Kate, thanks for posting your lovely roses. Very good photography, too. Your roses look all very healthy and I am wondering if you spray? If you don't you have to share your secret :-)! I also like my Icebergs, shrubs and climbers and I am not a little bit ashamed of that. I think they are outstanding roses, because they perform so reliable and are very floriferous, at least here in CA. My Burgundy Iceberg rose is in its second year and I like the rose when it has the dark burgundy color I fell in love with, but disliked it when it became screaming pink in the heat of last summer. I threatened to shovel prune it when it turns into this color ever again. This year it didn't so far, so the rose may have gotten the message ;-. On a more serious note, since the heat has stayed the same as last year I think putting down a sulfur/iron soil conditioner has done the trick. Has your Burgundy Iceberg ever changed color to a hot pink?

I accidentally received a bright clear yellow that I gave away since it was supposed to be dark purple. It did not fade and did I say VERY yellow, LOL! I guessed that it was Doris Day and now she's blooming in January inside an office building. I think her warm undertones would work great with orange. Assuming that she is actually Doris, she's related to Julia Child. My favorite yellow for performance and scent has been Lemon Spice but she has cooler undertones so I don't think that she would be the right yellow for your scenario.

Hi Kay Ann Welcome to the wonderful world of "garden color", not to be confused with "actual color" in the way that non-gardeners would use these terms. The term "red" in gardening terms is one of those words that can be applied to roses that are anything from screaming orange to hot pink to pale washed-out nothingness. Even more specific labels of red that should limit the variability can be applied in ways that don't make sense to me. My Scarlet Velvet rose has never been anything but hot pink to my eye, yet the term Scarlet evokes colors of fire engines or Revolutionary war uniforms that would never in any circumstances apply to that rose as I see it. Treat labels like "red", "blue" or "purple" with similar skepticism and find pictures of the variability of a rose on databases like helpmefindroses.com if you want to see the range of colors your rose actually might be. You're right that a lot of roses that can be more or less red under some circumstances can turn pink in hot weather. We call this "blueing" and some roses are particularly prone to it. Mr. Lincoln can SOMETIMES be a gorgeous dark red but most of the time he's a dark hot pink at best and a neon pink at worst. The transplanting shouldn't make a ton of difference in the color, but a new young rose might have blooms that aren't quite like its mature form in the first flush or two. I think the heat has more to do with the color than the transplant conditions, and some roses are simply more variable in color with weather conditions than others. Roses that have the word cherry as a descriptor are often ones that blue out a fair bit, since cherries have those blue tones and that's part of what our eyes read as hot pink. "Crimson" is another word that tends to be a rose that's in the hot pink family most of the time, whereas "scarlet" is supposed to mark roses that tend toward the hot side of red (but not in the case of Scarlet Velvet). Double Knockout in my yard always has those pink-crimson tones and is never a true fire engine red for me. The Cherry Drift roses are mostly the same for me, and that crimson-pink color is a common one that roses tend to drift toward particularly in the heat. There are some easy care roses that are closer to a true crayola red color - Kardinal Kolorscape or Screaming Neon Red (an Easy Elegance rose) don't tend to pink out on me, but any rose can be variable under some conditions. Hope this helps - it's unlikely to be anything you've done or the landscapers have done to affect the color directly. Cynthia

Okay, so it is the next season after this thread. Not sure who might even still have an interest in this. I guess I feel I am trialing roses for disease resistance and growing organically and thought my experiences might be useful to anyone trying to do the same. What has happened since then. I cut back Julia Child just about to the ground in August last year. It came back from the ground and was about a foot tall before the first frost. Over the winter that new growth died back to the base of the canes. Some new canes came up from the ground and some new growth started on the bottom of the old canes. I did my usual compost/alfalfa meal in late April?, and fish emulsion/seaweed a few times. I had excellent healthy growth and I let it develop the way it wanted to. I tried to fix the problem I felt I created the season before, by cutting down any plants that were near the rose, so it gets a lot more air circulation. Last season I had a lot of cleome reseeding and allowed it to grow right up around the rose. A big mistake. It is only July now, but we have had two long heat waves already and it's been very humid this season, but Julia Child looks very good, just small. Here is a series of photos..... Julia Child April 27th, 21 - low to the ground but healthy growth. By May 25th, lots of healthy growth and flower buds showing. I didn't really prune any of the interior new growth. Still wondering if I should have because it has a lot of interior growth. Julia Child June 7th - first flush of bloom, looking nice iwth plenty of buds, healthy foliage. Julia Child on the 7th of July - Still has completely healthy foliage and is pushing out new buds for a 2nd flush, despite not doing my usual 2nd dose of compost and alfalfa meal. And that's the story with Julia Child. Have no idea why it struggled so much last year. I didn't use the Epsom salts because I chose instead to cut it down to the ground and not look at the ugly foliage any more. I was prepared to lose it and replace it with the same. Happy that I didn't have to. What is different this year than last, that it's had such a healthy year? No idea. I have two questions, was it better not to have applied a second round of compost/alfalfa meal? Should I have pruned some of the center growth when it first started producing so much new growth? It's been a good year for roses here. I have only had foliage problems on one out of eight roses and that was Pope John Paul. I shovel pruned it as soon as I realized it had blackspot. I could have done what I did to Julia Child last year and cut it back to the ground and let it regrow with healthy foliage, but I decided I was unhappy with the rose for other reasons and that was just the last straw. My biggest complaint is that the petals on the rose, deteriorate as it is opening, so it's hard to get a healthy clean looking bloom. I decided I wanted to try another white rose, maybe next year. I was initially over enthused about the rose, but that problem with the petals just really changed my mind. Savannah, has been healthy healthy looking. Pushed up new canes, is very bushy. Had a good flush of blooms 1st time around but is slow to put on new buds. My only concern is again whether it is too bushy and I should have pruned more of it off. I did prune it initially and it started with only 3 canes but it added more and is branching off those too. So, I'm just letting it do it's thing. I skipped the 2nd round of compost and alfalfa meal on all the roses this year. I think I did that, because they had a little bit of a rough time last year, and some had a rough winter, and I wanted them to just go at their own pace. Savannah June 4th 21 Savannah June 27th...first flush was done and the foliage still was clean but it's so bushy. It seems to me that is the way it grows and doesn't seem right to try to open it up in the center for air circulation. Especially since the foliage has been so clean. I have another thread floating around which I had a hard time finding, but I did think that Beverly was dead, and with encouragement from everyone here, I watied and it came back great in short order. It has also had a good season with healthy growth. It bloomed with about 5 blossoms first flush and right now it has one open bloom on it that is smaller and a few new buds just forming. Here is a current photo of Beverly, after thinking it was dead back in May...completely healthy foliage. I also have Prairie Sunrise, which I had an early season thread about - New Dawn, which had it's best year since I've had it - Aloha, which I enjoy and is very healthy but it's not in full sun and it is a very stingy producer. Penelope that keeps coming back even though I've cut it to the ground multiple times. [g] And that's about it. I would say based on my experiences with these roses, Julia Child I have had the longest and I feel is the most reliably healthy and productive. And I love New Dawn and hope to place it in a better location where it can really perform the way it was meant to. I love that old rose fragrance. I'm enjoying all the rest. I'm not sad to be looking for a new white. And I could lose Penelope and not be sad at all. But the current collection I have, minus Pope John Paul,seem to be a very healthy bunch for someone like me who grows organically with no spraying or insecticides at all.