Thanks, Ingrid. Good info for folks gardening in desert conditions. It amazes me how you hang in there and keep a lovely garden, despite the conditions!

Jackie

Not as lovely as I'd like, Jackie, but I keep working at it. It would be nice to hear from others in a similar situation and which roses are doing best for them.

Cloudette Soupert is thriving in summer heat. She balled in spring and got hit with thrips. As soon as the dry heat set in, its been a show stopper.

Old blush is carefree in full sun

Perle dor is doing great

Marie pavi is taking a break

Champleys is being out competed by my oak tree but it has my favourite scent. I hope it makes it to cooler weather so i can move it to the vegetable garden.

Thank you, Ingrid for this review! I wish I could share some information too, but I have babies only and more babies to come in October. And since I'm new to roses I can't say if it's their true performance or it's my inexperienced gardening in this extreme conditions. I know how you feel... we moved in this house a year ago and I want to bring life and color into that kingdom of rocks and concrete.

Jackie, I love your garden, it is my dream that will never come true here in Phoenix... but I will work on getting a tiny bit closer :)

Natasha, I wish you great luck in your new endeavor. It's so exciting to begin a new garden. Every situation is different and the only way you'll really know is to grow the roses yourself. Even the teas, chinas, bourbons, noisettes and Austins are not all created equal and some tolerate heat better than others.

Ingrid, if you decide to get rid of any of your Wild Edrics please let me know as I love this rose. I have found it does not like fertilizer AT ALL. This year, with all the promised El Nino rains coming, and a pinched nerve in my neck from an auto accident, I decided to give my roses some timed release fertilizer (Osmocote). As I wanted to avoid the toting around the garden of 2 gallons container of very weak fish emulsion that some of my roses got around twice a year. Bad mistake the fertilizer. Multiple roses died, well-established ones too, even with extra water. They probably needed a huge increase in water but didn't get it due to the drought and watering restrictions. Still, they got a lot more than in previous drought years (less rain too than this one!). I had some leeway as my water usage has been low, but the sudden great increase in need the fertilized roses required caught me off guard. Too late for some roses. Wild Edric died back but survived and is again about to bloom. He was doing great on no fertilizer at all in very depleted soil. Rugosas are known to like poor soil....but I thought I was being nice to my roses this year. Killed them with kindness when they were doing well before, on very low water and little to no supplemental food (depending on the rose). Are we talking lots of Osmocote? No, not much sprinkled around them.

One of my best roses consistently in the drought has been the hybrid musk Omi Oswald. It is getting huge this year and has bloomed repeatedly (and thankfully in a location that got barely any Osmocote).

R. californica 'First Dawn' is showing surprising drought tolerance now when mature. However, it is in partial shade. Climbing (to around 12 feet) with support. Blooms will fry in 100+ degree weather but it will still bloom in the heat (pretty much year round with some flowers, heavy bloomer in spring). Blooms much less when fertilized. Very noticeably less. A great rose though for me and extremely fragrant (a super garden wafter). Generally produces hundreds upon hundreds of flowers, with almost every one turning into a tiny hip for birds to enjoy. They are the second best tasting hips from any rose in my garden (behind only the dog rose). Quite the garden thug, spreads everywhere (but I love it, so fine with me).

R. canina 'Laxa'. Very drought tolerant once-bloomer. Extremely prolific bloomer and setter of tasty hips, except this year when fertilized. Didn't die back or stop blooming, just was more like an average blooming rose. Very tough rose. Likes my lean, fast draining, sandy/rocky soil with some loam.

R. xanthina. Took quite a long time for it to recover from its severe pruning (both above and below ground) and move from Eurodesert in 115 degree heat (back in 2011???). Now getting quite big. Tolerates drought well, but not fertilizer. Bloomed less than usual this year.

R. primula. Died back severely after being fertilized this year. I have multiple seedlings in pots this year, they were fertilized but also given copious amounts of water that mom didn't get. Mother plant bloomed much less this year than in previous years.

R. borissovae. From Eurodesert (moved in 115 degree heat!). Superb species. Small and prickly it blooms year round. Quite drought tolerant. Sulks, and dies back, when fertilized and produces fewer flowers less often. One of my favorite roses. Produces some bizarre flowers. Beautiful big, pink single flowers usually, but sporadically produces in the middle of canes, these ultra tiny white flowers, with the normal pink ones both above and below on the same cane. It looks like, I don't know, maybe male and female flowers on the same plant??? I hope to plant some of its seeds this fall. Can't wait to see what they will be like--or if they will even germinate.

