Here's some more

1. Princess Alexandra of Kent

2. Chicago Peace

As you can see - I love pink. :)

Carol

Hi Carol, I love seeing your beautiful roses. Your very own Holly Bells is a true treasure. I hope that we will see more of it in the future. Most of the roses that you grow, I can only dream about here in Florida, our disease pressure are great. I am growing Belinda's Dream, it is wonderful here. I also grow the McCartney rose. I'm hoping that it will also be a good rose, my are still small ownroot roses but they have gorgeous flowers.

I always think of our winter being a problem (plus our cool summers with rain/hail nonstop) - but your disease pressure is worse. At least I can grow any rose I want here. And hopefully this summer will prove to be an anomaly.

I think you chose two really good roses. And The McCartney Rose is everything a rose should be. It's scent is fabulous.

Thanks for your kind words...especially about Holly Bells!!

Carol

Carol: thanks for those treats .. beautiful pinks and your Holy Bells has the ruffled petals that I like. PAK is lovely with so many petals ... almost got that but I chickened out after PAK died on a few cold zoners. Which one of the above has the best scent? Between the McCartney rose and Peter Mayle, which one do you like more? Thanks.

Your Neil Diamond looks great in cluster like that. The color is so cheerful.

Straw - awww...thanks!!! I'm hoping Holly Bells will be a really lovely rose bush. Oh, you should have gotten PAoK!!!

Okay, best fragrance from my pictured roses:

Best - The McCartney Rose

2nd - Buxom Beauty

3rd - Pink Peace.

Although the fragrances I love the most in my garden are:

- Strawberry Hill,

- The McCartney Rose

- Radox Bouquet

- Buxom Beauty

- Memorial Day

Between The McCartney Rose and Peter Mayle - it depends on what you want. PM is a huge bush here while TMR is an average sized bush. Peter Mayle's blooms are much bigger, but can be bothered more from prolonged rain that TMR. TMR has the better fragrance, but PM has a fine one too. I think I like The McCartney Rose the best of those two.

Neil Diamond better shape up next year! That's the first cluster. Before that there were about 3 blooms, and they didn't open.

Carol

Fubulous roses Carol. I did my weakly maintenance of pots (removing sucker on centifolia rootstock is a regular feature) and I have around 100 roses, big and small, in the pots. And when I logged in after the breakfast, it was such a treat to see your wonderful roses. And I agree with Valrose, your Holly Bells is a treasure. Please keep posting these lovely photos.

Valrose, whatever little I understand of your climate and soil, McCartney Rose should do very well. It is an outstanding performer in my garden and bloomed profusely even when the temperatures crossed 105*F.

best regards

Carol: Thank you for the info. on fragrance. I saw Buxom Beauty at Home Depot, so impressed with its HUGE fragrant bloom. I recently gave Neil Diamond some sulfate of potash, and it opens too fast: less petals. Will top that with my high magnesium clay to slow down the bloom from opening too fast.

Yes, aren't BB's blooms fabulous?!!!!!! I adore this rose!!! It's gone from being meh to fabulous!!! You didn't buy it????

Maybe I should give sulfate of potash to Brother Cadfael.

Carol

Ooh, beautiful pics. I love Valencia but don't think it would do well for me in zone 4, although I have been tempted to try...

Yeah, I'm not sure if it would do well in zone 4. I'm in zone 3 - but I overwinter my pots in the garage.

Here's another picture from last year to tempt you.

They sure look happy! !

:)

Carol

Thanks Khalid! I'll post more pictures if my roses have time to keep blooming before the cold snap cometh.

Love your The McCartney Rose!! Looks fabulous!! Wow, it really loves your heat!!! It seems to be a very versatile rose!! Glad things are going well for your roses after the move!!

Carol

I wish I had my pictures (lost when my computer died...Don saved them, but hasn't reloaded them yet) of Buxom Beauty....stunning pictures....each bloom is perfection...really large blooms that lasted a really long time!! It didn't bloom all that much for me...but I didn't care. :) :)

Do you have Soeur Emmanuelle? Tall, wonderfully scented.

Chandos Beauty is a world class rose IMHO.

...it gets to 4 feet tall (but not for me) ... more like 2 1/2

How about Stainless Steel? It's a tall grower...and one of my favorite roses. Frangrace is mmmmm!

Carol: I don't have Soeur Emmanuelle, too bad it's not available here.

LOVE the colors of your Chandos Beauty and Stainless Steel ... would love to have them as grafted-on-Dr.Huey (better winter-survival for hybrid teas). I finally narrow down to 4 OWN-ROOT roses that I will order from Roses Unlimited in May 2022 (many thanks to Brendan's giving a gift certificate): Buxom Beauty, Elle, Firefighter, and Summer Sun (Kordes Floribunda).

You won me over with your Buxom Beauty picture.

Firefighter died on me 3 times but it was my fault, so I'll redeem myself.

Elle is the best looking rose at Chicago Botanical Garden.

