Well, I'm another Californian with hot dry summers. But I grow a lot of irises, all kinds of lilies, dahlias, salvias, dianthus, foxglove, peonies, clematis, centaurea, pelargoniums, echinacea, snapdragons, guara, echinops, hellebores, heucheras, alstromeria, glads (altho they don't do that well), african daisies, asters, mums, euphorbias, gazanias, gaillardias, gerbera daisies, marguerites, rudbeckias, penstemons, shasta daisies, tracheleum caeruleums, lion's tail, verbascums, veronicas, lavenders, scabiosa, lantana, eucomis, caryopteris, stachys.... The best of them are the dianthus, echinops and lilies. The irises have to be thinned out about every three yrs or they become invasive and quit blooming. Salvias can get overwhelming. I have three "Hot Lips" in one bed and by summer's end they engulf the whole bed. The tracheleums are lovely, but they also get huge and spread all over, and have to be deadheaded. Asters and mums have to be hard pruned and thinned. Same with Shasta daisies. Euphorbias get really innvasive too, but they make nice fillers, until you have to deadhead. Snails and slugs like the gerberas. Dahlias have to be staked, or they become trailing groundcovers! Dang I hadn't realized just how many different plants I have put in the yard.. Not to mention the many Japanese maples and butterfly bushes, azaleas, camellias, rhodies, daphne, witch hazel, pieris japonica, etc all in the shady areas. Yikes.... Now, if I could just get delphiniums to grow!....

I grow two Rose de Rescht bushes here in hot, humid Alabama. I planted them last February in all day sun. The bushes are nice rounded mounds that are about 3 ft x 3 ft now. The bushes are attractive and have stayed pretty clean without spraying. The blooms are beautiful and smell like heaven. Each had a big first flush...completely covered in blooms and have had good rebloom since. They haven't been covered in blooms again, but have consistently had several blooms each. The blooms don't last long on the bush and only a day as a cut flower, but the petals fall off and self clean without drying up and turning ugly. Color is pretty true to the first pics below that were taken in very hot September...not as purple as they look in the last couple pics which were taken in spring on a different camera.

Hello Bellarosa, Wow your pictures are so lovely! I love your combinations and I loved the photo of Billy Baffin with the nepeta and liatris and daisies down below to hide Billy's knees. Absolutely gorgeous! You should be proud that you have such a lovely home and garden, with a hubby that will actually dig you holes! Wow. Your pictures gave me a breath of summer, since we still have a ways to go before we will be smelling any roses in New England (that we've grown ourselves, anyway!) Tmac96 - I don't grow any of the roses that you ordered, but I do grow the clematis that Bellarosa mentioned and those vines are very easy after the third year. I have a rose garden in the front of my house (sorry no photos like B.R.) in an oval with an obelisk in the center. The obelisk is where the clematis climbs. I have three separate types/colors growing together. Madame Julia Correvon, Etoile Violet and Comptess DiBouchard. Since I'm a "lazy gardener" I cut all the vines down to 12" from the ground when I see the forsythia bloom. Every year this will be a different time, based on the weather. If I had the vines growing on the roses or along with the roses on a trellis, I would cut the vines at the 12" height and simply unravel them from the rose bush, cutting away any pieces or parts that might harm a swelling rose bud. Do a little reading on the types of clematis, A,B, or C or 1,2, or 3. Try to plant the types that get cut to the ground in early spring -- they are easy and very rewarding. (I require - high R.O.I. Return on Investment!!!) It's not so much the cost of the plants, or even the hard hole-digging labor, -- it's the anticipation I can't stand. I love the plants that come back every year bigger and better than ever with hardly any work on my part. Oh! And O yeah, plenty of reading and posting on GardenWEB.

Yes, all 'Dr Huey' from the start (both plants). I have seen color variations on it here as well, although I am not sure I have ever seen it get quite that pale. People ask about this one all the time because it is used as a rootstock for other roses by commercial producer(s). These other roses apparently very often die, leaving the 'Dr Huey' to live on without them, as there are a lot of 'Dr Huey' around. I think in many instances the graft union was left up in the air, leaving the scion vulnerable to a sharp winter - and unable to come back after freezing off, unlike the 'Dr Huey' stock which has an at least partly buried stem (and roots) to grow back from. As may be visible in one of your pictures it tends to be infested with rose mosaic virus - perhaps this is what causes the flower color breaks. This post was edited by bboy on Sun, Jun 2, 13 at 1:06