They may prefer semi-arid climates as a talk on roses history I attended told that 80% of the species rose come from Asia & this area is either semi-arid, desert or higher elevation.

My experience is the same as yours. Roses, at least modern ones, much preferred Ohio to eastern New York. From pictures and other feedback, they do even better the further west you go.

I wonder if it's a combination of temps. and humidity. Portland OR had/has gorgeous HTs in its rainy climate. Summer temperatures back then rarely exceeded 80 F.

While we have the lack of humidity, our temperatures aren't comparable to Portlands, ours would be closer to rarely getting below 80 in the summer :) Thats a bit of an exageration, but not too much.

And I saw the rose garden there a year ago and even in mid october it is gorgeous.

Portland may have a lot of total rainfall, but it is still pretty warm and fairly dry for half of the year, from May to the middle of October.

If you think about where Tea roses originated from, and the climate of their natural environment, you can see why roses often have problems in many parts of the U.S. The Sichuan region of China where they come from is borderline subtropical, moderately high altitude, fairly low humidity but with adequate summer rain.

By the way, if you were ever wondering why they are called "tea" roses, it is probably because the fragrance smelled like bergamot, and English tea was commonly flavored with bergamot. And possibly also because tea was by far the most popular import into England from China at the time.

The old Alba roses, that predate the introduction of Tea lineages from China in the 1800s, are probably better adapted to the climate in Europe.

I would say the rose plant itself vastly prefers a dry climate where fungal diseases do not occur (that would be here in a semiarid desert), but the blooms do dry up faster in the dry air. Roses grow much larger here, partly anyway, because they are not expending any valuable energy and nutrients on replacing leaves they have lost due to black spot. Dry environments also have cool nighttime temps because the lack of air moisture allows the temperature to drop much more quickly than water logged air. This allows roses to recover from daytime hot summer temps faster. If I could just have my blooms last longer in a little moister air (Portland?), I would be happy. Of course, irrigating is always necessary in dryer environments, but the soil is never waterlogged, drainage is excellent, and galls and bacterial problems like botrytis are at a minimum.

I totally agree with Parker that Portland has plenty of hot and dry times during a typical year. Diane

I had read they were called tea roses because they were shipped in boxes with tea from china.

I love how my roses grow in pots, and USUALLY we have dry, coolish summers with no humidity.

I really love Wirosarian and Parker's explanations!!

Carol

Very interesting info thanks!

My experience echoes these described. I lived with roses for decades along the central Coast of CA. Really predictable performance, easy to manage, no problems other than aphids. Here in Raleigh NC, all bets are off. I read the description of the rose, then try to chase down someone who has grown ut in the South. I had a Mr Lincoln everywhere I lived. Nice, 5-6ft tall plant. Here? Omgosh! 8-12ft bamboo thick ninja canes which left me scarred & bloody. It met Mr Shovel. And we all know how paralyzed I bcm at the thought of sp any rose. Mr Lincoln was a public safety hazard.

Sheesh!! That's amazing!! Mr. Shovel can be quite handy at times!!

Carol

What roses like is heat, combined with being watered.

But not extremely hot temperatures. And they don't like the air too dry or too humid. Too much humidity, especially combined at the same time with heat and you're going to get pests and fungal diseases. Too hot and dry at the same time and the plant can get a little baked and will be under water-stress, especially if it has not rained or been kept watered.

It's also worth pointing out that there are different families of roses, and some of them will do better with more moisture and cooler temperatures.

If you grow in different regions of the country there will be very different issues.

To answer the question in the first post, I read something very interesting. Although the Gulf Coast actually gets more rain during the Summer than any other part of the country, they still deal with droughts. Part of this has to do with the heat. The hotter the temperature, the more evaporation there is, and the more water plants need. The other part of that has to do with the soil. Ironically because of all the rain, occasional flooding, and sometimes hot temperatures, the clay soil gets compacted down and baked. So the soil does not hold water very well.

Although roses do like heat, if water is the limiting factor the roses would do better in a cooler area.

Yeah but even in drdry years like 2011 we got regular rain on the gulf coast. When I lived in Houston/Galveston our average rainfall was around 60 inches a year and our lowest the 10 years I lived there was 49 inches I believe. I currently live in an area with avg rainfall of 34 inches and we just went through a summer where from the middle of may to the end of August we had 1 2 inch rain and 5 days over 110 degrees. Guess what...while I had to water my roses they are still growing better than they ever did on the gulf coast. Most of my roses are Austins and they have just loved it here the last 3 years.

Austins have a little more delicate foliage and don't like as much heat. Austins are one of the families that grow more lush and vigorous in an English-type climate.

There are certain varieties of roses that grow better in the Gulf Coast climate. Devoniensis is one that might come to mind.

Houzz disappeared my first comment, and then it came partially back. Sigh. Brother Cadfael is above. Diane

The above pic is Boscobel and Golden Celebration. Diane

Doesn't root stock have something to do with how well a rose grows in a particular climate? Rose growers in the humid South swear by fortuniana stock. The Buck roses and other northerners go on multiflora, as does everything from Palatine in Canada. Here in hot and dry inland SoCal, we get Dr. Huey.