Summer Sun is what Pat Henry of Roses Unlimited recommended for constant blooming like Poseidon (I love this floribunda for the past many years as own-root). Summer sun won't have the top scent I want, but it will brighten up my garden with its bush beauty & always blooming.

Well, Palatine offers Soeur Emmanuelle...I know you're not fond of multiflora rootstock...but it may be worth it to get this tall, beautiful rose with amazing fragrance. :) :)

So you're going to try Firefighter again. :) :) I wish you luck with this gorgeous rose. :)

As to Buxom Beauty, I think you'll love it...though it's not a fast rebloomer...so many petals and such big blooms takes a lot of oomph! :) :) Summer Sun is a beauty!! You're right...such a fun and bright color.

Heirloom carries it under the name Sister Emmanuelle. It's not in stock at the moment but I've seen it in the past.

Soeur Emmanuelle always seems to grab us with its thorns....whenever a rose grabs us as we pass by...it's always SE. LOL I love this rose, though. :)

Carol: Thanks to your recommendation, I checked LongAgoRoses (own-root nursery) and they have Soeur Emmanuelle listed on their website. The rabbits go crazy during dry late fall/winter, they ate my VERY THORNY and tall Golden Fairy tale down to 1 foot .. even the thorny stems were eaten. I have lots of pruned branches down on the ground, but they won't eat the leaves on the ground, they like to eat up the bush.

@strawchicago z5 I am very sorry to hear that--they got at the very base of my Eden roses last winter so I'm hoping the thickness of the canes will deter them...but probably not.

Aaron: I posted in the other thread how rhubarb is poisonous to rabbits, same with Avocado. I eat lots of Avocado this year and threw the skin & pits in my compost, and 2 opossum died so far. They always eat from my compost pile for years with zero problems, until I start eating one avocado a day this year. This year a rabbit got sick from eating my compost and it moved very slow, so a hawk killed it.

No rabbit eating my roses for many years when I had a large rhubarb bush, then I killed that rhubarb bush and rabbits started eating my roses. Next spring I'll plant lots of rhubarb, then hang the rhubarb's leaves on rose bushes. Rabbits like to eat up from the plant, and they don't eat anything on the ground, even if it's rose canes with fresh leaves.

My sister on 1 acre garden in CT has many rhubarb bushes, and she has zero problems with rabbits.

Straw - I think Soeur Emmanuelle would be divine for you....and the fragrance is wonderful!! Those rotten rabbits are more than a nuisance. And they eat the canes too? Wow...they're nasty rabbits! Rhubarb sounds like the way to go!

I wish rhubarb was the answer here! I habe three and they haven’t deterred the rabbits in the slightest.

A couple years ago rabbits ate Cornelia down to two inches of cane (luckily she didn’t die) and a couple weeks ago they did the same to Fantin Latour and The Poet’s Wife. I really hope they survive.

Oursteelers - ouch!! That is frustrating and disheartening!!

My neighbor put small flags that flutter in the wind around his bell pepper plants .. work well in keeping rabbits away. Another neighbor bought those plastic wind-mills that move with slightest wind and that protect her roses.

Rabbits kept jumping on my 1 foot-tall raised bed, so I put lumpy stones around my raised bed and that stopped them from coming near. They don't like unstable and lumpy stones.

Interesting! Are you going to try that in spring? What about planting bamboo sticks (about 4 inches raised from the soil and 8 inches depth) all around the rosebush?

I hate to ge a negative nelly and think everybody should be open to trying different solutions in their yard but the rock placement doesn’t deter bunnies here.

Since I have two labs I like to put rocks around plants to help them protect from the damage their zoomies can cause. Plus it helps me to remember where the hosta and peonies are sleeping.

Carol: Fantastic idea of bamboo sticks !! THANK YOU. I love it .. will try on my roses. Bamboo sticks are cheap and works as a sparse fence around roses. Rabbits are determined, they flatten themselves into pancake to go under fence, so my neighbor tore up their old wooden fence, and put in TALL plastic fence which go under the soil.

In the event that rabbits "flatten into pancakes" to squeeze between the sticks ..I need to impale garlic bulbs onto the sticks .. or hang poisonous rhubarb leaves on the sticks.

Tina: My rocks are big (the size of grapefruits and oranges) that I dug from my dense clay, that's how I broke 2 shovels. Agree that nothing seems to work with rabbits, I even bury big buckets of water .. like setting a water-traps for them to drown, but rabbits are smarter .. they jump over the water-trap. Chipmunks and voles jump into my water trap (with seeds) and drown, but not rabbits.

Carol thank you for your lovely pictures on this thread, especially Carole Bouquet! I just saw this rose advertised this morning and was thinking I should look and see if anyone is growing it, and then clicked on your thread and there she is right at the top and looking even more gorgeous than the advertisement!

Straw - you're welcome!! :) :) :) I hope it works!! And if you cut them to different heights they'll look even stranger to the rabbits. You can paint the garlic to look like human skulls and you'll have your own Vlad the Impaler miniature village. :) :) Man, those bunnies are SMART!