Madame Georges Bruant. The worst rugosa I've ever had. Has been sickly since I got it, struggling along (perpetually mildewy leaves), but I've let it stay because it is a rarity, and I wanted to see if it would grow out of the uglies. This year, with fertilizer is the first year it has had healthy leaves and repeat-flowered. From 1887, with one parent R. rugosa and the other the real Mlle de Sombreuil (before it had a chance to get mixed up in commerce).

Julia Mannering. An eglantine with nicely fragrant foliage and good rebloom. Very drought tolerant. Semi-double flowers loved by bees. Didn't care one way or the other being fertilized. No die back, no change in flowering. I plan to try and raise some seedlings.

Felicite Parmentier. An alba and has been one of my favorites for years. Her perfume is probably the best of all my roses (could find her in the dark with my eyes closed). Blooms are packed with petals of a most lovely shade of pale pink. Very drought tolerant and shade tolerant. Usually blooms like a crazy mad thing. This year, with fertilizer? One flower. ONE! I'm not happy about this.

Jenny Duval. Wonderful gallica (but garden thug, she will takeover the place if not blocked). Very drought tolerant. Fertilizer didn't make a noticeable difference. Tough as old army boots! Beautiful, fragrant flowers with plenty of petals.

Mrs. Doreen Pike. Austin rugosa. Had an awkward, lopsided growth habit at first. Blooms prolifically without fertilizer. Much less with.

Polareis, was, yes WAS, a beautiful, prolific rugosa in partial shade. Less drought tolerant than the usual rugosa. Stopped blooming when fertilized. Died back completely. Dead.

Snowdon. Gorgeous, dark green-leaved Austin rugosa with glorious snowy-white double flowers. Climbing into my grapefruit tree. Gets bigger and more beautiful every year. Very drought tolerant. Bloomed maybe a little more with Osmocote. No die back.

Tessiess, thank you for posting this helpful information. I am relatively new to gardening in heat like 100F and I found this very interesting. I have a few Rugosas doing better than I had hoped for in this heat, but it sounds like Polareis might not work here where I don't have much shade. The fertilizer tips are a great help. So sorry you had to go through all this.

Tessless,

I have to assume you're doing something very wrong with your fertilization practices.. No plant should react badly to appropriate (for the plant, the season and the conditions) fertilization. It is similar to saying that a human reacts badly to food without specifying eating practices and lifestyle.. Either this or you're attributing to fertilization what might have been caused by other factors (weather, water, soil depletion / UNDERfertilization, pests). If what you're saying about just a bit of slow release sprinkled around is accurate, I suspect the latter might be true.

Tessie, I'm also confused about your roses dying from that small an amount of fertilizer and with the extra watering you gave. I haven't fertilized my roses in quite a while and since I do water I imagine they would like it. I don't fertilize Wild Edric, but I've found that the one in better soil with better water retention does best of all and blooms much more. Go figure, since your experience is different. I think what's really missing and is the most important factor in growing good roses or good anything is rain. I can't speak for your wild or old European roses since I lack experience, but what's growing in my garden is just a pale imitation compared to the past, when it was cooler and there was dependable rain. I confess that I no longer love roses as I used to because so much of their beauty is no longer there. Growing them should be a joyful pasttime, not a heartbreaking exercise in futility. I wonder whether some of your roses might not also have died because of the combination of greater heat and less water. As time goes on I'll find what can best withstand the harsher conditions we face now, and I firmly believe there will be some that, given the best locations, can still survive and give much pleasure.

My hot Summer temperature reality: I do not expect blooms during the height of Summer ( all of July - approximately the first two weeks of August). I look for and expect roses to remain healthy/survive this time period... that is it. There are a handful of roses that put out blooms during this time period. These blooms are usually smaller, differing in color, or petal count. My attitude is so be it. My roses bloom almost year round, so those 6 weeks of no blooms, or differing looking blooms... not a big deal to me. If blooms on arose were so hideous during the Summer, I would remedy it by deadheading. By the time it goes through a new cycle, chances are, high temperatures would be approaching, or near the Summer decline.

I count on heat loving flowering plants, shrubs, flowering trees and annuals etc. to provide color during my weeks of Hades.

Specific roses:

Carding Mill - own root - about 3 years old - 4' - average growth

Baronne Henriette de Snoy - Just sat there until it became hot, and then it took off

Mme. Antoine Mari - has surpassed Maman Cochet both in health and vigor... although I do not expect this to last

Maggie and Mme. Lombard - I will be receiving both in October

SDLM - very healthy... very pretty but smaller blooms

Love Song - last year- July - 111 F

Blush Noisette - fragrant, very heat tolerant.. healthy. 108 F. It is very remontant.

