Mystic Beauty is compact here in 8A; She gets really wide but is quite low growing. ! Fragrance is marvelous and the blooms are best admired close up. So beautiful.

Oh, and I have a wonderfully fragrant Marie Pavie that has thrived for years in a pot. You can smell her fragrance all over the garden and she's such a graceful grower.

Clotilde Soupert is doing great for me in a pot.

Charles Metroz, Memory Lane, Renny, Prospero, Polly Sunshine, Francois Premier, and Baptiste Lafaye have all done well in pots for me.

Looks nice, John! I've had a bit of a sweet pea explosion here myself. Darcey Bussel needs to be rescued! Lisa

Looks great, Lisa!! They can be dainty thugs, but it's hard to cut them back when they look so good with roses. I suppose the decent thing to do would be to give them something to grow on...other than our roses!

I have Sophies Perpetual and Perle d'or in matching pots. They look great.

Other good pot pets are Ducher, Francis Dubreil, Hermosa, Archiduc Charles, Fake Perle, Prospero and Tipsy Imperial Concubine.

Clotilde grows and blooms well in a pot for me too with only a few hours of sun.

Wow what a great list!!!! And gorgeous photos. Tessiess what is Francois Premier?

John, that sounds like a fairy tale "The Sweet Peas meet their Prince"... too pretty!

Virginia

I grow everything in pots, and it's true that some only barely tolerate it, others are okay for a couple of years then need to go to another home as they outgrow even the largest pots. Some of my favorite for pots have already been mentioned..Sophie's Perpetual, Clotilde Soupert, Marie Pavie. Others that do really well are the Burgundian rose and other of the dwarfish centrifolias like Spong and Rose de Meaux. Most of the polyanthas do well too-Cecile Brunner, Aunt Margy's Rose, Baby Faurax and it's descendant Lauren, Leonie Lamesch, Anne Marie de Montravel, the list could go on. Eugene de Beauharnais does as well or better in a pot as he does in the ground. Old Blush its own self continues its blooming as well in a pot as in the ground as well. If you want something more modern, try floribundas..I've had good luck with Geranium Red, George Burns, Brown Velvet, Angel Face and others. Vineyard Song and Golden Buddha also do well. And then of course there are the miniatures--Unconditional Love, Hurdy Gurdy, almost any really.

So fun, thank you! It'll be a little birthday indulgence for myself, choosing one rose, just ONE mind you, to grow in a pot. Huge list to explore already. Nothing could be more fun, thank you!

ahh, well, if it can just be one, then I would recommend Sophie's Perpetual. Beauty, fragrance, looks lovely in a pot as it likes to drape over the side a bit, a lovely bicolor, an interesting story involving English nobility, what's not to like?

Most of my roses grafted to Doc Huey or own root hybrids are in pots. So basically all my Austins are. They all seem pretty happy. They need a large enough pot and excellemt drainage and more water than in ground plants.

Here is my newest Austin William Shakespear 2ooo I just planted about a week & 1/2 ago bare root. It had no leaves then and now it has a couple buds already. I'd say its happy. I add bunny manure and vermicompost to my potting mix and they love it!

Prospero and Pretty Jessica do quite well in pots. So does Hermosa and Tipsy Imperial Concubine.

Hm, lots of votes for TIC, Clotilde Soupert, Marie Pavie.......

DAs are absolutely blacklisted from pot life here, have seen far too many hate it. Surely my fault for not pampering them enough mind you. Now they're (almost) all in the ground, taking up space I wish I had for things like...mmm.... Henri Martin?

all my roses accept for 15 are in pots bc I'm still working on my gardens to plant them in- ( we bought 3 acres almost 2 years ago still have loads of work to do) all are happy in pots as long as they're in the right soil, have enough holes in the pots & are watered well enough but not over watered. I have to cut my fertilizer down a little for the potted roses ( if I'm using granular- or if it's any of my old garden roses ) verses ones in ground but I also have to add it more often to the pots due to leaching. I have noticed each rose is different so it takes a little bit to figure out which ones require more watering than others and which require a little less/more fertilizer. Only from my personal experience, if any rose starts to decline in their pots, it's time for me to re- pot them into a little bit bigger pot. Sadly, I have to admit, I do have a few roses thatre pretty darn root bound in pot & still happy. Cl clotilde soupert & sombreuil are my most root bound roses in pots right now.

