Liz I think you are going to be very happy with this rose. Although I only got it last year it has really put on a show. I can't imagine what it might do when mature!!!! Ingrid--thank you. Buford--I agree, fragrance would be so nice....but right now I can't get low enough to sniff her anyway. lol

I think you are right abot the diagnosis of ME. I demand more from a cultivar that is marketed as "Healthy" and then in my garden turn out to be susceptible to 4 fungal diseases ...all at once. In my book that is pretty bad performance... Sure if it had a fragrance to die for (Like Gertrude Jekyll) or was exceptional beautiful (like James Galway) as floriferous as John Clare (many hundreds flowers on each bush each bloom cycle) Then I would nurse the rose like a ICU patient!!! I look for roses with good disease resistance or tolerable disease resistance if sprayed (the way I grow it in my garden/climate). So my conclusion is that Sophys rose does not meet those criteria. What particularly worries me is the rust... cultivars that show stage 1 rust has to be remowed ( I grow nearly 600 rosebushes in my cutting garden) since I have seen rust spread like wildfire.... So yes I demand a lot from the cultivars I grow ... they better have good/tolerable disease resistance or they will get showelpruned like Sophys Rose got this morning. Euthanasia can be justified in a world with so many good roses :-)

I've ordered Sophy's Rose so your information is very useful, Michael. I love to cut roses for the house but so many of them don't last well. I'll gladly settle for two or three days in the vase, but with the old roses and Austins I grow I often don't even have that. I'm a little disappointed that this rose is a bright cherry red on the bush since I'd always assumed it to be lilac red. Well, it remains to be seen what color it will be in my climate and I'll hope for the best. The compact shape and fast rebloom are exactly what I was looking for. Ingrid

I grow both of these roses and have for three years. Both bloom almost constantly, much more than most of my other Austins. Neither have much fragrance. I prefer the blooms of Sophy's Rose to John Clare. I don't consider John Clare's semi-double blooms anything special but I definitely appreciate him in my garden during those times when nothing else is blooming. He got rather tall at the end of this season, shooting up to about 5 feet. Sophy's Rose has blooms that look more like dahlias to me. They are a darker, deeper pink with many petals. They do not look typical of other Austin Roses, to me, they look more modern. Still, I find them beautiful and appreciate their frequency. Neither of these two roses are anywhere near my favorites, however, I value both for their reliable, constant color and bloom. I do spray and find them both to be more disease resistant than other Austins. HOpe this helps, Shelley