SDLM - temperature was in the mid 90's

Roses I am having issues with: Marchesa Boccella (needs to go in the ground or it cannot cope with my climate), Belinda's Dream - ( burnt leaves) but I will keep it to see if there is improvement when the trees that will ultimately provide filtered sun grow enough to possibly help. Baronne Prevost- ( right now it has sawfly damage, something that looks like rust, and black crud). I am really considering shovel pruning B.P. Natchitoches Noisette - has a handful of leaves ( shovel pruning and replacing with Maggie in October). Colette - ( needs to be planted or does not like my climate and will leave my garden)

Interesting that your Belinda's Dream also has burnt leaves. On mine part of the leaf will be completely dry and brown and part of it green. Very unsightly and occurs at all times of the year. I can see that Love Song was a good choice for me. I may have Blush Noisette in too much shade as I compare it to yours. Don't the blooms age very quickly in that much sun; mine do with not nearly as much. My Mme. Antoine Mari's leaves burn very quickly in the sun, but it's a young plant. Since your Carding Mill is also own-root I'll just have to be patient with my tiny bush, which fortunately does look healthy, although at almost two years it should be taller than around 12 inches. Patience!

Since you'll be ordering Madame Lambard I'm enclosing photos of mine with two blooms and some buds. This plant will be two years old in October and is an open bush of 3 x 3 which I think will be considerably larger by next year. Very healthy, no disease so far.

I may not buy any more roses but it's a pleasure to see many of the ones I have now still willing to go on and hopefully having a nice fall flush when the weather cools down. That's the beauty of gardening, always something to look forward to, even after you've thought that the garden would never amount to much again.

Your Madame Lombard looks great, Ingrid! I am really looking forward to receiving her. My Carding Mill was a 3 gallon own root when I purchased it from Pam/Angel Gardens. That could account for the differing growth. Belinda's Dream, being an Earthkind rose, has really shocked me with its burnt leaves. Maybe it needs a little humidity mixed with the heat in order to tolerate it. In the past, I used strategically planted trees to filter the sun, although nothing is mature enough at this point to help at all. Blush Noisette is so floriferous. It seems to take about 4-5 days for all of the blooms to open. I have not noticed the blooms aging quickly, but will try to pay closer attention next Summer.

Well, that would explain it, 3-gallon versus band-size Carding Mill. My little guy has a lot of catching up to do. You might have put your finger on the problem with Belinda's Dream - not enough humidity. That would make perfect sense. It does have gorgeous blooms, which don't decrease significantly in size, unless it's over 100 degrees, so I'm not sure what its ultimate fate will be.

'On mine part of the leaf will be completely dry and brown and part of it green'

If the brown part is at at the tip, this sounds a lot like salt accumulation due to excessive salts in the soil and/or irrigation water and lack of rain. Deeply flushing the root area every now and then may help.

The same is true in my garden, that this rose is the only one that has the dry area in this configuration. When it's very hot some roses will have leaves that are dry around the edges or all the way, but with this one it looks as though the leaf is cut in half straight across, half green, half dried. I've never seen this in another rose. Even the drip roses often get watered with the hose too. However, Nik, I think you're correct in that the problem is due to lack of rain water, which is the only thing that will really help, and it would have to be a lot of rain to penetrate deep down.

The salt "builds up", so a good flush is helpful.

Lynn, rain water does not have the salt irrigation water does. Watering with more irrigation water, whether ground water or softened tap water, will not "flush" like rain water would, is the problem I think.

My assumption is that she wants to deal with salt build up. If she has an "accumulation" of salts, something we deal with regularly here due to our water, flushing as Nik also suggested, is common protocol, even for those not growing roses. The water has salts, but it is not accumulated like what is present in the soil. The "flushing" process will dislodge/remove salt "build up". Phoenix averages about 9" or so in rainfall annually. Depending upon rain water to solve the issue will be futile....

