Oh what a cool list, think I'll be checking these all out on HMF. You have such wonderful obscure roses. By the way, do you really have that many as listed there? "insert shock looking smilie> LOL!
I got only 3 from Palatine in yesterday, my what big plants they are!

ALOHA (not the better known Boerner pink but the apricot Kordes 2003 climber)
CARAMEL FAIRY TALE
AMBER SUN (floribunda, Kordes 2005)

I am almost ready to place a small order at Sequoia, trying to make up my mind between Lavender Pinocchio and Brownie. How is your Brownie? I read a report of weak stems, do you find that?
Also want Nigrette for planting in a pot, such a nice dark one to contrast with all these apricot ones I have aquired lately. Also Cafe for a pot, which I know has some issues with plant vigor or something like that but the blooms are so luchious. Also am debating Samaritan. Any comments on any of these I surely would appreciate, I am on such limited space I have to be very careful now. So I keep trying to tell myself.
Maybe I shouldn't look all your new ones up for fear of being tempted.:-D

Of the ones you have on your lists, I have Midnight Magic and Royal Philharmonic. Midnight Magic is a heavily petalled, heavy substance, dark red and white bicolor that has been a real trooper for me. It has quite a few flowers several times during our sometimes insufferable summers. It does need to be sprayed. It will defoliate badly if neglected. The flowers are only of medium size here and open rather flat. Otherwise, it does well, all things considered, in my yard provided it is kept healthy. Our Easter freeze last April set it back some, but it came out of it reasonably well.

Royal Philharmonic is another story (see picture below). I have the own-root version. This rose is more for cooler, coastal, maritime climates rather than here. That said, when it first blooms here, the flowers are usually medium to large size and gorgeously formed, pure white. It is a real looker. After that, forget it. It gets too hot here for it to look decent. It does rebloom, but not spectacularly. It is reasonably healthy, but it needs spraying like every other rose suffering in my yard. It survived the Easter freeze, but it only had one flower the whole summer, and it was of poor quality. It really struggled. I don't know if it will make it. I don't know where you are exactly, but I think it is worth a try if you don't get too much heat. It would probably be very nice along the coast. Anyway, it is worth a try.

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Hmm, this may be disguised as enabling Beth. I'm happy for you. Now we will want lots of pictures next year!

Carla

What a list. Looking forward to lots of pics on the Gallery next year. I bought a bloom of Elegant Beauty at a spring rose show years ago and it was so lovely that I've never forgotten it. The substance of the petals (which it needs a few more of) is like leather and the form on a newly opened bloom is perfection.......and btw, you always need more roses Beth, so why stop without those last two you mentioned.

Sue, I actually have MORE than what's listed at HMF. There are several mis-marked ones that I haven't ID'd, and quite a few that HMF still doesn't have listed. If I had room for another climber, I'd get ALOHA. That's a beauty! I have CARAMELLA FT and it's a pretty one, but doesn't bloom that much. AMBER SUN is pretty too. You'll have to show us pics when these bloom!! As for LAVENDER PINOCCHIO and BROWNIE, I love the colors of BROWNIE best, but it's been a slow grower, and is still quite small. Not sure if it has weak necks, because it's been too short to be able to tell yet! But LP is a wonderful rose, ranging from lavenders and mauves to rust and brown tones. The blooms blow pretty fast, but there's usually a lot of them and the repeat is decent. NIGRETTE so far has been very slow, but I've only had it a couple seasons. The color is wonderful, and virtually impossible to capture accurately. SAMARITAN is another great rose. Blooms like crazy and is just spectacular almost all season. As for my "new" roses, you still haven't seen what I have on order next from Hortico.... If I get them all, OMG, I'll be in rose heaven for sure!! LOL

Bustopher, I had MIDNIGHT MAGIC a few yrs ago, and loved it. For some reason it died on me tho a couple yrs ago. I ordered it last yr, and it didn't break dormancy. So, one more attempt!! Thanks for showing that pic of ROYAL PHILHARMONIC!! It's beautiful! I have verrry hot summer temps, so I hope it wasn't a mistake getting it! Maybe I'll plant it in a semi-shaded area.

Carla, you know I'm enabling all the time.... that's what's fun about growing roses!! (hee-hee) And you bet I'll post pics next spring!!

