Well, I guess I will probably leave out the Iceberg! lol I had my doubts about that one. I have also bought ramblin red, and william baffin which I will stick to. I was trying to find a pure white rose, a climber, to go with the red and pink of the other two. I don't really care if they are fragrant, as I can't smell very good anyway (sinuses always clogged up lol). I have a 6 ft high, 20 ft long trellis that I will be planting these on. Or do you think just the ramblin red will fill it in enough? I hear that both ramblin red and william baffin can get pretty long. Thanks, kentstar

Matt, Winter hardy to the cane tips for me without any protection, nothing: Quietness - very fragrant Aunt Honey - moderately fragrant, some say very Lady Ashe (climber) - very fragrant Earth Angel - very fragrant Pink Climbing Don Juan - very fragrant (You gotta' get this rose. It's better than Climbing Red Don Juan, all around, IMHO.) That's it so far for fragrant, to the cane tip hardy, and winter hardy in my garden. The following are expected to be equal to the above in my garden, but are too new to say 'yes', positively, yet: Scepter'd Isle - very fragrant Dee-Lish - very fragrant Quick Silver - moderately fragrant Milwaukee's Calatrava - very fragrant Everything else I grow, and I grow fragrant roses only, no deadbeats in my garden, needs protection over winter to thrive. I don't spare on the protection for those that need it. It's a small price to pay to be able to grow fragrant roses in this colder climate. Fragrant roses are the ones for me, roses that without protection would limp along needlessly. They thrive because I pile the medium to fine pine bark mulch (never large chunks), high over them for the winter to give them every advantage I can. Having a rose struggle simply because it did not get winter protection, and just come back every year, dying to or nearly to the ground, is not success to me. Having it thrive, and come back bigger every year until it reaches mature equilibrium is success to me. Moses

In your zone winter cane die back is normal for most roses but I doubt your roses are completely dead, A lot of old garden roses have brown or gray and woody looking canes but that doesn't mean the cane is dead. Unfortunately your November pruning was the exact wrong time of year to prune Seven Sisters. She is a once blooming rose and only blooms on old canes. At least one year old wood. So by pruning her in the fall you probably took off a lot of her one year old canes and that will greatly reduce your bloom for this year. Once blooming roses should only be pruned immediately after they finish their bloom in the spring or early summer. The color of the outside of the canes is not an accurate way of telling if a cane is alive or not. You need to look at the inside of the cane. Find an end and snip off a small piece and look at the center of the cane. If it is brown/tan and dried up it is dead. Go down another few inches and clip again and look. Do this gradually down the cane until you find a center that looks white/greenish and moist. from there on down the cane should be alive. Do this with each cane. After a bit you'll get a better feel for what might be dead and what is still alive. Your red rose sounds like a modern rose and die back is even more common. Use the same method of pruning to find what is good, live cane and what is not. On these types of roses it is a good idea to make your last cut at a 45 degree angle about a quarter inch above an outward facing growth node. Take off all the dead wood first and see what you have left before you decide to do more pruning. In your cold zone I caution you to wait a bit longer before doing any pruning. It is still too early. I am in zone 6b and I am just going to start pruning mine this week. A rule of thumb is to wait until the forsythia bushes are blooming. That's usually when the roses begin to show new leaf growth as well and you can see where new leaves will be coming from to make your cuts easier to find.

I have a friend who has a "summer home" in the area of Kennebunkport - literally right on the beach. Once when I visited her there, I stopped off at Suzanne Verrier's nursery, which is not far away. Suzanne sold me a rose which she said was perfect for that coastsl Maine climate, so I brought it to my friend as a hostess gift. It is a climbing once bloomer (which in that areas short growing season meant it blooms all season). Suzanne Verrier (who had a lovely nursery, and has written several books about cold weather type roses) really went on and on about how good for that area this rose was. She had one growing, which was about 10 feet high and 6 feet wide, and truly lovely. The bad news is that I have no record of the name of that rose (it is not growing in my garden), except I think it was two words, both starting with a B, I think. I looked and I found a fuzzy pic my friend sent me of it as a baby in its first season, which is in the "Comment" below. Perhaps someone on here will recognize it. Jackie