I bought Calypso by mistake. I thought I was picking up the rose next to it. But, it has turned out to be a good addition to my garden. It is an own root band I planted last spring. It immediately grew several 4' canes and the bush is dense with really nice looking foliage. It is not 2'x2' as printed on the tag. Even though it was new, it bloomed all summer, with never a hint of black spot or other disease. The color blends nicely with other colors around it. I wouldn't say it's 'knock-your-sox-off-gorgeous', but the photos I've seen of it don't do it justice, either. I'm glad I have it.

Dingo2001, Love your garden Sculpture!

Coral Cove is nice compact Ping Lim rose. Constant bloomer, thick leaves that seem impervious to black spot. Might be hard to find, Northland Rosarium has it.

Coral Cove bloom, couldn't find a whole bush photo. Young plant with dark new foliage.

This is great info. thank you all.

Mine have been sort of the work horses of my garden. I've never had black spot on the cultivars that I have had but some are prone to mildew if it gets to dry. My favorites are,

Sweet Fragrance

My Girl

All The Rage

My Hero and

Macy's Pride

I have Music Box and do think it's a good healthy continuous bloom shrub. I just don't care for the flowers. The color gets lost in the foliage. When I look at it I see shrub not flowers if that makes any sense. The flower to my eyes is only pretty for a day. Might as well let it all out. I hate the quilling on it and Ping Lim was long gone from Bailey's before it and several others were introduced. Yes, he and his partner bred them but never introduced them. Some are seedlings that grew years later. Well enough of that. I truly feel Ping's best were his early roses that were bred and released while he was still working there. ymmv

I really do like my early Lim roses. But am very happy with my Kordes roses.

Oops, forgot I really love your yard ornaments Julie. Especially the brown and black one that is in front.

I have Polar Joy rose trees. I love them, they are hardy and repeat fast, great for landscaping.

Ha Ha thanks Patty and Ratdog :) Goofy dog loves to be in pictures!

Patty I get what you mean about Music Box being shrubby. I may cut it back and thin it out this spring and see if the flowers pop out more.

The one rose I really wants from this brand is Kashmir. I love all the pics I've seen of this rose.

I have 3 Love & Peace. Beautiful rose. No fragrance. Probably the worst blackspot like any hybrid tea I have ever had. Possibly worse actually. Have to spray it all the time with fungicide or zero leaves.

I also have Carefree Celebration, which I thought was a Ping Lim, but could be wrong. Amazing hedge rose. Zero problems blooms til frost.

-Adrianne

Just saw that Northland Rosarium has my favorite Ping rose - Kiss Me!! I love this one, disease free, always blooming, and great fragrance. They have a bunch of Ping's roses. I ordered Patriot's Dream too, haven't seen that one before.

Oh, I'm so glad this thread has resurfaced since I love Lim roses and I was too busy to post pictures a week or two ago. Teka, I really love the Lim Easy Elegance roses and I discovered looking over my lists that I have 20 different Lim Roses, and probably 30 counting duplicates. I'll post pictures in the next two responses starting with my 10 favorites.

I'll start with Music Box and Calypso, which are among the Lim roses I have duplicates of in my very cold north side of the house. They are rock solid trouble free bloomers all season, with blooms that are mutable from pale to more vivid colors depending on the weather. All the Easy Elegance roses are disease free for me and ridiculously hardy, so I won't bother to repeat that most of the time.

Here's Music Box. I put it in the front of the bed but it actually gets bigger than the 3-4' I expected from hmf. Not a giant, but it's not necessarily a front of the bed rose either. The cream-yellow center and vivid outer petals happens mostly in cool weather, but it's usually got some kind of color variation in the bloom and of the two you mentioned I prefer Music Box. This shots shows some of the subtler variability of the blooms and Patty's shows more of the pink mood of this rose.

Calypso was one I expected to be a groundcover 3' or lower rose, but it's more like 4' and likes to stretch out lanky arms to the neighbors. This one can look quite peachy in a good mood but fades to cream when it gets hot. It doesn't stop blooming however, and blends in nicely with other roses nearby.

My ultra-favorite Lim rose, and probably in my top 10 roses out of the 1000+ I grow is Sweet Fragrance. Needless to say I also have multiples of this one. It is maybe 5' tall, bushy, totally disease and trouble free, and blooms all season in a wretchedly cold spot with apricot blooms that STAY APRICOT. The palest bloom in this photo is about as pale as it fades. Boy that is not common in this color range. The only thing it's missing, ironically, is fragrance. I thought it was just me but others posted in with the same observation. These are fluffy fully double blooms with a kind of translucent sheen to the petals that really grabs me.

