Beautiful rose, but lacked rust resistance here.

HI!
I have two Margaret Merrill. They need regular spraying to be healthy. The blooms hold well on the bush. Overall, a pretty good rose. I am not in love with white roses though!

In Coastal Southern CA, in generally cool conditions, it required spraying.
Moreover, neither of us could detect the slightest hint of fragrance.
Long Gone from here.

If you could find a virus-free clone of the Austin, Perdita, you might try that.
It's almost pale enough to be warm white, and has enough gold and pink
shot through it to have the look of fire opals.

Jeri

I'm in coastal So Calif, and have grown Margaret Merril (one L) for a number of years. She tends to be extremely disease-free here for me, although I have been experiencing big mildew pressure for the past couple of months, and I noticed a bit of PM on her just this week for the first time ever. I have never had rust on her, and I have several roses who are rust-susceptible. Anyway, she is always extremely fragrant and has a tendency to want to grow big, so if you want to keep her smaller, I'd recommend deadheading her hard. She's one of those roses who starts to make new shoots high almost before the old ones are done (sorta like Frederick Mistral and some others ). So she can quickly grow huge if you don't keep on top of it, and sometimes you need to be ruthless and deadhead really low to keep her in bounds. She reblooms extremely fast, and doesn't sulk a bit at this treatment. It has been one of my neighborhood walker's favorite rose in my yard for a long time. When I dug up my original one b/c of the oak root rot fungus in my front yard, this guy actually came to my door to ask what happened to Margaret, LOL! I assured him that I would be replacing it with a potted specimen that I was already growing.

Hmm. Mine was a rust bucket non-pareil. It did grow tall quickly and with all the rust it looked like a giant Cheeto.

Mine was constantly battling Blackspot and Rust. It wasn't exactly a strong grower either. After four years of suffering it along, I dug it up this Spring and tossed it. There are better roses to be had. Get 'Marie Pavie' instead if you want a compact, fragrant white.

I've had Margaret Merrill for a few years, I live in the foothills east of San Diego. She has been surprisingly healthy. She is in a spot with good ventilation and LOTS of sun all day long, and she seems most happy. She has grown into quite a large bush. I prune lightly (about 2/3 height), and right now she's about 6' tall and 4' across, with a ton of flowers. I like her better than I expected to, although her fragrance is scant, her foliage is a nice green and she's not as leggy as some of my other bushes.

Margaret Merrill, really, was one of those roses that, after a few years, DH finally said: "Can we get rid of this thing?"

It looks like it may not like West Coast conditions.
Or, maybe there are good clones and bad clones of it.

Jeri

MM is clearly a climate dependent rose. I grow her in Australia, zone 7 I think, and she is disease free and flowers from early spring till pruning. She's wonderful and it's a shame she doesn't prosper in other climes.

Sue

I have this rose, and it varies in quality: This spring it was truly wonderful. Tons of blooms, not too much blackspot. By the end of the summer she was loooking pretty bad--leggy, not too many leaves, BS, few blooms. Depends.

I had it in western Washington. It repeated flowering much better than French Lace. It likes the Pacific Northwest, but I wouldn't think of trying it here in the midwest. It is a cool, maritime climate rose.

I grew Margaret before I knew what thrips were. I got rid of her since her tips were always brown. Now I know that it was thrip damage and she was the only rose in the garden affected. I wish that were still the case. She had a great scent though.
Oh man Jeri, someone needs to hire you to write their rose descriptions for their catalogs.
The Austin, Perdita:
"It's almost pale enough to be warm white, and has enough gold and pink
shot through it to have the look of fire opals."
Thanks, now I've got to have that one too. Ha ha.