Joey - thanks so much!!! :) :) I'm going to try to get that rose again from Palatine. :) :)

@rosecanadian I didn't know about Carole Bouquet, what a beautiful rose!

Carol: I love your sense of humor, you made me laugh with your clever ideas.

This is off-topic, but thanks to Carol's leniency, I'm embolden to post on any off-topics in her thread.

I'm tired of "severely constipated" roses that pump out wee-little blooms once in a blue moon ... such as wimpy OWN-ROOTS Jude the Obscure, Veteran's Honor, Neil's Diamond.

I also don't want diarrhetic roses that pump out a bunch of blooms at once, such as Belinda's Dream and Princess Anne (own-root), then a long pause between flushes.

I want roses that ALWAYS have blooms even if it's a few, such as Poseidon, Dark Lady, Gene Boerner, and Betty White (all own-roots). What are some roses that always have a few blooms? Thanks for the info.

For me Princess Charlene de Monaco always has blooms but something in my memory is tickling that you’re not a big fan?

My always-have-at-least-some-blooms are Queen Nefertiti (but I recall she didn't do well for you) Bright and Shiny, Iceberg and Lambert Closse. Sweet Mademoiselle is very short between flushes. Also Champlain is a non-stopper but has little to no fragrance.

Seaside - yes, isn't it!! :) :)

Straw - LOL :) :) :)

Carol...you had both me and my husband laughing!!! I usually bury the garlic at the roots to deter vole, but if I can get boys to paint, we could have quite the scene!

Strawchigaco...Golden Celebration blooms with one flower all along for me, but I think you have it already. If you are just going for color, Ballerina is non-stop at the Homedepot in the bad part of town.

joeywyomingz4b...I am thinking of QN, nice to know it is a constant bloomer for you.

Ann: Princess Charlene de Monaco loves my dense alkaline clay (now at 10 feet tall on Dec. 9), but Queen Nefertiti is wimpy in my dense clay (1.5 foot tall after 2 years) .. I suspect it prefers fluffier soil and full sun, which I don't have .. also it blackspots during tons of acidic rain, so it needs fast drainage.

Gravels around plants deter voles .. voles don't like to dig through sharp gravels. From the web: "Voles love to feed on bulbs, especially ones planted more shallow in the soil. You can add pea gravel around the bulb to discourage the voles from eating the bulbs. If that doesn’t work, mesh fencing or chicken wire buried below and above the ground at 4 to 6″ can work wonders in keeping voles out of beds and gardens."

From Permies.com: "Michael Phillips (The New Organic Grower, groworganicapples.com) recommends a couple feet diameter circle of gravel around each tree. The voles don't seem to want to burrow through it to reach the trunks."

Below is Queen Nefertiti as 2nd-year own-root in my dense clay, 4 hrs. of sun:

Ann - LOL Thanks for letting me know...made me happy to hear that you and your husband laughed at my Vlad idea. :) :)

Straw - is that gorgeous yellow at the top right your Tchaikovsky?

Carol: the yellow is Golden Fairy Tale. It's more prickly than Moonlight Romantica. Moonlight Romantica is a prettier bush than prickly Golden Fairy Tale .. like a porcupine, but rabbits still eat that. Below shows the pretty leaves of Moonlight Romantica, it's a rain-hog .. doesn't bloom unless with tons of rain, but it's always healthy, zero blackspots.

Golden Fairy Tale! I just googled it...such a beautiful rose!! What do you think of your Moonlight Romantica's fragrance? It's another beauty!! I'm getting that one this year...you said I should replace it with something else...but I haven't tried to do that yet. I do like big roses in pots...my Peter's Mayle was a favorite until it died in the GGDO.

Moonlight Romantica's scent is strong and better than most yellows. I would rank it a 9 versus -5 for About Face (rotten mango/papaya scent). For yellow in pot, I like Well-being the most .. lots of blooms and best scent ever.

Moonlight Romantica is stingy in its 1st year as own-root .... it has climber genetics (Graham Thomas) and will be more generous in 2nd year. Sweet Mademoiselle also has Graham Thomas as its parent and was very stingy in 1st year .. one bloom per flush. Then in 2nd year, Sweet M. exploded to 40+ blooms in late fall, in only 4 hrs. of sun. Own-root climber takes a while to establish its roots before pumping blooms. Sweet M. is about 1 foot taller than Peter Mayle (left bush in below pic.):

@strawchicago z5 those pictures are GORGEOUS--I was really skeptical about Sweet Mademoiselle, but saw it in a garden center with my mom and encouraged her to buy it--they have some of the loveliest, most massive, cabbagey blooms I've ever seen. I was even a touch jealous :) Thank you for sharing those lovely photos!

Straw - LOL rotten mango...mmmm...gotta get me one of those roses!! I've never seen a Well Being for sale anywhere. Sounds like one I should keep an eye open for. Wow!!!! Your SM has such a deep coloring!! Love!! It's petal formation makes me think of Augusta Luise. Great job!