I suspect boron toxicity with my roses. One of the plant scientists at my local botanic garden several years ago told me that the high boron in our city water caused serious problems with some of their plants. Osmocote has added boron. It is a prolonged release fertilizer, so my hunch is that the mix of which wells are being used by the water company has meant increased boron levels lately, added to the fertilizer with more boron. The symptoms of the plants (and not just the roses) does look like boron toxicity. Some of the roses are able to handle it better than others. But I think the addition of the fertilizer was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back. Osmocote is probably a very fine fertilizer in many places, just not here with this water. Roses were doing fine earlier in the year when we were getting rain (more than last year), but when the rains stopped and hose irrigation started, the trouble showed. Old established roses (decades old I'm talking), even some of them showed severe problems, including Climbing Crimson Glory that has been here for around 40+ (likely closer to 50) years. That plant has very shaded roots and is (or was) enormous. It has looked wonderful throughout the drought, barely needing much supplemental irrigation. But this year it is burned to a crisp, almost killed.

When boron in the water is too much, plant olive trees and grapevines.. Seriously though, boron toxicity is rare but does indeed occur mainly due to irrigation water (or less often due to too low soil pH) but you won't know for sure until you get your water and soil tested. You can also get leaf tissue tested if you want an accurate diagnosis.

The botanic garden did test the water. I think they are more up on this topic than I am ever likely to be. We use the same water, and I am within walking distance. I know not to use this fertilizer again in my conditions. Next year, it is back to diluted fish emulsion, or nothing, as usual. And we will see how the roses look.

Sorry, no place for olive trees (and I don't want the mess), and grapevines are out because I have dogs (grapes are toxic to dogs, depending on the dog as to how much). But I did plant alfalfa within the last several years to see how it would do (fields growing alfalfa frequently supplement with boron). The alfalfa grows well here with zero supplementation. The wild creatures eat it like crazy however.

If what you do lack is nitrogen (which is very probable) just add a N fertilizer (e.g. urea based). Much cheaper than Osmocote or fish emulsion.. Flushing and then adding N would also help with your suspected boron toxicity. With regards to boron, the delta between deficiency and toxicity is very small for many plants so it would be worth to perform a test of your conditions rather than assume toxicity to be the case.

Ingrid, Lynn, how would you describe the intensity of fragrance for these roses, I think I'm ready to choose the last one. But want to pick the most fragrant. And since you have dry climate it will be closer to what I would have in terms of fragrance for them. Here is the list:

Hermosa

Madam Lombard

Mlle sombreuil

Mlle Franziska Kruger

thank you!!

Natasha, I have a really hard time smelling tea roses except for a few, and have never grown Hermosa, so I can't be much help. Mlle. Franziska Kruger has the reputation of being a difficult rose for some people to grow, and I didn't have great success, but it was also not in the best spot. I have the other two teas in my garden right now and both are beautiful, with Mlle. Sombreuil holding up better in the heat with the flowers not decreasing in size, while Madame Lambard does have smaller flowers which fry more easily, but it is a younger rose than Mlle. de Sombreuil. I hope Lynn will be better able to help you in regard to fragrance.

Thank you, Ingrid. Good to see you grew to love Mlle. Sombreuil. I just read the thread several years old where you've been sharing your feelings about it being ordinary (if I put the right words) rose. And it was kind of spindly at the very beginning...

You're right, Natasha, in the beginning I wasn't so impressed, but as is the habit of tea roses they get better every year, not only in growth but in the quality and size of their blooms. Have you made a decision about which rose to acquire?

My sense of smell is far from acute. Because of this, I look for highly fragrant roses so I can smell something!!! I currently grow all of the roses on your list except for Madame Lombard, which will be sent to me in a couple of weeks. Regarding the roses on your list, I have not noticed anything in terms of fragrance at this point, however, they are all short plants, so I may need to get on my knees to give the blooms a whiff the next time they are present.

Ebb Tide is not an antique, but I can pick up on its fragrance before I can even see it. ( afternoon shade is a must).

I can smell most fragrant roses except for most of the teas, with the exception of Duchesse de Brabant, Mme. Joseph Schwartz and a few others. My Ebb Tide was bought early on when I moved here and now I certainly would have placed it differently. I remember it as being very fragrant.

Thank you, ladies! I decided to go with Mlle de Sombreuil this time. It will be next to Maggie that is coming along with Mlle in the same order, hope they will look good together :) Others will stay on my wish list in case I made the wrong choice with any of existing ones or I would feel like digging another hole in this hard hard clay.... I just can't wait the temperatures to go lower... still around 100 as far as I can see...

I think Maggie and Mme. de Sombreuil will look great together color-wise. I find that white (or cream) to be great in a group of more colorful roses; it does break up the monotony. A glaring white might be a problem but the Mlle. is more creamy with sometimes pale pink touches so it blends in beautifully.

Sorry it's still so hot for you, but Phoenix does have that reputation. I've only been there once, years ago, and it was 112. We're in the eighties now and what a relief that is.