about this rose! Blooms the size of my hand, lovely dark green foliage with no diseases even in a pretty humid summer (it has been 70--90% here lately) a nice tidy shape, and fragrance that makes me say 'now that is what a rose should smell like!'. Cold hardy to --30F and blooming in 90F summer temps. And she wasn't touched by whatever wretched bug ate my Anna's Promise band down to nothing too.