Lisa, my PDA is not blooming yet, but there are buds. I'll post pictures when it does it's thing. I used the trellis kit from (I think) Lee Valley. You glue little "plugs" with eyes where you want the trellis then string wire through it. Mixed results with that..some of the plugs are coming off. Last year, it got to the top of the pillar I was wanting it to wrap around, and I've extended the trellis contraption to go across to the next pillar. Lol, if I had thought this was really going to work, I'd have used a more permanent trellis. May have to do something else for the long term. My rose is nowhere near the size of yours..maybe 7', and not many canes. Flowergirl, sorry to hear you didn't have good luck with it. I ordered mine in spring and grew it in a pot and put it in the ground in the fall. There's been no looking back. It's not quite as vigorous as the Sweet Autumn that's eating the west side of my porch, but then again, it's not as old, either. And, it just blooms it's fool head off. Hope you get one to do well for you! OH, and this is the first year I've remembered to top dress it with composted cow manure, so LOOK OUT :) Brenda

I am starting to think that hybrid teas, even the older ones, are not as much work to keep clean as the dense shrubby OSO EZEs and the Knock outs. wIth the HTs you just look to the hygiene, air transfer and spray them with old fashioned Sulpher Lime and dormant oil in the winter. With the twiggy new shrubs you can accumulate all kinds of fungus and stuff but they keep blooming and over grow the yellow leaves. They have to be opened up and cleaned up or they infect everything around them. I really believe this. You really cant strip their leaves off; its suicide. Here in coastal NJ we are in black spot hell, fungusamongus every spring. The nights are cold and wet. The days can get warm with big drops in temperature. Humidity all year. I have rugosas but keep them far away from other roses because they are great mildew traps. I like all of them. Some that I think are excellent for us in cold 6B are Autumn Sunset, Queen Elizabeth, New Dawn, Sea Foam, Cecile Brunner, Heritage (prone a little to bs) popcorn drift, and the newer Kordes. I have found great Maidens Blush gets some, but its worth it, so does Sidonie, but I love it. Sun, spacing, food and hygiene (pick up the leaves) are the keys.

Update: most of my roses are here and ready to go in (hopefully next week). I ended up with: MAC ZD (for porch front and side) GT (for the side of the house, next to ZD) JtheO Comtes de Champagne Peace Sharifa Asma Stanwell Perpetual New Dawn (to train into a tree in the yard) Anne Hathaway Paul Shirville Apothecary's Rose and Alba Semiplena for the herb garden I'm still waiting to find Bolero, which sounds very promising, and Evelyn, which I might keep in a pot to see how it does. Most of the others will be planted in a circle around a small fountain at the front of the house. I'm planning to put MAC at the back; my vision is to have it growing fairly tall to screen our bay window, and to fan out on the sides (assuming i can convince it to do so) to achieve the look of an arching fountain of blooms. Here's my question: I ordered two MACs. Would I be crazy to plant them next to each other to get a more "fountainy" look? I don't know if they will achieve the monstrous proportions here in NJ that I see in pics from CA. Am I better off putting the second one on the other side of the tree with New Dawn, or somewhere else altogether?

VJ, Here's what works for me. We are essentially growing roses under identical conditions. Get paper leaf bags at Home Depot or Lowe's. They come 5 bags to a bundle, 30 gallon capacity each bag, and a bundle of 5 is $2.12 at Lowe's here, cheap! Each bag is 36" tall and, when open is 18" in diameter. From each bag you can get 3 winteization collars. Measure down every 12", and cut across the bag. Just cut the bottom off of the bag. Each bundle makes 15 collars. Although the bags are paper, they are double thick and will easily last all winter. The 18" diameter of the collar can be a bit wide, so to make a less wide collar fold over the side. My average size hybrid tea collar is 12" high and 14" in diameter. To get this size fold over a collar 7" , crease it, and staple the folded part in several places. The staples will hold all winter long. The collar will now be 14" in diameter. That diameter is usually sufficient. Huge, mature hybrid teas that need winterization may need the original 18" unaltered collar size. Put the collars on your roses after a few light frosts. 17°F. or lower kills most hybrid tea canes. I usually winterize my roses in November, before Thanksgiving. Just watch your weather pattern every fall. Early frosts mean winterize sooner. Do not winterize too early, let the roses get some light frosts. The best winterization material I have found is fine pine bark mulch, but not too fine. Postage stamp sized to Wheat Thins or Cheez•Its sized pine bark mulch is the best size that I have found. Pine bark mulch does not get soggy. Soggy mulch is the kiss of death, and is worse than no mulch at all. Soggy mulch rots the canes. Soggy mulch to avoid: garden soil (especially clay type soil), hardwood mulch, sawdust, vemiculite, most leaves (even oak leaves), grass clippings, manure, compost, straw, i.e. anything that holds water when wet will induce cane rot. Try hard not to prune any canes at the season's end. Let them be, all the way to their tips. Gather the canes together and tie them with soft ripped rag strips if you cannot easily get a collar on a rose. Those tips are your roses' thermometers that report to the bush the weather conditions. Cut them off, and the bush can make premature dormancy breaks, much to the bush's detriment. Place your mulch into the collar slowly, wiggling the collar so the mulch settles in properly. Fill up to the top. You will use an amazing amount of pine bark mulch. This same winterization mulch will be your rose bed covering mulch next year. Next spring in mid-March just wiggle off the collars only. Leave the mulch in place. it will spill away a bit, but now looks like a beaver lodge. Over the next couple weeks, slowly, every few days, tease the mulch away from the crown of the rose. A little more every time. Watch the weather carefully. Spring frosts reported? Hold off removing more mulch for a while. Soon all the mulch will be spread evenly throughout the bed, dressing it up beautifully. When you get closer to the rose's center/crown, be careful removing the mulch so that you do not break emerging shoots. A gentle water spray will help move the mulch away easier when close in to the crown. You can prune your roses just after the forsythia and large daffodils have reached their peak of bloom. What to do if after the mulch is removed and there is a late spring, killing frost? Put 5 gallon buckets over the big roses, over night or as long as the temp. Is 32° F. or lower. Use 2 gallon buckets, or bottom cut out gallon bottles: milk, iced tea, distilled water, etc., over the smaller roses. Remove all those covers as soon as possible when the frost is over, especially if the sun is shining, or the new shoots can cook! Moses