Sunrise Sunset is a great rose for exuberance of bloom and sheer territory it overtakes with no trouble whatsoever. Don't be fooled by the 2' height of this rose - it may be only 2' high but it wants to conquer 20 feet of space. Seriously, in the photo below it totally swamps a real climber (Illusion) and about four other roses grabbing the limelight. It would be a real top favorite rose if it bloomed this way more often, but after the spring flush it puts out a dozen or so blooms here and there the rest of the season. Still, for show-stopping impact, it earns a good vote from me.

The other Lim rose that I've just added a second time is All the Rage. Normally I wouldn't be all that excited about a semi-double rose, but the blooms are HUGE and can be quite a vivid apricot to coral color. It's also rock solid hardy and blends in with the rest of my apricot bed in the front. This one so far has stayed below 4' and it isn't as broad a bushy plant, so it fits in around other roses.

Another bush in the cold front apricot bed (for contrast) is Snowdrift, and it's definitely coming into its own even in the second year for 2016. It has nice clusters of white flowers pretty much all season. You can see the spent blooms doing the dead Kleenex look of virtually all white roses, but I don't consider that the rose's fault. The blooms are fluffy without showing the stamens too much - I prefer petals to stamens except in unusual cases like Dainty Bess.

Another good white Lim is Champagne Wishes. It tends to be more pure white where Snowdrift has an apricot blush sometimes to the centers (ironic, since you'd expect snow to the the purer white). It isn't quite as prolific a bloomer as Snowdrift, but Champagne Wishes is only in its second year so it'll beef up after a while.

For a totally different look, Fiesta is quite a nice pink/white striped rose. The bush I initially bought had all kinds of dead wood on it and I rather took pity on it rather than being excited at first. It has grown out of its twiggy phase and puts out clusters of striped blooms pretty regularly all summer. It isn't quite the prolific bloomer that Stars and Stripes Forever is (and they're next to each other), but they compliment each other nicely. It stays much lower than SSF, maybe no more than 4', with nice bushing out. Here's a June shot with buds just ready to burst out.

Pinktopia is one that has worked its way into the top 10 Lim roses in its second year. It's one of the more mannerly and compact Lim roses, staying under 4' and rounded as a bush. The blooms are semidouble and an average medium pink, but they're pretty frequent and troublefree. You can see the modest height here with the nasturtium leaves kicking in - the variegated bloom at top right is Hannah Gordon. This one also thrives in my zone 4 pocket.

Kashmir is nice but it only just makes my top half of Lim roses. I like the double blooms and it's trouble free as all of them are, but it has more or less prime real estate and it still isn't all that frequent a bloomer even in its third year. I like the color and it can get a nice dark red, fading to crimson, and the double blooms are nice.

OK - second half to follow...

Cynthia

And now for the REST of the story. The bottom half of the Lim roses are still excellent roses one and all, it's just the others are better. I highly recommend them all in any cold zone for sure, and I suspect most of these will do well in warmer places. I get mine routinely at Lowes for a respectable $19 for a 5-gallon pot, marked down 1/2 by mid-summer and still looking great. Since I have an extra slot for photos (see Love & Peace below), I'll show you a typical Lowe's sale plant from late June (All the Rage at left and I think Calypso on the right).

Just missing the top half Lim rose cut was Little Mischief. If it had more petals or held the clusters a little tighter together, it might have made the preference. It's a good front of the border rose (I think - we'll see if it has Sunrise Sunset tendencies), but it does want to sprawl. The photo below shows the territory it has conquered by the end of the second year. The blooms range from pink to crimson, and they're a little scruffy but part of that is because it's never entirely out of bloom.

I hadn't realized till Adrienne mentioned it that Love & Peace is a Lim contribution, but it's not an Easy Elegance rose and it has all the lovely and frustrating qualities of a hybrid tea in my zones. Very infrequent blooms on a scrawny plant that doesn't have the typical Lim disease resistance. But oh, when it blooms, it's heart stopping. It could give Dream Come True a run for its money if it were just a bit more robust. Sadly, mine has gotten shaded out by some other roses and I haven't caught its blooms in the last year or two, and the previous photos aren't really worth showing.

Coral Cove is probably next on my list, and it would be higher if it bloomed more often or faded less scruffy. This one stays reasonably low so it should be in the front of the bed (no more than 3.5' probably), but of course I have it behind Calypso in the front (that was supposed to be 3'). The blooms are nice on Coral Cove when there, but it just isn't that enthusiastic a bloomer and is better as an accent woven in around the others.

Como Park might work its way into my top tier Lim roses as it comes into its third year. It can have blooms that look totally high centered like HTs, though they open out as you see most of them here. My neighbor saw me taking photos and insisted I take a closeup of the top right bloom here when it was a little more open since it did look like a florists rose. It stays red without blueing much in the heat and does well in part shade and a cold east side spot. It so far has stayed about knee high but that may change next year.

