I've given up on Austins, beautiful as I think them, but they didn't get a fair trial with me as I hadn't yet learned to dig good enough holes. The only survivor in my garden, and I do like it, is 'Sharifa Asma'. But conditions are so variable. I wouldn't actually call our climate hot, in spite of our undoubted summer heat and mild winter lows, and our soil is very heavy indeed. So my experiences are no rule for you.

I'm in Australia too, in Sydney right on the coast (zone 10b). Additionally I have a lot of Austins in my front garden, which has a lot of reflected heat. My favourite is Prospero, it is evergreen for me (most of them are) and flowers 11mths a year. Others that have been very good for me are Jubilee Celebration, Glamis Castle, Wife of Bath, Potter and Moore, Alnwick Castle, Claire Rose, the Prince, Cymbeline (not as many blooms but so lovely) and Grace (blooms fry but quick to repeat). I try not to buy any Austin that's "tall", although somehow I still have Jude the Obscure, Abraham Darby and Evelyn. I expected the Austins not to work for me but they have surprised me and do as well as anything else. I do water and feed them but don't spray (except for a recent spider mite plague). All of the above stay pretty clean, although I do have other Austins that don't.

I have most of those grown by brightstar and endorse her opinion. I would also add Wildeve, Queen Nefertiti, Pretty Jessica and Christopher Marlowe.

My favorite DA is Scepter'd Isle which puts out many blooms in my hot summer climate in California. The scent is fabulous and being one of the DAs with not as many petals the flowers are held high and don't flop over. They seem to bloom in pairs. (photo below)

None of my bushes are very large yet but they seen to do well in my shady woods, even when the temps are very high. Most get 4 hours of sun.

Gertrude Jeckyll does well with only morning sun it does tend to reach for the skies but holds the blooms high on strong canes. I do like that it also has lower blooms and the scent is very good. One that wafts over the area. (photo below),

The Alnwick Rose does well also, in a very shady location, only a few hours a day of hot sun (photo below)

I do love my DAs but since the fragrance has a certain tang which is characteristic, I only want a few in the garden interspersed with the older garden roses. They are very healthy for the most part.

I am in Las Vegas, the 2nd hottest major city in North America. My summer temperatures are really similar to mustbnuts, however, it is not unheard of to have temperatures 3 degrees above 46C here and there during the month of July, and we average about 90 days in the 40-46C range annually ( summers). It is hot and arid with very little rainfall; the desert.

My home is built on land that was previously a farm for decades. Our new home was completed about six months ago, and I am still learning about the soil. I have definitely found areas where the animals may have frequented. Professional soil testing is on my agenda.

I grow Austin's, but in a location where they receive morning sun and then total shade after 2 p.m. This is a prime location. I have been growing Austin's for about 13 years. The following are my experiences:

Top performers:

Munstead Wood

Mary Rose

Golden Celebration

Pretty Jessica

Glamis Castle ( I no longer grow... many abhor the odor)

Huntington Rose ( performing well thusfar but still too soon to tell)

Okay performers:

The Prince

Crown Princess Margareta

Lynn

My climate is much more humid but just about as hot, and recently quite droughty. Austins do not do well here. They bloom well but lose all their foliage every summer. Teasing Georgia is a tangle of awkward sticks with some lovely blooms on top. Abraham Darby is more satisfactory - blooms nearly all year and has a Yaupon shrub growing up through its doubtless bare canes providing a semblance of healthy foliage.

I'm curious about the same issue. In searching for an answer I found this helpful article: http://www.pacifichorticulture.org/articles/david-austins-english-roses-for-the-west-coast/

Based on that, I thought Ambridge might work in my yard, which is quite small. I wanted to try Jude the Obscure, but according to the article it gets huge on the West Coast.

My Teasing Georgia is also a tangled monster but I love the blooms when they come and the deer nibble off the parts of Georgia that want to poke through the deer cage, I guess it is really a rose cage. I call my roses 'My caged beauties' as I talk to them.