Surprisingly my Louis-Phillipe has done great in his pot. I'm not all that fond of his bright color and poor vaselife, however. I wouldn't mind if he declined:) Lisa

Thanks Rachel, three acres, how exciting! It sounds like you have a good system going. I've bookmarked your comment to remind me to be more diligent... :)

Lisa, that's a mixed review if I've ever read one! This rose is doing fabulously, but I hate it and wish it'd die. Hilarious.

Anna I'm a mess over here with these 3 acres!! Sadly, out of the 6 of us, I'm the only one who cares to do any gardening or landscaping:( so if I want to run water underground to my gardens or even dig & make a garden, I'm totally on my own! My man tells me he's a business man not a maintenance man or landscaper. So I've been working outside as much as possible to get my gardens going & my roses n flowers planted. Two years later, I still haven't made a big dent in the yard so it's a work in progress :)

Rachel, I started out gardening on my own, too. My husband only helped when he saw it was taking me a week to dig a hole. I have to use a pick axe because of the hard clay and rocks. However, after a few years he started commenting on the garden and telling me it looked nice. Then he started coming out to see if I needed anything lifted or carried or a hole dug. Now, he is in the garden almost as much as I am. He still calls hydrangeas chrysanthemums and steps on my irises when he's digging a hole, but I'm happy he's out there with me.

Pots are a good way to garden until you're ready to plant in the ground. Put down a weed barrier (newspapers), cover it with mulch, and arrange your potted plants on the mulch so you can enjoy your plants while you're getting your acreage ready for gardening. I move my big pots around with a dolly or hand truck.

Why not use soaker hoses so you can skip all the digging and installing 3 acres of sprinkler systems. That'll put you weeks ahead. I have a large area with about 150 roses, and I prefer to hand water so I can examine every rose for disease every time I water. If I had kids at home, I would use soaker hoses.

I think I know how you feel. When we moved here, the property was very wooded and waist high scruffy native growth. It has been a labor of love and will always be a work in progress.

Anna ,that's so silly sounds like a typical loving hubby! Lol- I love ur screen name by the way it's awesome..... Honestly, Lonnie will help me if I ask him to. But he hates snakes, insects & being in the hot sun . He's 6'3, a little overweight ( 52years old ) & doesn't like anything to do with outside unless it's being in a boat fishing- lol- but he will bring me cold drink & if I ask him to dig a hole or till an area up for me, he will but that's ab all I get out of him. He's not a Nature lover, outside person like I am :( I can spend all day outside with my flowers working on projects !! He would rather be hanging out with other people doing something fun as long as it's inside - lol- I was thinking of using soaker hoses but I only have two sources of water ( front n back of house hose hook up ) how can I get soaker hoses ran around 3 acres?? I'm worried if I hook them up from the water source by the house the pressure won't be hard enough to run thru that much yard?? I don't really understand how all that works. It confuses me, so I guess I need to do my research. I'm not sure how to get soaker hoses out that far. I do enjoy hand watering, Especially my roses , like u said. I can check them over but due to the number of plants I have and my crazy schedule, if I plant anything so many feet out of the circumference of my house. more than likely, I will forget to water it or run out of time to do so. An Example- I planted fruit trees all along one side of our fence ( in my site but a ways away from my house) I had no water ran to them. I connected a few 100 ft. hoses together and would drag the hose out to water them often. Well, that got old quickly. I would forget to do so at times so, the trees ended up neglected and half of them are dead now :( I figured any plant that's not in the close proximity of my house ( on my back lanai or against my house) is considered out of sight out of mind plant and Usualky ends up neglected :( So I Need some kind of water ran n figured running underground is the best way. I was going to run piping underground to the planted area so I have a water source to hook up soaker hoses / sprinklers or whichever works best n is easiest :) I have all the piping and connectors for running the water but not a clue how to do so! any ideas ?? Or advice on what I need to do? I'm going to make a new thread on my projects as soon as I have the time with pictures!! So please look for it -I'll let u know when I post it bc I need all the help I can get !!! I'll prob name it my Florida gardening projects or something like that - the water being ran is a project on its own :)