Maryl, I had an own-root ELEGANT BEAUTY for many yrs, that I had gotten from Michael Fischer, and it never did anything! I don't even remember seeing a single bloom and it never grew more than about 8". It finally bit the dust last winter, so I decided to try a grafted one. I want to see some of those gorgeous blooms one day!! And don't worry, I plan to order a few more from Heirloom once they get the website updated. I tried to order some last night and the shopping cart wasn't working right. Hopefully it will get fixed soon!!

Wow, Ok so I need to move, I always knew that, living on a tiny residential lot in the Bay Area just hampers the plant addiction in me. LOL. We are looking.

Thanks for the insights into those roses. I have added several pictures of Lavender Pinocchio to HMF taken at the Heritage Garden, it is so beautiful and with all those shades, so entertaining. I rarely am that drawn to solid color blooms, I appreciate their beauty of course but I love subtle shades and combos of colors. I especially like different colors on the reverse of petals, and darker edges, streaking and veins. I love bringing blooms in the house and seeing them up close to really enjoy all these features.
I started the year with only 6 roses, I have been mainly a daylily collector, and now have over 53 roses, 7 of them mini's. Sales have been too tempting.:-) It's going to be so exciting next year to see all these new ones bloom! Think I'll go through your images and see what catches my eye and maybe ask more questions if you don't mind. Oh, and happy planting, it's been pretty cold the past few days hasn't it?!

This was one of the first I bought after seeing it at Vintage Gardens during one of the their open house days. It's very distinct to me, I have yet to see one like it.

AUTUMN

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and I took this at a rose lovers garden in Sebastopol last week, gorgeous white reverse. She has a wonderful collection too.

CONTRAST

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Sue, I'm with you. I like the blends and contrasts and non-solids best too. Color is my favorite aspect of roses. AUTUMN has been a verrrry slow rose for me. Got it (grafted) several yrs ago and it's taken until the last couple of yrs to really give me good blooms. Part of my problem is I really need to fertilize more often. I'm lucky if I get them fed once a season. Oh, and I found CONTRAST at HD a couple yrs ago in their cheapie bagged bareroots, and it's a pretty nice rose. Ya know, ya better watch out. This rose addiction is really bad. You sound a lot like me about 17 yrs ago, when I started with 5 roses and ended up with over 100 in less than 2 yrs. It just snowballed ever since. We moved over 600 roses, including over 100 minis, 7 yrs ago from a mobile home park to our present home of 1/3 acre. I've only got a couple of small sections left that have decent enough sunlight. I have waaaay too many roses coming this season, and I'm going to be hard pressed to get them all squeezed in this spring. I may have to s/p a bunch of the under-achievers to get them all tucked in!! It's scarey!! LOL

Question. How do you get roses that only seem to be available in Europe right now? Connections I assume? For instance, Espresso and Cherry Brandy just SPEAK to me!
I knew I shouldn't have started looking at your lovely images.
Off to look at real estate instead. :-)

Sue, several of the florist varieties I've acquired over the yrs from Carlton Roses. Unfortunately, they went out of business early in 2006. They were a small company that actually were suppliers to the florist industry, and they grafted plants for sale also. Many of us managed to snag some really great roses. ESPRESSO was one of the last ones I managed to get before they quit shipping last yr. CHERRY BRANDY was another one. But, you can get it from Hortico. They show it as available right now. It's a beauty!! Those blooms lasted for weeks!! Actually, Hortico and Vintage Gardens are my major sources of the hard-to-find roses, anymore. I've also gotten cuttings from a guy I used to trade with yrs ago. He somehow got a lot of them, probably from SJHRG.

I was composing and flipping back and forth with HMF when you posted.
Oh I am glad you can then relate to that scary leap I have taken the past few months!
My friend in Sebastopol has several hundreds, she lost count at over 300, figures she has tripled that but she has a big gopher problem so she doesn't want to count and get more upset by the losses. I can't remember what size her lot is, maybe 1/2 or 3/4 of an acre. She used to live within walking distance of Vintage so that's where she got her start and she has many of the wonderful hard to find ones that they have sold over the years. She is also an enabler and I love visiting her garden (and then go to Garden Valley). :-D
I plan on another trip up probably next week, Garden Valley had a huge band shipment from Vintage that are now in 1 gal. pots and they have a sale, in fact I was just informed that a new sale was just posted. Anyways, many of the ones we saw are not even on their site or on Vintages site. We had Vintage's book with us last week and were able to look many of them up that way.

