Cincy City Garden, Here and in PEI, Therese Bugnet throws out a huge spring flush and then blooms fairly continuously through the summer. Not heavily mind you, but there are always blooms on the bush until another larger flush in the fall. It grows very tall, vase shaped and upright and since it will be tip hardy for you, will become a substantial plant for you quickly. You will not need to prune it for several years, but you certainly can if this is your wish. I have never grown Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, so can't really tell you much about it based on real experience. David Austin did use it extensively in his breeding and both Mary Rose and Eglantyne have CFM in their genetics which is the main reason these are two of the hardier Austins. CFM is apparently somewhat prone to rust and makes a very tall and vigorous plant. It is not as hardy as some of the "truer" Rugosa Hybrids though and not even close in hardiness to Therese Bugnet. Hope that helps. Hi Kate, The Rugosa pictures were actually taken by my Mom with a digital camera I bought for her as a X-mas gift and are from her garden in PEI. I helped design my Mom's garden and purchased her first 70 or so roses as a retirement gift when my parents decided to, well, retire out that way. They have a 5+ acre property and I only wish I had that much space to plant roses in my garden. In my own garden, I'm constricted to a 60X150' lot in the suburbs, so I can only dream about doing things that she can accommodate easily. About FDH, it would be next to impossible for me to give you any advice that would really be of use, despite how much I'd like to help. We garden in such drastically different climates and I have no idea of your cultivation habits, the composition of your soil, or any other factor that could contribute to a less than robust plant. I also don't know how FDH actually performs in your area, so maybe that is normal for it in your zone. I will add that other than manure, I have never fertilized Rugosas ever. Unless they get chlorosis and need iron, which is rare here, they simply don't need the fertilizer and many don't like chemical fertilizers regardless, even if you don't get it on the leaves. Is your FDH own-root or grafted? If grafted, you may want to check your soil PH and see if it is acidic or alkaline. As a general rule, Dr. Huey does better in alkaline soils and Multiflora does better in acidic soils. The whole point of Rugosas is that once established, they really don't need much care at all to flourish. If they are receiving enough water and the soil is half decent, they should thrive. At least in my zone and climate... By the way, the pics I posted don't have FDH in them. I couldn't find one of FDH that my mom sent me last year. In the first pic, those are all 2 year old own-root plants from Cornhill nurseries of Rotesmeer (Purple Pavement) and either Schneekoppe (Snow Pavement) or Schneezwerg (Snowdwarf); I can't remember which now and I always get these varieties confused because of the name similarities. The second pic of the railway tie bed is a blended mix of many different Rugosas that are the same type and colours on each end and repeat as you move in to culminate in the center with Roseraie de L'Hay. The last pic is Roseraie de L'Hay on the left, Henry Hudson in the middle and Therese Bugnet on the right. Hope that helps.