I'm in Adelaide,SA, so hot and dry is us for at least six months every year!

My favourite Austin is Sophy's rose, she just blooms and blooms and has stayed quite small and reasonable in her space. I didn't even prune her this winter, and she looks amazing.

Munstead Wood is great too, but in a prime position with some dappled shade and regular water.

Strawberry Hill is coming into its own now.

Jude the Obscure and Graham Thomas are just coming into their first flush now. They do send out long arms, but I've pinned them down (actually, tucked them back down into the bush) and I've been rewarded for it :)

Shot is from bedroom window looking out . That is probably my most exposed shot in the garden, no shade at all. Excuse the bins! The Austins are the same size as the Iceburgs at this time.

I've planted a lot of other Austins, mostly aiming for ones under a meter tall (in theory) but they haven't been in the ground long enough (1-2 years) for me to make any judgement.

I can say that Summer Song struggled terribly in the summer Heat (I hadn't in a pot) but I've moved it to a much more sheltered position and it's doing a lot better.

St Cecelia hated being exposed too and I dug her up and she's getting a second chance in a pot.

Here is a pic of my Strawberry Hill I took for you this morning.

I Only have Prospero in a pot, but can confirm it performs wonderfully and is evergreen here. The flowers do look like catnations and have a very strange raspberry candy scent.

I can't speak highly enough of Radio Times in a hot climate. This us one I saw in a nursery up in Lansdale growing in typical Perth sand. All Austins are sold on Fortuniana in Westerner Australia. It has to make a big difference.

My two Austin bloom machines are St. Swithun and Wedgwood rose. They also grow really fast, after three years they are 2 metres bushes (Wedgwood rose needs support). Lady Emma Hamilton, Lady of Shallot, Gentle Hermione are doing really well.I do not recommend Munstead wood, its lovely blooms get fried in full sun.

Sharifa Asma looks very lovely in the picture above. It would be tempting to try this rose some day. Since our four-year drought none of my roses, Austins or not, have done terribly well, although before then Bishop's Castle, Sophy's Rose and Potter and Moore had done very well for me. Carding Mill is also very good in the heat and keeps on blooming. I'm trying Charles Rennie McIntosh but it's young and small, and hopefully I'll have something to report by next year.

Thanks, everybody! I think one problem is that, being a sucker for climbing roses, I've tended to get the Austins which are described as "can be grown as a climber in warm climates"; i.e, that grow tall .So now, can ya'll go one further: how do you prune your Austins? Desertgarden, I see you have Huntington rose: I have that, too; one of the better ones. But it has begun putting out some long "climber"-type canes. I'd so love to grow it as a climber, but does that mean I'll have to sacrifice bloom?

Ingrid, if you get Sharifa, give her some afternoon shade and expect her to have great spring and fall flushes with sparse bloom in between. That said, I miss her and loved that rose. She had to go this year in the great replant due to birds dropping whatever to make new plants inside my rose bushes and others reverting back to root stock. Unbelievable beauty and great scent.

Bart if you want a prolific bloomer, try Princess Alexandra of Kent. She gets huge and I think she wants to be a climber. She is gorgeous and always in bloom. She takes the heat and still keeps on producing. Big beautiful blooms in spring and fall and smaller blooms when it is over 105 degrees every day for months on end.

I also grew an older Austin, Peach Blossom as a climber. Peach was my first and my last rose to bloom. Very pretty. I grew her as a "normal" climber, trying to angle her canes to at least 45 degrees if not straight horizontally. She grew about 8 feet or more up my huge arbor, which meant her canes were much longer than that. Austin I think states she grows to be about 4--5 feet as a climber. Not in my climate! She was a charmer, btw. I very much enjoyed her.

Once again, I have to cast my vote for Tamora. I have three of them in my front yard, growing in full hot sun until late afternoon. They grow (but not too much), they bloom all the time, and the fragrance is heavenly, at least to my nose. I'm in the northern part of Los Angeles, zone 10a/20.