I think I read somewhere that you have most in pots? That's my goal for now and I am trying to find those that strike my fancy that are on the smaller side too but it's hard to sometimes find height/size info and also being in Calif., seems many can grow bigger than the breeder registered.

You ever have an open garden for rose nuts? You know, show off all your beauties day?

Ahhh, and thanks for that tip on Cherry Brandy, will go look now and just keep an eye out if per chance someone ever lists that Expresso. Seems a shame it is no longer available anywhere. Of course there are always more roses coming along.

Sue, thanks for the Lavender Pinocchio pics. I was going to ask someone to post some. I've been contemplating this beauty too. Hmm, as long as I hang around here, I'll never be able to "quit" buying roses! And Sue, the photos are beautiful.

Carla

Oh wow, Sue, I hadn't seen those LP pics til now. Beautiful!! I assume you'll get one? Gee, I wish I lived closer to Sebastopol & Petaluma. I've been to the old Vintage Gardens place a couple of times back in the 90's, and we even went to Garden Valley Ranch when it was still Ray Redell's. Got to see the test garden there, but the main garden was not in bloom. I think the first spring flush had just finished and they had deadheaded everything. What fun to be able to go there and shop anytime you want!

Sorry your friend has gopher problems! That's worse than my mole problems. At least the moles don't eat the plants. They just loosen up the soil.

Yes, I used to have ALL my roses in pots. But that was back when we lived in the mobile home park. Imagine having 600 roses all over the tiny little space around a double-wide mobile! I had to pot them because there were three fruitless mulberry trees on our space, and the roots are extremely invasive. Plus I knew one day we'd move outta there, and I wasn't about to leave ANY of my roses behind! When we moved, we moved everything ourselves, and my husband and his sister took about 20 or more trips loading and unloading the pots in his big truck while I worked inside the house. He joked about how it took more time and effort to move the roses than the entire house full of stuff. It's taken me these 7 yrs to get most of the roses planted in the ground. There are a few sections of the yard than have to remain potted due to trees or other factors that make it not worth planting in the ground. One being the hypericum that simply will not die in one spot, even tho it's been sprayed and covered with plastic and gravel. That stuff is horrible!

And as to your question about my opening up my garden for visitors.... anybody that wants to come is welcome. Just let me know ahead of time. I had one Forum member fly up from SoCal to get cuttings from me a couple yrs ago. The roses weren't as big and full as they are now tho, so he missed out on seeing better plants and blooms. I've had a couple others ask to come and visit, but they never made it. I'm probably a good 2½-3 hours from you. If you ever want to come, just send me a private message and I'll tell you where I am!

You know, I went to bed last night and all of a sudden, that '600 roses from a mobile home park' popped in my head, like I had read it but it suddenly sank in. Must have been a bigger lot than most around here and I pictured a nursery look with pots everywhere, kind of like what I have going here! I have over 150 daylilies and half are in pots among all kinds of other plants. It can get difficult to maneuver around the patio at times!
Oh that sounds like a wonderful trip to plan, I'll have to see if Kathy wants to come too. I do garden tours as often as I can and do drive or have flown in some cases for special tours in the past. So maybe in the early spring when things are just taking off with blooms, I will contact you then and see about it. Thanks for the offer.
Yes, I think I do need to get Lavender Pinocchio, it's just too lovely not to add it to my small growing collection and Carla, go for it too, glad you liked the photos!

Haha!! Ya know.... when we moved here and I had pots all over the yard, I actually had poeple stop and ask if I was selling the roses!! My husband used to say our yard looked like a nursery, and that's what he'd tell anybody who was trying to find our house. He'd say... "it's the house with all the roses, and it looks like a nursery!" But, there aren't that many roses in pots anymore, so he doesn't say that now.

And that space in the mobile home park had about 10 feet on each side, and maybe 6 ft in front, and 9ft in back. I had pots stacked on picnic tables, benches, raised planter beds. It was insane. I almost started putting pots on the metal roof! Thank heavens we got moved outta there before I did resort to that!! LOL