Regarding what the reviewed published scientific literature says about bees and imidacloprid. When a scientific paper is submitted for publication, it is the responsibility of the Editor and the reviewers to see that the paper adequately and fairly covers the prior published literature. Here is a very recent reviewed scienific research paper from a European source. Title: Risk assessment for side-effects of neonicotinoids against bumblebees with and without impairing foraging behavior. Authors: Mommaerts, Veerle; Reynders, Sofie; Boulet, Jana; Besard, Linde; Sterk, Guido; Smagghe, Guy. Authors affiliation: Laboratory of Cellular Genetics, Department of Biology, Faculty of Sciences, Free University of Brussels, Brussels, Belg. Published in: Ecotoxicology (2010), 19(1), pages 207-215. Abstract: "Bombus terrestris bumblebees are important pollinators of wild flowers, and in modern agriculture they are used to guarantee pollination of vegetables and fruits. In the field it is likely that worker bees are exposed to pesticides during foraging. To date, several tests exist to assess lethal and sublethal side-effects of pesticides on bee survival, growth/development and reprodn. Within the context of ecotoxicol. and insect physiol., we report the development of a new bioassay to assess the impact of sublethal concns. on the bumblebee foraging behavior under lab. conditions. In brief, the exptl. setup of this behavior test consists of two artificial nests connected with a tube of about 20 cm and use of queenless micro-colonies of 5 workers. In one nest the worker bees constructed brood, and in the other food (sugar and pollen) was provided. Before exposure, the worker bees were allowed a training to forage for untreated food; afterwards this was replaced by treated food. Using this setup we investigated the effects of sublethal concns. of the neonicotinoid insecticide imidacloprid, known to neg. affect the foraging behavior of bees. For comparison within the family of neonicotinoid insecticides, we also tested different concns. of two other neonicotinoids: thiamethoxam and thiacloprid, in the lab. with the new bioassay. Finally to evaluate the new bioassay, the authors also tested sublethal concns. of imidacloprid in the greenhouse with use of queenright colonies of B. terrestris, and here worker bees needed to forage/fly for food that was placed at a distance of 3 m from their hives. In general, the expts. showed that concns. that may be considered safe for bumblebees can have a neg. influence on their foraging behavior. Therefore it is recommended that behavior tests should be included in risk assessment tests for highly toxic pesticides because impairment of the foraging behavior can result in a decreased pollination, lower reprodn. and finally in colony mortality due to a lack of food." ----------------------------------------------------- I have a copy of the full paper but I can only post the abstract due to copyright restrictions. However, I can send a limited number of copies of the full paper by e-mail "for educational purposes" if anyone desires to read the full paper. I can also quote a section (or sections) to make a point in a discussion. Here is some of what the autors cite about the research that had been previously published on the subject: " To date, most studies on bees mainly consider mortality (Suchail et al. 2000), while less attention is given to sublethal effects which may be detrimental towards pollination and subsequent bee populations. Thompson et al. (2003) and Desneux et al. (2007) reported that sublethal effects must be considered when evaluating the impact of pesticides on pollinators. To date, multiple laboratory studies have focused on the impact of pesticides on the biochemistry of honeybees (Armengaud et al. 2000). However, interpretation of the negative effects on the neurophysiological capacities of insects is difficult, and in turn the effects for the insect or the whole colony are unknown. For honeybees the proboscis extension response (PER) assay has been used to determine the impact of pesticides on the learning ability (Lambin et al. 2001; Decourtye et al. 2004a; El Hassani et al. 2008). Further, Decourtye et al. (2004b) showed the reliability of this method to detect disturbances at the level of the learning behavior on free-flying foraging bees under more natural conditions. For honeybees such abilities are essential because they rely on their visual learning capacity to communicate the distance and the direction to the food source. Pesticide exposure to honeybees while foraging could affect their orientation behavior (Vandame et al. 1995; Bortolotti et al. 2003; Thompson 2003; Yang et al. 2008). In France, it was believed that honeybee mortalities in areas of sunflower crops were linked to the use of pesticides (Bonmatin et al. 2003). This assumption was not supported by Schmuck et al. (2001), who found that the residues in pollen and nectar of sunflowers were too low to be detrimental. But in the field, bees can be chronically exposed to pesticide residues via contaminated stored food (Schmuck et al. 2001; Bonmatin et al. 2003; Miranda et al. 2003; Chauzat et al. 2006). Numerous studies have reported that ingestion of small quantities can lead to sublethal effects in honeybees (Colin et al. 2001; Decourtye et al. 2003); in laboratory and semi-field tests it was reported that low concentrations of imidacloprid taken up via the pollen were responsible for changes in foraging and food collecting and for the loss of ability to communicate and learn (Colin et al. 2001; Decourtye et al. 2003). Similar sublethal effects on the learning ability were found after exposure to fipronil (Desneux et al. 2007), on the communication dance by carbamate insecticides (Thompson et al. 2003) and on the homing flight by the pyrethroid insecticide deltamethrin (Vandame et al. 1995; Ramirez-Romero et al. 2005). Until now, most studies have been performed on honeybees, while other bees like bumblebees may also be affected by pesticide poisoning." -------------------------------------------------

Thanks for the response michaelg. So the rose petals that fall off the mature bud and onto the ground are called "self-cleaning?" Too funny! Especially since the climbing rose and the bougainvillea are the only flowers I have that I'm constantly sweeping up after. Yes, dying buds are ugly too but I find it easier to just deadhead those. Perhaps I'll think differently after acquiring a few more. I don't have any other flower-types that I can really compare them too. Wait. I do have a gardenia, but I barely can get that to flower at all. I guess the rose petals can be pretty. But now that I'm paying them more attention, I thought having any disregarded materials nearby would be unsanitary and breed pests? No? The other thing is our home sits pretty close to the neighbors. Although I do have the best and friendliest of neighbors, I'd like to keep them that way. I live pretty coastal - San Diego, CA. About a 10 mins from the beach. Thank you for your help!

Thanks guys. i hadnt noticed the fragrance when I took the pic, So before I posted i had to go back out and check. I had to grab a chair and climb up onto the 30" reataining wall, and into the bed,lol. Nothing like a little gymnastics mid day. It does have a wonderfully, soft sweet rose scent. I guess it just got a reprieve,lol. Glad I didnt jumb into pulling it too quick.Thing is, I dont remember planting it. But as big as it is, I am sure it was quite awhile ago. Tammy