Hi, Kelly & Vapor, @celeste/NH Thank you for your ideas! i checked my friend’s location and she has humidity, too, so I am reworking my list. Rugosa are good. Kordes are great for no BS in humidity. Do you know what Old Garden Roses are best for zone 4 and humidity? @Kelly Tregaskis Collova Earth Angel & Madame Anisette are zone 5, but you have grown them in your zone 4. Are you zone 4a or 4 b? Where in your yard can you grow them? Maybe if you grow them on south side of home it keeps them warmer since they are not nade for your zone? However, climate has warmed all over and temps may not be getting as low as we are zoned, either. Also, did the cold winter get your Olivia? Olivia does really well in humidity. I have humidity & she gets no BS. Princess Alexandria of Kent gets BS, so I will not recommend for her. The DA roses list in my post above are zoned 4, but maybe DA are just not very hardy? Lichfield Angel, though, may be their most hardy rose-I have her and she grows no matter what where I have lost other roses. Yes, I heard less fragrant DA newer ones-thanks. Maybe if planted on south side home they will keep warmer in zone 4.

Thank you, Maria... at least now we're not all wondering, even though we all pretty much knew that they weren't really hardy to zone 5, and that they aren't really something from Hadeco. Still, it's nice to get factual information straight from the horses mouth, as it were! Once the original copyright or registration runs out on a product, it's ownership and name are up for grabs. I wonder how long the growers that grabbed these were waiting around, drooling for the original patent to expire? Many, many years ago I bought a bunch of bulbs from Breck's... I knew they wouldn't be top-sized bulbs, but I didn't mind waiting a couple of years for them to grow. I must say... I did get my money's worth... they were all beautiful flowers, and by the second year they were in, they really put on a nice show! However... this was years and years ago, when Breck's was more reputable and owned by someone else... I would not place an order with them now and expect their ads to be true... any company that spends that much in advertising and has that glossy and pretty of a catalog isn't putting their profits back into the company or the products they sell. As my experience and learned knowledge of gardening and plants has grown over the years, I know what zones most perennials and bulbs and plants are normally rated for... so, when I pick up a catalog and see a plant listed for a zone I know is not probable, I take it with a grain of salt and note which company the catalog is from... Bumping zones of plants in catalogs has been a sales ploy for a long time... once you have a general understanding of perennial gardening, and you begin to do some cultural reading on the subject, you begin to remember which plants are rated for what zones... The bottom line is... this kind of thing is exactly what you'd expect from a company such as Breck's... and all the other companies of the same caliber will very quickly jump on the bandwagon and offer the same thing, claiming that it will survive in a zone 5 garden... we all know it won't. I suspect most of us knew that already...

I'm in zone 5 Ottawa,Canada. Zone 4 for you in the US. They used to say you couldn't grow J.maples around here. But for 20 years I always could, and have never lost any, except 2 variegated ones. I have about 25 varieties, a sort of J. maple forest in my back yard & I am running out of room. Good thing they are dwarf trees, unlike our native maples that grow to 50 ft. I wholesale them from (grown in)BC, zone 7-8. They do not loose hardiness by grafting and propagating in a milder climate. The hardiness is built into the plant. I will say that they can sometimes be slow to establish, and this is the important part. Any tree should be planted early and well cared for in the first season, so it is well established going into it's first winter. I don't believe in bare root trees doing well, too slow to establish, or over wintering in a pot. They should always be planted in the ground and well mulched. I do think they prefer a more acidic soil. Ours is neutral approx. 6-7ph, so I spread sulphur everywhere every couple of years to acidify a little.(I don't like pink hydrangeas, prefer blue) I saw a study once, out of U of Michigan I think, where when they tested plants, and they found that plants growing in acidic soil seemed a little hardier than the same plants growing in more alkaline soils. In the past I have used geo-textile fleece as a winter cover for the first few winters, but snow makes a great insulator as well. I get a bit of tip dieback sometimes, but it doesn't matter since they grow back very well, as if they were pruned. There is a sort of wilt going around in J. maples lately, others have noticed as well. It doesn't hurt the tree, it just attacks some of the newest growing tips as they are finished flushing out in summer....sort of self pruning. We regularly get to minus 22 celcius (-10 far.)here most winters, with minimal problems. Even with last winter, the worst in 20 yrs., there were no losses. The only damage I ever notice is the heavy snow pack in spring, will sometimes crack the weeping types as it weighs them down and melts. Variegated types do seem less hardy, possibly due to the fact that variegation is a mutation and therefore weaker. Red and green types are perfectly hardy. They all seem hardier as they get older. thanks, Rich

Yes, it's the same rose. The year I bought my two I think it was listed as 2.5 feet or something odd. HMF says 3-6 feet, but used to say only 3, I think. But funniest is HMF says Ascot grows up to 18 inches wide--mine is about 7 feet. It's a good thing I just happened to plant the one in the photo in a place with lots of room, but I have had to remove a lavender, dianthus, and will remove another big lavender this spring to make way. It's currently duking it out with a huge snowball bush. Who will win? Diane Ascot in 2013--see how far away the snowball is? The rose is touching it now. The lavender on the right is gone and other will soon be gone; it's being crushed.