Well Gemma, those varieties are not great cut flower roses anyway; you can arrange them in smaller vase, using florist's foam and decorative stones (that's what I like to do) and together with other flowers from your garden they'll make some stunning decoration. For good, long stems and great flowers you'll have to plant Hybrid Teas bred exclusively for that purpose; plants that are tall, bearing one exquisite flower per stem and repeating well. Such Hybrid Teas look awesome in a vase, everyone will turn their heads to look at them, but I consider them to be untidy, narrow, twiggy, ugly bushes in the garden. I've planted some 20 Hybrid Teas just for this purpose and that rosebed is not as beautiful as Floribunda rose bed, for example, where roses are planted densely together with Colius, multicoloured Verbena, Chives, Parsley, blue Salvia and white and purple Alyssum. - Tom

I so agree - Hybrid Teas need to be a bit disguised as they look too twiggy for my liking. I have a Grevillea which is about a metre high, in front of my Blue Moon climber and the Blue Moon towers over it with a tall wire fence behind it for support. The Grevillea is just airy and open enough (sort of ferny) to keep the air flowing through to Bluey. Janine

Gemma, you can get longer stems on your roses. I imagine that the reason you're getting short (and twiggy?) growth on your HTs, is that pruning in Winter, and trimming after each flush is too light. Difficult to help from a distance, but you may need to encourage vigorous growth, that's my guess. Be ruthless in completely cutting out "old" wood. Stand back and look at the plant. Find the non-productive wood, and cut it completely out at its base. The plant should regenerate strong new growth, and longer stems. Clearly you prefer fragrance to florist's roses.

Hi Gemma, I have a few bud vases and those small clusters look terrific in them.
Being so warm here every morning I cut off most of the just opening buds
And they last a few days inside, even less outside, so you can still enjoy them.
With the clusters I wait till at least half of the buds have opened before cutting.
Cheers..MM.

Dear Gemma,
There is another little thing you could try if you want your roses to only produce one or two flowers per stem.
Simply disbud. When your flower stem is produced, if it is going to produce a multiple flowering head , look at it, and then, nip off between finger and thumb, all the buds you don't want. All the plant's energy will then go into your remaining one or two blooms per stem. They should be bigger and more robust than if you had left it as a multi- head. Cheers, Happy Gardening, Rosalie.