As far as own root goes, I seem to recall reading in this forum that those are less sturdy overall. Still true?

Not intending to hijack the thread, just wondering if kingcobbtx8 grew roses on fortuniana while on the Gulf Coast.

Fortuniana is for nematodes. My roses grew fine on the Coast, but they exploded and have grown ridiculously since moving to a drier climate. As was mentioned earlier in the thread, roses grow natirally in drier areas.

I saw it explained somewhere--and maybe they were talking about old fashion tea roses--but for many roses the growth/dormancy cycle is not triggered so much by temperature but by moisture. Rainy season/dry season.

I’d certainly agree that roses grow best in semi-arid mediterranean climates: there are much fewer fungal issues, and the cool nights are a great respite from the harsh (but needed) long hours of sunshine. Any one who has been to inland California or Oregon knows that roses are so much easier there than on the East or South part of the US.

Here’s Mister Lincoln being used as like median divider(!) in hot and dry Sacramento at a very mediocre supermarket shopping center. It receives no more care than a row of box woods or hollies. You would NEVER do this on the east coast or Texas, a traditional hybrid tea under this sort of care , you’d have only blackspot and thorny sticks!

I suspect those roses in the above picture are a lower maintenance polyantha or grandiflora variety. I don't want anyone to be under the impression that roses grow like weeds in the California central valley area. Anyway, Sacramento tends to be dry, but not too dry, and the temperatures tend to be hot for half the year, but also not too intensely hot like a desert. On average, the Summer temperatures in Sacramento are not quite as hot as the South, but there can be some days where the temperatures do spike higher than the hottest days in the South.

If you want a typical rose variety to do well in California, it's going to need consistent water, at least a deep watering once a week.

I‘m not aware of any polyantha or grandiflora that produces 6” blooms that smell just like Mister Lincoln or have its exact same growth structure and foliage. If such a creature existed it’d probably overtake Double Knockout In popularity. I would agree those roses get good irrigation.

Although my conditions are similar to Nanadoll's (10-12" of rain a year, and 5-10% humidity, at 6500 ft elevation), my experience is a bit different. Yes, there is very little disease here. Blackspot is rare. I've never seen rust. Mildew can occur however. I find however, that many Austins are reluctant to grow (i.e. Jude the Obscure is not happy in my garden despite trying in 3 different areas and in a pot, whereas Nanadoll's is fantastic and huge). In my neighborhood the HT's seem to be much more tolerant of the conditions. Almost all rose blossoms get crispy edges within a day of the dry heat of summer. So roses don't always prefer semi-arid conditions. Maybe I'm doing something wrong...

Nose, you just get too much rain! Just joking, of course. We have had 7" snow/rain so far this year. Oh, my aching water bill. Do you think elevation has anything to with our differing experiences with Jude and Austins? We are much lower that Albuquerque. I have lousy soil, so amendments are very necessary. I've found that as long as I water plenty, the plants love the hot, dry air, but the blooms on some roses suffer like you mention. Other roses rest during the worst of the heat--but the rose bushes always look good. When the temps start dropping like now, out pop the blooms. Deer and tree shade are the biggest problems here when it comes to blooming. Some rose blooms don't give a hoot about the hot and dry like Julia Child. Evelyn is pretty good, Ascot, Munstead Wood, Twilight Zone, and Augusta Luise, though you wouldn't think so.

I don't think you are doing anything wrong. I guess you have to pick roses that do well in your conditions and give up the others. I don't follow that advice, and I have plenty of turkeys. I want to move to southern Oregon! Diane

That's where I want to move to also! My friend who lives in Corvallis has two rose bushes, one of which is Gertrude Jekyll. Here in Albuquerque, GT is a prickly mess that blooms once in the spring. Hers is a mannerly shrub just like a HT, that has no more prickles than most, and blooms all summer.

Yes, I think the altitude is the problem. The difference between day and night is 30-40 degrees, and this means that in the Spring and Fall, although the days can be warm, the nights can be below freezing. In the summer, with nights in the 60's, the days are in the 90's or above. I think it is hard for the roses to grow just during the ideal time of the day. They don't start growing in the spring until the night temps are consistently above freezing, but this means that the days are in the 80's, and it is a brief time before the day temps are too hot. Also, at this altitude, I think it's a lot harder for the roses to keep up with the transpiration - just like the rest of us. It just evaporates quickly into the thin atmosphere. Water too much and the soil is waterlogged and the roots can rot or get fungal disease. Water too little and the plants have a hard time growing and a harder time blooming. If the plants are just not genetically able to manage the water (too few feeder roots, to many stomata, poor vasculature) or the sun intensity, or the temperatures, they won't grow, or the flowers are small and fry. I notice also, that the same roses that grow well in the valley don't necessarily grow well in the foothills where I live. That 500 feet or more difference in elevation can make a big difference, and I'm at a slightly higher elevation than Denver.