I love the nodding ones. If I want to make them stand up, I'll use a bowl or if you pile enough in a vase the top ones lay on the lower. But I know many dislike it so I mention that feature

my favorite rose from last month nods wonderfully and got the attention of the neighbors. One who noted how sad it was that "the rain ruined the blooms and made them hang like that "

I like nodding blooms, they give the bush relaxed informal look. But when you have a baby rose I can see the point that you would like to see the bloom but it's down below and nodding, hiding its beauty...

I find the nodders to be romantic. Tea roses in crystal vases on lace tablecloths at a summer garden party. That sort of thing. (Soft focus filter on the camera documenting the occasion.). Sometimes the cut flower stems fall out of their containers, but as Kippy suggested, they're pretty good to go if you cram enough plant material in the vases. Your neck breakers are beyond lovely, Jackie! Well worth the crick. Thank you for sharing photos of your beauties, Altorama. I have Madame Alfred, too, and look forward to her first big flush every year. Carol

I love nodding blooms.

I find them to be modest and charming in graceful presentation.

Steven

The 'noddiest' rose I have, and I have quite a few, is Marechal Niel. Its necks are really really weak to the extent that it might not be good even for the wall but only for an overhead structure. Mine is still young and maybe it will strengthen a bit but I somehow doubt it. At the moment it hides its blooms in its foliage..

Climbing Mrs. Herbert Stevens comes a close second but I'm growing her as a 'tree' slowly limbing her up so I hope that at some moment I will be getting overhanging blooms from her long canes.

Sigh. Marechal Neil. Only in my dreams. Carol

I love my Marechal Niel. It just started blooming nicely this year and I have it growing up a trellis so the blooms will hang down. I wish there was a good lavender tea with nodding blooms. Does anyone know of one?

MN just popped up over on Father Jerome's latest morning garden photos thread, too. I mention this for the benefit of fellow members of the Marechal Neil Adoration Society. Carol

I love a rose that nods although I've never tried making a flower arrangement with "nodders". I expect it would be somewhat more difficult, at least that's my experience with other weaker-stemmed flowers.
I find nodding blooms on the actual rose bush to be so pretty and graceful. I think I may actually prefer them to more upright ones.

Famous passage in Elizabeth and Her German Garden about roses that nod their heads (not to hijack a thread or anything):
My roses have behaved as well on the whole as was to be expected, and the Viscountess Folkestones and Laurette Messimys have been most beautiful, the latter being quite the loveliest things in the garden, each flower an exquisite loose cluster of coral-pink petals, paling at the base to a yellow-white. I have ordered a hundred standard tea-roses for planting next month, half of which are Viscountess Folkestones, because the tea-roses have such a way of hanging their little heads that one has to kneel down to be able to see them well in the dwarf forms—not but what I entirely approve of kneeling before such perfect beauty, only it dirties one’s clothes. So I am going to put standards down each side of the walk under the south windows, and shall have the flowers on a convenient level for worship.

I love roses because they broaden one's horizons beyond one's own time and the barriers of space. Here is a link to an unblinking article by Robin Lane Fox about Elizabeth's garden and it's dark underside, complete with a photograph of the nodding Viscountess Folkstones, for those who are interested. The "Man of Wrath" is Elizabeth's nickname for her irascible Prussian husband. The marriage was not a success, it seems -- or perhaps it was. They stayed married until his death in 1910, but she had left him two years earlier. I hope he didn't beat her. She stayed married to her second husband, too, Bertrand Russell's older brother: the Earl, but they separated after a few years, after which she had an array of interesting lovers. According to wikipedia,

"The Latin inscription on her tombstone reads, parva sed apta (small but apt), alluding to her short stature". It does not seemed to have handicapped her as a lover.
https://www.ft.com/content/326a5c2a-2bc0-11e5-acfb-cbd2e1c81cca

Can we replace the description Weak Necks with something else? Theres no deficiency there, its not a flaw in the plant. There has to be some appropriate latin term or something botanical or poetic we could use. Molineaux , where are you when we need you?

VF is now considered an HT, isn't it?

I love knodding roses and I second it, or possibly third or forth it...... There really is something romantic about their heavy petaled blooms.... Somewhat sun drunk in the summer heat... I love to feel small as they stare down from their arbor roosts.

Kitty - how about pulchritudinously pendant peduncles?

Jacky - to save your neck, I think at this time of year you really should be doing a lot more lying on your back in the grass, staring up at the sky between those dreamy clouds of blooms... :-)

I don't mind nodding blooms on climbing roses although I prefer those that tend towards the outward horizontal look, but I'm not entirely happy with short growing roses that nod, I prefer them to look up a bit... same with Hellebores... so all a bit borderline with me..

I like to think of them as swan necks. Sometimes the teas with longer buds appear like swan head. Lady Hillingdon for one. I do arrangements for shows and mostly use HTs. There is an art to using OGRs, but I haven't mastered it yet.

Marlorena, I know what you mean about short nodders. I keep moving my hellebores to higher and higher ground in hopes of actually viewing the early spring blooms. Carol

ferndale

Is that a china? ^^

Yes.

http://www.helpmefind.com/gardening/l.php?l=2.2732

:-)

~Christopher

I had that rose, my pics are on HMF under altora. It was red but in cooler weather pink. Sad that it died and I will probably never find it again.

In 2015 and 2016 I ordered a bunch of Chinas and Teas from Rose Petals Nursery and Angel Gardens. "Ferndale Red China" was among them. Unfortunately, my computer is in a coma, so I can't access my rose file to see which nursery sold me this -- but one of them did.

ETA -- it must have been RPN, since AG doesn't carry it.

http://rosepetalsnursery.com/rose.php?pid=653&cid=3&rose=Ferndale%20Red%20China

:-)

~Christopher

I like weak necks and I can not lie
You other gardeners can't deny
That when a rose has that certain kind of grace
And the fragrance in your face
You get hooked...

(adapted from Baby Got Back by Sir Mix-A-Lot)

Lady Salisbury, so demure.

She has another charming character (for those of us with snowy winters); the canes become reddish in the winter, lovely against the snow.

I took these two pictures of General Schablikine last week.

For the first, I was standing up:

And for the second picture of the same flowers, I was lying on my back on the ground:

Gorgeous!

I also love nodding blooms. I don't mind people who prefer upright, but they should go grow HTs. Here's 'Lady Ann Kidwell':

I love nodding blooms too and noseometer I love your remix of Baby Got Back!

If you don't like nodding blooms you don't have to resign yourself to growing only HTs. There are plenty of OGRs that hold their blooms perfectly upright and outward.