Glamis Castle in winter, before I couldn't wait any longer to prune

Darcey Bussell

Sharifa Asma

Lady of Shalott

Mary Rose

Others that aren't Austins that I have to mention - Pomponella and Pierre de Ronsard

Thanks, all.OK, I'll see what my present Austins do this year now that I've added cracked corn to the rose diet,plus mulch. If I can see improvement, I may try PAK...

Bart, the 'oldest' of my roses were planted in May 2012, and the second rose I planted that month was DA's 'St. Swithun' (bought as a climber). It has been an amazingly prolific rose. It's the first to start flowering (in April here) and I cut a few blooms from it just this morning. In my garden it is never without blooms between April and November. Its growth, however, is rampant - it is planted against a south facing stone wall so gets the full brunt of the sun - the flowers don't fade or crisp, either. The spring flush is quite breath taking and I love its strong myrrh perfume (I know a lot of people apparently don't like the perfume). Oh, the foliage is healthy too and it lasts well as a cut flower! I should also mention that it's covered in prickles. Here are a couple of shots of my St. Swithun -

On 11 May 2015 -

In August 2015 -

I may have mentioned elsewhere, but the stone wall is 4 metres high and I only prune once a year at the end of Winter - I really should prune it hard in Summer but it's generally either too hot or I don't want to drag out the big ladder and risk life and limb!

It may be a stupid idea,but I keep on wondering if, so some reason,some roses- Austins among them- do best as climbers ON A WALL??? Might there be any reason for such a thing?

No, I think it depends on the wall. Some DAs will fry on a hot wall. An east wall might be better. All of my DAs love morning sun and Othello did very well winding around in a pomegranate tree. If you want something charming that takes heat, try Kordes' Lion's rose. It takes a while to get going but then flowers continuously and the pale blooms have withstood windy 90-100 F temps here and still hung onto petals without crisping up. I like Abe Darby, Evelyn, Sharifa Asma, Sceptr'd Isle, Charlotte, Jude for the fragrance- not the repeat. Heirloom is a heavenly scent and will rebloom but you need to give it enough water or it won't. There are many that look great in spring and then turn into fishing poles with flowery toppers here. Some of them you can bend down and get more out of but it's work. The Huntington in San Marino keeps chopping theirs down and getting rebloom so I think letting them grow sky high is not going to get you anything ....at least it didn't when I tried it.

I guess I better just arm myself with will power and try the chopping down technique,probably on The Ingenious Mr. F,and maybe on Alan Titschmarsh. For James G, I'm still going to persist on trying as a climber; ditto Gertrude J. This latter in particular has a decidedly climbing habit. All of them are going to get organics NOW,so the goodies will hopefully be broken down and available to the plants once spring arrives."Fishing poles with flowery toppers"...excellent description! But I'll be content if I can get them to look great in the spring.

Good luck with it, Bart. For me, when we chopped them down, they just hunkered down and grew back to what they wanted to be, and bloomed up there at the top.

But for us, there's a worse problem. They are very, very THIRSTY roses.

We still have our Golden Celebration hedge because my husband hauls bucketfuls of dishwater up there, to keep them happy. And it probably helps a lot that they get no afternoon sun -- so they have not been heat-stressed.

I would never give up Prospero. That stays, and gets extra water.

But other than those two, I simply cannot afford to grow Austins in a historic drought.

I tried both GC and Teasing Georgia up a hot wall. An absolute failure. It's not only that they didn't bloom. The bud eyes and new growth were frying too. Kitty is right, they need their noon to afternoon shade. I have since moved GC and I will be moving TG this winter. My cl. Lady Hillingdon thrives on that same wall although it too shuts down during high summer. Gloire de Dijon too.

PS But to be honest, I think that a hot West or South facing wall in the Med may be more suited to climbers other than roses. For example jasmins, bougainvilleas, plumbagos and the bignonia family.

Very helpful information all. That is too bad Nik about these needing a move on top of all the new planting. It's overwhelming. I'm glad the older climbers can take heat.