Anna-Lyssa, my experience with pots here is that it's better to avoid planting anything in there but drought loving plants as Rosemary and such. If it's not dying it's just hanging there. I even tried to insulate the pots with plastic with bubbles to prevent pots heating up too much. It works, but seems just to some extend for plants not to flourish... Sad as I'm running out of space in the ground that has at least a little bit of shade in the afternoon.

Rachel, I feel you and I went exactly through all of this. Even though I didn't have 3 acres (ah, dream...) but small urban yard... I tried to keep up with watering schedule for my newly planted areas last year. And I failed with some plants. Sad... This spring I had to extend my drip system as we will be out of town in the summer heat. It's all set and running for couple of weeks but oh what a relief, I still can go and check my plants in my spare time in the meanwhile I know that drip system will have my back on that. And I see that some plants love dripping system more than me with the watering can! Soaker hose is great but to only certain length and at certain water pressure. I will be very surprised if it works for you for that crazy length. It was a night mare for me to figure out what is best for me, what would work, what wouldn't... But I think you should start with the drip system set up from one of your sources of water. Ours is set up that way that I still can use that water faucet from that source. I ended up digging a trench with main line with spaghetti with bubblers on the ends going from it to where I need it or running shoulders of main line here and there. Wanted to use that spaghetti hose with built in emitters but they wouldn't work again because you are loosing pressure the further it gets from the source of water.

Anyway good luck with whatever you decide to do!

Anna-Lyssa. while looking up something else, I encountered this advice from an English gardening magazine. Dated 1858, so make of it what you will:

"With the exception of rampant growers, such as Multifloras, and some of the Noisettes, there is scarcely any rose but may be grown in a pot. The most prized, however, are Teas, Bourbons, and Hybrid Perpetuals. Among the Teas take the following eight: Devoniensis, Adam, Comte de Paris, Niphetos, Saffrano, Gloire de Dijon, Madame Willermorz, and Duchess of Kent. Among Bourbons, Du Petit Thouars, Louise Odier, Sir J. Paxton, and Souvenir de Malmaison; the last is the finest for pot-culture that we have. The following twelve perpetuals are first-rate for pot-culture: Jacqueminot, Baronne Larray, Baronne Prevost, Duchess of Sutherland, Geant des Batailles, Leon des Combats, Madame Laffay, Mrs. Rivers, Mrs. Elliot, William Jesse, Jacques Lafitte, and Lord Raglan. The grand secret in growing roses in pots is to grow them so from the first. A rose taken up and potted never makes such a plant as one grown from a cutting and never put out. At the first potting, the pots should be very small so as to allow of successional shifts: the soil should be loam, leaf-mould, and old hotbed dung in equal parts, with a little sand, and, after the second shift, room should always be left for a layer of rotten dung as a top dressing. To get fine plants, every bloom bud should be nipped off till the plants are strong and bushy. Plenty of air, plenty of light, and plenty of water are the three leading conditions of success."

From The Floral World and Garden Guide, July, 1858, p.166

Enjoy!

Virginia

I have Little White Pet in a pot and it's happy. I had Mothersday in a pot and, in spite of it's small size it was miserable and growing backwards. I planted her in the ground a few weeks ago and she is already improving.

My favorite rose in a pot is Little Chap. From a band it draped all the way down the side of the urn it's first season. I'm kicking myself for not getting a photo. It's pruned way back now, but I expect it to do the same this year.

Virginia! Fabulous. :) :) :) I'm totally going to follow this advice just to see..... it'll take like 6 years before anything comes of it what with all the taking cuttings and nipping off the buds... fun!