Of my two Lim yellow roses, High Voltage is the better. It can be a luminous glowing lemon yellow, but it does fade before long to a fairly scruffy unattractive cream with brown streaks. Like many Lim roses, it gets taller than advertised, and wants to be between 4-5' without pruning or shaping it down. It also thrives in my virtual zone 4 pocket in part shade.

Yellow Brick Road starts out more golden and may not fade as far, but I'm not as wild about the flower form. It also handles part shade and zone 4 pocket, and it may not be a fair comparison as this one is in more consistent shade being directly between the houses. It hasn't ever reached the top of my 6' fence, but it's a good 4-5' high probably.

Super Hero is a nice uncomplaining red bloomer, reasonably compact maybe 4' high. It can be close to a true red sometimes, but most of my pictures show a more crimson tone. It's next to Nur Mahal that is decidedly crimson here (back left), and they blend well. The blooms open up to semidouble but they're reasonably frequent.

Now for as close as I get to "meh" roses from Lim. Good landscape roses but they don't make my heart zing. Ironically, two of these last three are the ones I've had hte longest, so I think this is as good as they get. To be fair, they're both in the semi-shade between houses and cold virtual zone 4, so they're not at their best I'm sure. Still, the blooms or frequency aren't all that remarkable to me.

Here's Macy's Pride more or less at its best. It can have nice cream blooms kind of like Snowdrift, but they're not that frequent. This does seem to be a compact front of the bed rose however, and as always it's undemanding.

One year I did get a very nice couple of flushes from Mystic Fairy as you see below, but since then it's been hit or miss. The blooms are that mid-range crimson that's hard to categorize, and they mostly open to semidouble. Again, a perfectly nice rose, just not exceptional.

For me, the jury is still out on Grandma's Blessing. It died on me one year from a 5-gallon bush planting, but that might have been a weak plant. It survived last winter but I've only seen scattered single blooms in its second year. I don't expect it to be an exciting plant unless it really ramps up from here.

The only other Lim roses that have ever died on me were Paint the Town (not a zone 4 rose, haven't tried in zone 5 normal spot) and Yellow Submarine (survived a winter or two in my zone 4 spot then faded). At least I don't have to get that song stuck in my head with it gone (smile). I'd replace either or both of them if I find them locally, though, as they were fine roses.

So cruise your local Lowe's this summer and plant Lim roses! They're well worth it and rewarding in frequent and healthy growth and blooming.

Cynthia

Cynthia, I'm getting Kasmir this spring, how tall is it in your yard?

I don't think Kashmir has gotten much above 3 feet or a little beyond, and I think I was expecting more like 4-5' given where I put it. It still may stretch out, but it's not as tall as Sweet Fragrance or even Music Box in my yard.

Cynthia

My Kashmirs reached 4 1/2 - 5' in the first summer.

Okay I'll chime in on Kashmir, Mine grew 4 to 5 feet up then fountained out. The canes where sturdy enough that they stayed well above the ground thou. But like Cynthia it just did not bloom much for me. If I'm remembering right I'd get one nice bloom at the end of each cane. So it bloomed like a ht but grew like a good sized shrub. Who knows maybe it was just me. Either way I removed it after three years.

thanks for the Kashmir info

Thanks for the info on Kashmir indeed. I really like the pic on sweet fragrance. It is a beautiful rose. I need to keep an eye on this one.

Update on my new Kashmir: is is blooming a lot as a first year own root. The blooms are smaller in the 90+ humid heat we've been having but it almost always has 1-2 blooms on it. Still tiny about 1x1 feet.

Sweet Fragrance is on my wish list for next year.

Wondering if there are any updates on your Ping L roses.

I think you’d make these roses a priority depending on how much you value blackspot resistance. I’ve had True Inspiration for about 4 months now, and I think it’s sort of the lead rose in the ’True’ series in terms of sales and garden performance. It’s reputed to have great BS resistance, and I dont doubt that, but I cannot verify since my climate is blackspot free. It’s a nice enough rose, but not the most beautiful or best performer in the color class. Pink Peace is a grander bloom with stronger fragrance. Elle is more vigorous and generous, and to my eyes, more beautiful and refined. But if you wanted to be no-spray and live under high BS pressure, then True Inspriation is certainly a more substantial and fragrant flower than say Pink Knock Out.

I sort of think the same way about many of the the Kordes. There are far more beautiful pinks than Savannah and Beverly but they might be high on the list for a no spray garden.

I have a Calypso new to me this summer. It was a late shipment to the nursery last year and had some cane damage. Anyway, it has never stopped blooming. Sometimes sporadic but never w/o blooms in 100* heat. No blackspot here, but we get powdery mildew something fierce and it’s clean.

It fades light pink and sets hips.

Really Pretty HD!. Ben, even in TX, I dont think theres a rose you cant grow well. Does anyone grow the shrub rose DayDream?