I have these established rugosas listed by my most favorite for hips, rebloom and hardiness at the top and on down: Magnifica (my best rugosa for rebloom and hips) Fru Dagmar Hastrup (second best, but a close second!) Belle Poitevine (right in there with the top two) Marie Bugnet (love this little rose - unfortunately the stem girdlers do too and rarely leave poor Marie with more than one or two canes.) Martin Frobisher (gotta love a rose that sets such pretty blooms over the whole season yet asks for nothing at all) Mrs. Doreen Pike (if only she'd let go of her spent petals, she'd be a perfect little rose. Love the pink blooms against the apple green foliage.) Carmen (when she's in her spring flush she is awesome! Very little re-bloom the rest of the year.) R.rugosa rubra (I like this rose, but it won't stay home. Suckers badly in every direction!) Therese Bugnet (Not much rebloom from Therese and just like her sister, a regular victim of stem girdlers.) Sweet Cecilia (a bit too tender for my zone; it's hanging on but just barely. Pretty white blooms.) Fimbriata (not too impressive in bloom, ho-hum out of bloom which is usually. Canes only half hardy up here.) Dr. Eckner (definitely longs for a warmer zone, has severe die back and awkward growth thereafter with few blooms that blow in a heartbeat. Needs to be shovel pruned except that it takes up so little space it's easy to ignore!) ** Agnes (I just bought her this year so I haven't ranked her yet - but being a once bloomer doesn't bother me as long as I get *lots* of yellow blooms when she *does* bloom!) The less "rugose" they are by hybridization, the less hardy they are for me plus all of my rugosas are prone to stem girdler which can be most frustrating. As far as blackspot or powdery mildew, I don't think any of them with the exception of Dr. Eckner (which hardly even looks related to rugosas at all) are affected. If it weren't for the stem girdler problem, they'd be pretty care free. They rarely even get fertilized or watered or deadheaded.

Tammy--nice collection of "H" roses. Another Huntington Rose (Austin) pic--I'm falling hard for that rose and almost wish I'd ordered it for spring instead of Scepter'd Isle--though that is a beautiful Austin also. I need more room--so I can order all those roses I can't possibly take care of since I'm already maxed out in terms of what I'm physically up to caring for. Sigh--life can be so difficult at times! Kate

Zip code zone finder(s) I have used put me wrongly in USDA 7 also. USDA 7 is average lows between 0 and 10F. The all-time record low for the Montlake weather station is 10F, for the Sea-Tac airport 0F. This past winter there was a bunch of browning of long-established specimens belonging to certain alliances at the Rhododendron Species Botanical Garden - because it got down to 10F there, and it rarely does that. Failing access to correctly identified live material to compare the shrub in question with you'll just have to look at rose books and rose web sites to see if you can find clear markers for one variety or the other indicated.

That is so funny Carol, my wife said the same thing (not the swoon worthy tho, that's a Carol original ;-) One of the gals was not going to attend because of some probs with her mother. That bouquet went home for her.