Using the data from Culpeper Airport and looking at the data between November 1st and February 28, we had: 5 days where it did not get above freezing 80 days where it went below freezing 34 days where it went below 20 5 days where it went below 10 10 days with recorded gusts over 30 mph. and the one that scares me the most - only 3.29 inches of precipitation over the entire four month period. The airport is probably warmer than at my house as I had temperatures below zero over the winter, but no days on wunderground show any negative digits. It feels like it got colder sooner and has stayed colder longer than any winter in recent history (especially looking out at the 8 inches of snow we got last night). I am worried about some of my roses which have black stems. St. David's and Duchesse de Brabant are the ones which I am most concerned about. Kathy

You folks are trying to reel in another victim, aren't you? Same thing happened to me a few winters ago. Right now I am having seedlings coming out of my ears and I cannot plant them out fast enough. The weather is not cooperating either. It turned so hot so fast those babies are growing like mad until the roots are bound together. Whine..whine..whine...:-P Welcome to the mad house, Steph. If you still need more seeds, check back in fall. I will have plenty. In fact, I have a lot of plants to share, but it's too hot now to ship them out. I can ship plants for postage in fall, if you are interested. :-)

If you have a chance to read Helen Dillon's books, she has (or had) a famous though tiny city garden in Ireland. She's a good writer - and her books are really inspiring. I've got a few others on the subject of small gardens, like Heyward's 'the intimate garden' - this is an up and coming topic. Dillon has really mastered the art of layered plantings that pack a lot of plants into a relatively small space. She also recommends breaking some rules, and using some large scale plants instead of too many diminutive and fine-textured plants, which I think is a really important point when you're designing a small space. Off to check out the 'small space' forum, thanks for bringing that to our attention!

I really have mixed feedback on this issue. I totally agree that the robust growers in cold zones do fine on their own roots and you don't have to worry about suckers from the graft. Too robust growers (like gallicas) can be better grafted so that you can plant the graft ABOVE the soil (only) for those super-hardy roses and avoid the gallica taking over the garden bed. I also agree that grafted roses of the wimpier varieties of HTs and floris are more robust in their first year or two and tend to grow bushy faster than own root versions of those plants. However, I've recently started to experience the down side of grafted HTs in a cold climate. First of all, virtually all of the grafted HTs and floris that I've planted with the graft properly buried have gone own root over time if they've survived. For instance, I bought In the Mood grafted from a local nursery and it was fabulous and bushy in its first year. The second year and for every year after that, it was a knee high one-cane wonder until it finally gave up the ghost and died after about 6 years. The same process has been happening more gradually with my grafted Savoy Hotel. It was lush (maybe 4.5' by 4.5') and incredible in its first year or two, ranking in my top 20 of roses. Every year since then it has declined and come back from the winter more slowly. By August this year, my plant in optimum sun and soil conditions has just now reached almost 3 feet with 3 canes on it and a couple of blooms here and there for the first time all season (nothing at all in June). Here's a contrast picture to show that effect - this is 2013 in June for Savoy Hotel at its full 4.5'x4.5' glory. Savoy Hotel is at the bottom right corner keeping up with Madame Isaac Periere in the back of it with no trouble. Granted, this was a particularly good rose year, but you can see the relative sizes. Now just one year later in 2014, here's Savoy Hotel in front of MIP (bottom center) also in June, and this was an average rose year for me. It's too late for MIP on the shepherd's hook to be blooming, but you can see MIP's height by the purple clematis. Notice that she's now in 2014 only 3' high and has about 4 blooms every couple of weeks. She has declined from that since, even though she's still a very nice rose. I don't have any more recent bush pictures for her since I only get the scattered blooms any more, and only late in the season to boot. One other effect I'm seeing in my older grafted roses this spring in particular is graft failure for a lot of my well-established roses with the graft well buried. Even under the soil, it seems like a grafted rose starts running out of places to grow new basal shoots after a while. For instance, this spring I lost an 8 year old Dream Come True (the tall rose at the left of the first picture) for no good reason that I could see, and it was a mild winter. Sure, you see pictures of 50 year old grafted HTs in warm climates, but those are warm climates. I suspect that if we have a 50 year old HT rose in cold climates that started out grafted and is still alive, it has gone own root in that time and is a robust rose on its own roots. My reluctant conclusions are that if a rose is going to be a wimp, it will reach that state on its own whether own root or grafted. If I get an own root HT rose through its first winter it will increase in size to its sustainable height and vigor and more or less stay there for the duration. If I get a grafted HT rose through its first winter, it will decrease in size to its sustainable height and vigor and stay there till the graft fails or it goes completely own root. There are only a few roses where I think the graft did give the rose a little boost in survival over that first winter, Memorial Day and Oklahoma come to mind, but for the most part I don't think it buys me anything in either survivability or vigor after the first year. That's why I tend to grow my HTs and floris on their own roots. I want to know the long-term height it's really going to be in its early years, I get reliable winter survival of the original rose from own roots if they get to a good size in their first year, and I don't have to dig up a massive root system when it dies or deal with suckers. Just my two cents Cynthia