You're welcome Nadia! Once you have the others collected, and you find you have more room, there is ONE more... Crestline Mulberry is a rose I "discovered" nearly thirty years ago. I hadn't grown it in many years, but re collected a sucker of it from a friend's garden in Torrance, CA last week. She, through her rose society, has spread it all around the Palos Verdes area because it grows so well there. It could also fill the bill for the type of Old Rose you're looking for. Arena Roses offered it for sale in their first printed catalog and it should still grow in the old rose bed at The Huntington Library, so if you're out there when things are blooming, you can see it. The last nursery I know of offering it was Muriel Humenick's Rose Acres, up in El Dorado, CA, but that was several years ago. Muriel was the source of many of my early old, rare and wonderfully obscure roses and is a lovely lady with a wonderful garden. Kim http://www.helpmefind.com/gardening/l.php?l=17.3022 Here is a link that might be useful: Crestline Mulberry

Those are some good choices. Quietness gets to be about 6' tall here and 4' wide but is great. Carefree Beauty is another Buck rose that to me is the best blooming Buck of all, and is blackspot free. Country Dancer is an excellent Buck that for me has better bs resistance than Earth Song though Earth Song is great. I think you might look into some of the antique roses. If you have plenty of room you could make another bed out in your yard. You might try Clotilde Soupert. It is a wonderful bloomer, very disease resistant, very fragrant with romantic cup shaped blooms, and can take some shade. It does ball in the spring ( blooms fail to open in the cool damp), but later it is wonderful till cold weather. There is a world of roses you might check out on the antiques forum. Some of the old roses are tough things. A resource you might find helpful is www.helpmefind.com/roses. You can look up most any rose on that site, get pics and information and a list of nurseries that supply that rose. For your soil, I'd dig out any larger rocks. I'd loosen the soil in the whole area where you're planting and get out any grass or weeds. Adding organic stuff to your soil can help it retain water. For a small area you could buy bagged composted manure or mushroom compost. In my area the town has a leaf composting facility and they sell it by the truckload for ten dollars. Your town might have one. Before I had a truck I'd bag it up and they gave it to me free. It makes good mulch too. But otherwise, bark mulch is good to conserve moisture , insulate from too much heat, and to keep down weeds. Just don't pile it high on the stems of your young plants or it can cause rot. Kind of mulch the roots, and keep it off most of the stems. Be careful not to overfertilize, and don't feed at all when it's within 6 weeks of your expected first frost in fall. Some advise not to feed at all the first year but I think I'd try some 1/2 strength Miracle Grow after they're in the ground a month or so and settled in. Chamblees may have their own advice. I think it's a lovely present for your wife and your kids will love seeing them grow for her. Linda

Wow that's a tough choice haha. All of these nurseries (Annies included) are within a short driving distance. Annie's to Ace would take no more than 30 minutes on a day and time with no traffic congestion. Berkeley Horticultural and East Bay Nursery carry a similar selection of plants. Berkeley Horticultural is bigger though and also carries a wide selection of fruit trees, and a wider selection of natives and roses than East Bay. East Bay Nursery has a larger succulent section. Dry Gardens is small but has an amazing collection of truly unique succulents. They also carry really cool plants that are drought tolerant, as well as restios and bamboos. Ace Garden Center has a more "typical" selection of plants for California, but they do carry really cool plants that may be hard to find from time to time (Parajubaea cocoides, Doryanthes palmeri...) They do stock a lot of Annie's plants as well, so if you're going to Annie's, maybe this is one you can skip. I would make a stop at Dry Gardens because it specializes in succulents, and at Berkeley Horticultural because you will have gotten your succulent fix at Dry Gardens anyway (instead of at East Bay Nursery). Tell us which ones you choose and what goodies you find!

Wow - your space looks perfect for roses - lots of sun! If I were you I would do some more investigating before buying any roses. Going to your local nursery and buying grafted roses (the "bare root" ones you spoke of) is not what I would do. My reason is that grafted roses are actually 2 roses - one is the top (called the "scion"), and the other is the roots (called the "rootstock"). They are grafted together at the soil level, in a lumpy thing called the "bud union". In our warm climate, my experience has been that the usual rootstock on roses sold here is one called 'Dr. Huey'. The problem here is that Dr. Huey likes our climate so much that it decides to take over the entire bush, and puts up its own canes within 2-3 years, and can then take over and kill the scion. Dr. Huey is a once blooming climbing rose with medium sized red flowers (if you look around at neglected gardens near you, you will see LOTS of unintended Dr. Huey bushes!), which in our climate gets horrible powdery mildew all over it. To prevent Dr. Huey from taking over you have to continuously recognize and tear off the emerging Dr. Huey canes, which is a pain, especially if you have roses in a hedge - OWE! What I would recommend is that you purchase "own root" roses, which are grown on their own roots - there is only one rose, not two. This means that any new cane that shows up is good news, as it is part of the rose you want. Own root roses are becoming available at local nurseries, but the best selection is from mail order nurseries. I order my roses from "Heirloom Roses" and "Rogue Valley Roses" - both are in Oregon. You can google them. They both have lovely catalogues in addition to their web sites (personally I like to look at catalogues). They both sell old and new roses. Another nursery I love is the "Antique Rose Emporium", which is in Texas. You can easily get catalogues from these nurseries, and then you can see all of the different kinds of roses which are available. Many times these nurseries will ship you roses in "bands", which are very small pots. These are just as good (and probably better) roses than you can buy locally. They just need some time to get bigger before you plant them in your garden. What most folks do is to plant them immediately into a one gallon pot, and let them grow in it (out side only!) for 6-12 months, at which point they are big enough to plant. In our climate, you can actually plant roses 12 months of the year. The only conditions I would avoid planting in is if it has been so rainy that the soil is completely saturated (I will be SO HAPPY if that happens this Fall/WInter!)- wait until it has had time to drain and dry out a bit. The types of re-blooming (as opposed to once blooming) roses which do best in my garden (contrary to what "they" will tell you, roses are VERY climate specific) are old tea roses, china roses, hybrid musk roses, and polyanthas. Look at the catalogues - once you have found some roses you think you would like, look them up on the website "Help Me Find/roses". A couple of things to keep in mind: 1) The higher the climate "zone" numbers at the bottom for a rose, the better it will like our warm climate (I, and I think you, are zone 9). 2) The sizes they say the roses will grow on HMF are smaller than they really get in our climate. After you get a list of roses you think you would like, I would post it on here and as about people in the Bay Area who actually grow those roses what they think about them - that is the best way to find out, next to growing them in your own garden. Lastly, you are lucky re where you live! There is a thing in the Spring called the "Celebration of Old Roses". It is in El Cerrito - very close to you. There are roses for purchasing there, and also an immense display of all kinds of roses - thousands of them laid out by type - cut blooms in little glasses. There are also 2 local fabulous roses gardens where you can go and look at various types of roses growing - one is the San Jose Heritage Rose Garden, and the other is the Historic Rose Garden in the Sacramento Historic Cemetery. I would go see these in Oct, when they will have lots of roses blooming, or of course next Spring. Sorry to be so long, but I can tell by looking at your garden that you are a gardener, and just need some encouragement! (BTW, if I had your garden I would plant a huge climbing rose like, say Madame Alfred Carriere, on that fence way in the back, and start it up that huge fir tree - it would go up to the top!). Hope the above is helpful. Jackie