Ann, at first I did not understand the significance of your question about excessive thorns. As you have stated in your e-book: "Hyper thorniness is not a dependable indication of RRD" I have a copy of the full Chinese paper. In it they state: "WRLRD differs from RRD in the following ways: first, the witches’ broom symptom consists of the proliferation of only small leaves along the canes, instead of both leaves and twigs at the ends of canes; second, the leaves are not distorted and twisted; third, the thorns are not red-tinged or produced in excess." Thus it appears that the Chinese closterovirus possibility (for the Damask rose infection) can be removed if the claim of excessive thorns in the damask rose is accurate. However, when I look at the picture that they (the damask investigators) provide, I do not see the clear indication of excessive thorns that I have seen in some rose rosette virus pictures. I suggest that we wait for the results of the definitive PCR test before concluding whether the middle East is or is not to be added to the known locations of rose rosette virus. I

Unfortunately, I can't give an update on the current conditions at Descanso. It just was too difficult & heartbreaking to continue to go there. The last time I visited the rose garden was June 2016 with Anita Clevenger. She bore witness to the sad destruction of what once was a prominent & unique Southern California destination rose garden. It was obvious that it could only be included in the pre-conference tour for the upcoming October, 2016 HRF Conference, 'No Rose Is Safe: Preserving Roses in a Challenging World', as an example of the worst that can happen to roses in a public garden. At the time of our visit, the greatly diminished collection of Alister Clark roses was struggling under the shade of the overgrown trees above them. Lammerts roses were also struggling amongst Knock Outs. There were only a couple of Dot roses left. The Polyantha beds were still there and they hadn't yet tackled the tangled mess the Centifolia beds had become. The torn up Gallica beds still had not been planted & the plowed up roses were sprouting up again from the remaining roots. Some of the newly planted roses had black spot and were virused. For Star Roses & Weeks to have donated virused roses is inexcusable. But that was two years ago & I have no idea what has happened to the garden since. Seeing as they got off to such a bad start with people who really know little about roses, I can't imagine it's gotten better. They truly have no concept of what they destroyed. Molly Malinick has the title of Rose Garden Horticulturalist there, was fresh out of school, very young but enthusiastic. To her credit she attended the conference. I hope she learned something.

Chilipete - both of those roses are typically hardy and healthy and shouldn't need much fussing. Veilchenblau mostly blooms in the spring with lovely purple blooms and it gets BIG. My picture below is when it was only two years old and it's nearly double that size while I'm waiting for it to bloom this year. Give it space, particularly in zone 7 - she's probably about 6-8' wide already here. Beverly is also healthy and gets tall, but not as wide. In my zone 5, she tops out at about 5' so far. As she starts to bush out more coming into her third year, I think she'll bloom more frequently. This one has more traditional cutting type flowers that people expect from roses, and it's supposed to have some scent. Anything on the east coast is liable to get some blackspot, but this rose is more resistant to it than most HTs. What's notable about her blooms for me is how BIG they are individually, as you can see with my hand next to this one. Good choices for roses and I expect they'll do well for you without too much fussing. They'll probably appreciate a little cleaning up pruning in the spring and maybe some shaping in the growing season, but they should be roses you don't have to pamper particularly in your yard. Cynthia

At least when I use cardboard for mulch or to create a new bed, I’m usually using a motley collection of boxes of different sizes and shapes - Amazon boxes, shoe boxes, dividers from wine cartons, boxes plants shipped in, etc. These boxes all have different kinds of flaps and vents, and so it’s pretty much impossible to make a complete and solid cover - there are always going to be little cracks where the cardboard doesn’t quite match up that are not covered. Not to mention, most of my beds are curved, and most boxes are square, and so it’s impossible to get them completely under cardboard. And of course, if I’m mulching an existing bed, and trying to fit the cardboard around a plant, I’m certainly not going to get complete coverage. Plus if I’m covering existing weeds or grass, there’s bumps where the cardboard kind of sticks up from the underlying grass or weed, so it does not lie flat against the soil. So it seems to me that all these little cracks and etc. leave plenty of room for air, water, gases, etc to go in and out. It’s really not, in my experience, like you’re talking about an impermeable surface. (Of course, weeds get up through these little cracks, but nothing’s perfect.) If in order to experiment, they used a perfectly flat surface covered perfectly in cardboard, well, that’s just not the reality of the way it actually works, in my experience. (Tbh, it wasn’t clear to me that this was citing a specific experiment with cardboard, though I did not read all the previous posts she referenced, so maybe it was). Of course it would be ideal to just use beautiful fresh organic wood chips (and have everything perfectly weeded before applying them) but wood chips are heavy and if you have a big area to mulch its a vast amount of hard work to apply it. I don’t have a budget to hire help, so other than the mowing, which DH does, it's just me, and the time I can spend in the garden is limited by my work. So I have to do the best I can, and for me cardboard (topped by straw to cover the less-than-great look of the cardboard) works, and I’ve seen no evidence of any harm. My garden has tons of earthworms and other creatures, all over, including in the soil. And my plants seem to do pretty well. Plus, here in wet NJ, it really does break down pretty fast; maybe in drier climates it would be somewhat different.