Here I am again staring at your lovely roses, and the best rose photography I've ever seen.... Whisky Mac sigh.... the Dark Prince...Sharifa Asma, so many... Khalid you wrote: During previous years, I used to prune all my roses at one time but now I have decided that I will only prune those roses which show the signs for hibernation. Otherwise, I let them grow and finally prune them on 15 January Due to the rust I had I already pruned a few but not a full-prune. Did you do a full-prune with your roses, after they stopped blooming? I was thinking to do that a bit later on, closer to spring, but definitely to cut away a lot of canes, to prevent the rust problem....and with spring 2 months away. I can see the value of not allowing diseases to over winter.

When I saw your first picture and read that it climbed, despite not being a climber, I wondered about mislabeling. The color was more like my Austin Benjamin Britten, which is a climber and has a wonderful fragrance, but is not deep red like my (much shorter and less robust) Falstaff. I recently bought 6 (!) bareroot roses from Home Depot (serves me right!) labelled as Ballerina which turned out to be Kordes "Pink Perfection". Grrrr. For glorious scent and deep red color I have loved Prince Camille de Rohan. Charles de Mills is also glorious deep red/purple, but once blooming.

Khalid: Thank you for those nice pics. & I'm impressed at how large and healthy the leaves are. Your Chartreuse de Parme is beautiful, same with Belle E. Own-root roses are much smaller than grafted, and my cold-zone makes roses 1/2 the size of warm-zone. So I have to go with REALL BIG roses if I want own-root in a cold-zone. Some of the wimpy own-roots like Love Song, Bishop Castle, Jude the Obscure are sold for $40 each at Heirloom roses since it takes longer for them to root. The problem with our winter & growing indoor: STERILE potting soil is used, that doesn't have mycorrhyzal fungi for fast root-growth. Rooting OUTDOOR with fast-drainage & loamy soil plus mycorrhyzal fungi resulted in THICKER roots for me. But I have to mix that in a month is advance. If you click on the below link, you'll see how Jobes' fertilizer NPK 3-5-3 (with bacteria & fungi) makes a big difference in Julia Child's flowering. Ingredients in Jobe's fertilizer NPK 3-5-3 are "Protein Hydrolysate from feather meal, bone meal, composted poultry manure, sulfate of potash and various bacteria, endomycorrhizae, ectomycorrhzae and archaea." https://www.amazon.com/Jobes-09426-Organic-Granular-Fertilizer/dp/B002RBGO0U/ref=lp_3032347011_1_10?srs=3032347011&ie=UTF8&qid=1477666753&sr=8-10 Here's what Jobe's fertilizer for roses contain: " A consortium of three microorganisms - bacteria mycorrhizal fungi plus a unique species of archaea that breaks down complex materials." That the same microbes in compost. One person reported the best result with rooting was with coco-coir (for fast drainage) and compost. I like home-made compost better than store-bought-compost (mostly cow-manure with antibiotics, salt, and that nasty quick-lime added to deodorize).

Help Me Find lists three offspring of Louis Philippe. One is a mutation; one is from its seed and one from its pollen. Archduke Charles is a mutation of Old Blush and has produced only mutations. That doesn't necessarily mean anything other than no one has reported raising any seedlings from it, but seedlings have been raised from Old Blush. Mel's Heritage may be fertile, or not. There are no listed crosses involving it, either direction. Again, though, that only means no one has reported raising any crosses from it. Of the three, I would think Mel's Heritage would be the most interesting to try, because of its parentage and the fact no one has reported any results from it. Unless you're going to try something really far out, like species crossed with Archduke Charles or Louis Philippe, you are likely to raise "more of the same" from them.