Church Mouse, the ONLY rose I have never been able to at least satisfy enough to keep alive. The Dahlia Rose, so weak and spindly own root, I finally yanked it out and enjoyed cutting it into pieces to send to the landfill. Lavender Lassie, two plants in two different valleys. Both grew rampantly, both mildewed horribly and neither flowered very much. I'm convinced this variety requires a longer, harder winter chill than I've ever been able to give it. Ballerina, grew, and grew, and grew and mildewed and mildewed and mildewed, even the flower petals. Horrible, simply horrible no matter what I did to/for it. The Gift, very much like Ballerina, including the terminal chlorosis. Suckered and layered everywhere it touched the ground and self seeded like Bermuda Grass. Fantan, an import from LeGrice back in the 80s. VERY difficult to make happy, requiring significantly more effort and voodoo than Grey Pearl. Grew reluctant inches each year for a few years, provided a few really interesting, very strangely colored flowers before the entire planted turned olive green, every bud breaking into simultaneous growth before the whole plant turned yellow and died. That was a budded plant. Own root plants performed even worse and lived much shorter lives. Wandering Wind, like the little girl with the curl in the middle of her forehead, beautiful when it was beautiful, but most of the time it was horrid. Rust, terminal rust. Beautiful in flower in the early spring, but in a no spray situation, it seldom had foliage after the first flush and didn't rebloom. Morden Ruby, very beautiful flowers and new growth in spring. Bare canes which sunburned until the plant died due to another case of terminal rust, even when nothing else contracted the fungus. Totally unsuitable for my climate. Blue Skies, one of, if not the most expensive rose I've ever bought. Before it was officially introduced, a group in Texas sold pre production bare roots of it for $25, way back in 83-84. The single worst plant I have ever struggled with. Gall, rust/black spot/mildew spring through fall with many blind shoots. WHEN it would flower, they were misshapen and shattered within a day or two. Obviously badly virused, showing more yellow patterning than solid green. It was supposed to be THE mauve rose to beat them all. It definitely wasn't. Plum Crazy, very interestingly colored flowers with some fragrance, but the foliage burned in sunlight. No spray, no water stress, it just couldn't stand up to the Santa Clarita Valley sun, which finally burned it badly enough for it to just do the only reasonable thing, it died. Reine des Violettes, another heavily virused plant from Roses of Yesterday and Today. I bought it because GS Thomas said it was the bluest of all roses. Not in the Santa Clarita Valley it wasn't. Two or three flushes of mauvy to white flowers on chartreuse foliage with heavy die back. Heavy applications of peat moss and Ironite gave it deeper colors to the whole plant, but it never resembled anything ever used to illustrate the "bluest of roses". Even at its best, the flowers never lasted more than a day. Chianti, the original deep red English rose. Perhaps in Britain, but not in the Santa Clarita Valley! It grew, in fact it grew too well. It got quite large and loaded itself with buds each spring. The weather would be spring like, then the switch would flip and every bud would explode into flower for a day before frying. It was never the deep, rich red-purple I expected. Fried, faded cerise was the best it could muster. Charles de Mills, grew like a house-a-fire and spread like oatmeal on an active two year old. The only way to get ONE flower from it was to repeatedly pack it in ice in the San Fernando Valley. It required several years to dig it all out of the garden. Camieux, another own root gallica, totally unsuited for my San Fernando Valley climate at the time. Not one flower from the four plants I tried for several years. They all just melted away, fortunately. I'm sure there were many others over the years, but these most easily came to mind. Kim

It's hard to tell without looking at your soil, but I am going to make a guess based on my own difficult experience. My garden soil is terrible, a gluey, rockfilled mess that has been amended by myself and the previous owner, but I slowly learned with the overwhelming mess of clay and bottomless number of fill rocks large and small, the amending wasn't nearly enough. I did learn to dig, dig, dig in more organics AND, based on a comment in a rose book, add Perlite. You see, things would be fine in the cooler spring temps, but when the temps soared, that airless rocky clay just seemed to be choking the life out of the bushes. Plus, I later read that iron moves particularly slowly in heavy clay, and sure enough by late summer some of my bushes began to have typical lack-of-iron symptoms (chlorosis). My symptoms were poor sad growth, and some bushes would just die. I also had a disgusting grub problem, I would dig up the soil and there was grub after disgusting grub I mashed. Then I treated my garden with milky spore disease. All the amending, perlite, and milky spore disease seems to have improved things, but the improvements continue, and it IS back-breaking work. So I am wondering if you have lousy soil + you said your garden is at the base of a hill, so maybe you have water pooling there drowning/suffocating the roots. And the problem is really showing up as the temps rise?

Hi Linda, It's a gorgeous rose in pictures. By potted, do you mean it is in a 2-3 gal. nursery pot, or are you planning to grow it as a potted plant? These require extra winter protection. If you intend to put in in the garden, what kind of soil do you have? The main concern is that hybrid tea roses are not winter-hardy below zero, though they can be grown in z. 5. They will need to be pruned all the way down each spring, and occasionally you will lose one. When you plant it out, the most important thing is to bury the top of the graft (swelling where the canes diverge) 4-6" below the surface to prevent it freezing out. Then heap mulch or soil over the crown when temperatures start falling to around 12 degrees. New transplants from pots will need water every other day for a while, about 1-1/2 gal. if it is hot with low humidity. Later you would water once or twice a week, 4-5 gal/week depending on the weather. Fertilize according to the fertilizer label.

Please try the Antique Rose Forum as there are several very good Australian rose growers on there as well as many OGR (old garden rose) growers. You are most welcome to post there and are invited by this OGR grower.