You might consider Leander. It grows into a huge shrub/climber. I have one in the front garden that is watered deeply every 10 days, and one on the back fence that is watered deeply once every three weeks. We average 15 inches of rain a year here, all in the winter half of the year. Malvern Hills did very well under the same situation, but bleached to white and I took it out when I reduced my garden due to drought.

Other Austins that do well for me include Munstead Wood (a favorite), Sharifa Asthma (removed in the downsizing purge), Gertrude Jekyll, and several of the yellows, I forget which ones. These are all on the every 10 day schedule.

No Austin I have ever tried has been a real real success. Some have been pretty good, some adequate, some not so much, some utter failures. In general they don't seem to like my climate and they have never been as floriferous as I've seen them elsewhere.

In the first category I place Boscobel, Darcey Bussel, WS2000 (though it can sometimes mildew badly), Jubilee Celebration (slightly chlorotic), Abraham Darby and Scepter'd Isle although these too are not without probems; they tend to dislike my alkaline soil and some can suffer from mild cases of mildew (pun not intented).

In the last category I will place the Shropshire Lad which I have had for 3 years having only seen literally only a couple of blooms, the Prince which is a wimpy frying mildewy plant with never more than 2 blooms at a time and Glamis Castle which I would have liked if it where not such a mildew magnet and its blooms lasted for more than a couple of hours. It can be nice during its two main flushes if one is prepared to spray it regularly. Shropshire Lad is going to the compost since I have no use for a big, thorny and bloomless chlorotic plant, the other two are staying for another year since they don't occupy too much space, until I decide with what I will replace them.

Thanks for reviving this thread, Sheila. Looking back I'm sorry to say that I never did the "chopping back" experiment; I still hope eventually to try that.

I barely have any Austins left, just Charles Darwin, Potter and Moore and Bishop's Castle. The latter two stand up quite well to the heat and I keep them small by cutting back quite a bit when I deadhead, and neither seems bothered by that. Charles is showing some signs of blackspotting right now and does not do very well in the heat, and I mostly acquired it for its soft yellow color that blends well with my pinks and whites. It's a young rose and I'll give it a few years to get established before I make a final judgment. With global warming and drought, heat resistance is now the primary requisite for another Austin to find its way into my garden. I frankly prefer the charm and individuality of the old roses in most instances, and the Austins are beginning to look more and more alike to me.

So far, Darcey Bussell has been my best DA performer. She’s not a favorite, only because I prefer softer colors. She remains “fairly” compact, relative to most DA’s here. She never seems to mind pruning, no matter when or how often. She blooms all the time and makes a better cut flower than most DA’s. I don’t get any disease on her here, although Embothrium has big problems with something like downey mildew on Darcey Bussell. I don’t think that’s in a dry Mediterranean climate, though. Mine is always healthy and happy. She’s in a rather small bed, so she’s cut back often. She doesn’t receive more water than anything else does, and doesn’t seem to need it. My soil is clay, so it does retain water well and is full of nutrients.

Abraham Darby on the other hand, DOES want extra water here. I have never experienced rust(other than on hollyhocks), until recently. I’d been very busy over the past month or so, and must have slacked off on watering, just a little. Nobody minded except for AD. This, combined with the wind and 3-5% humidity produced a spectacular case of rust on Abraham Darby. Even though I’ve never seen rust on my roses before, it’s so bad that there’s no mistaking what it is. I’m not even sure what to do about it. I’m giving him lots of extra water, and thinking of pruning him down to almost the ground. I’m worried about spreading the rust, even while pruning. Last night, I went out late to move the hose with my headlamp on. I removed a spent bloom from AD, and in the light beam I could see tiny dust like particles floating off. I can only assume they were rust particles. I fear that while pruning the rust will blow everywhere. So AD definitely wants extra water. He’s brought me my first case of rust on a rose bush. And oh yes, of course, he grows huge in our kind of climate. Lisa