Robert,are you asking about new ADR Kordes roses or just any Kordes roses? My experience is that older roses like Sunsprite, Iceberg, Alchemist, Lavender Lassie, Liebeszauber, Nicole, Perfect Moment, Valencia, Westerland, Raubritter(sp?) etc are not resistantt here. Liebeszauber and Westerland are better then others in BS resistance, but still here they almost completely defoliate. They are still vigorous and continue to bloom, but look more then half naked. I tried three new ADR tested introductions last year. So this is all based on one year experience, take it with a grain of salt. Floral Fairy Tale - little BS, about 30 % or even less. Blooms are fragrant and beautiful. Better resistance then I expected Aloha Hawaii- this climber was healthy for me, but didn't bloom yet. Laguna -was healthy most of the summer, then in end of August got Cercospora and BS pretty bad, completely defoliated. No blooms yet. I am curuious to see how they will behave this year and of course want to see blooms. But overall I think this new varieties are worth to investigate. Olga

I've had two Otto's for probably over 15 years. I LOVE OTTO!!! In coastal SoCal he is resistant to rust and 95% to mildew which is a HUGE achievement for any rose around here. I just get some on the ends every great once in awhile during the season, not enough for me to care or bother about. In sandy soil, he got around 4' with a 6' cane or two. Now, in amended clay, he is usually about 6' with canes up to, I dunno, maybe 10'. I have him (them? ;-) trained on trellises. If I wanted to cut the long canes down, I could but prefer to train them horizontally instead. If you want a lot of blooms, I prune the side shoots on the long canes down to three buds or so as you would a climber. Fyi, he is in a 4' deep bed by the driveway so I just prune him so he's left to right instead of round. He also holds onto the flowers for awhile, but a gloved hand can 'shave' them off when they dry up. You do need gloves, I'm not outside to double check, but he does have some thorns, and the leaflets have prickles on them - I wouldn't call him nasty in the regard but he is not thornless. Now the good part, easily 2,000 blooms (each) on the plants in spring, of course that much effort requires some recovery but he does repeat throughout the year but not like the first flush. Fragrance, I do smell him, especially the first flush. Also if I stick my nose in a spray. He's cute in a vase and won't fill a room, but I can absolutely smell him as I walk by. I hope that you come to love him as much as I do, wherever you put him.

this site lists Tausendschon (forgive my missing umlats)as being "almost without thorns." tomhumphreys, the way you get around umlauts is to spell those words the way the Swiss do. Every time you see a German vowel with an umlaut, if you do not have a way of recreating those two dots, add a following "e". That's what the German-speaking Swiss do and it's universally regarded as a totally legitimate spelling among German speaking people. Thus - "Tausendschoen" (& you will see it spelled that way now & again since that is also a legit. spelling of its name). Yes, I'm not surprised to learn it's regarded as "almost without thorns". If the rose I have transplanted and pruned is in fact Tausendschoen, then there are no "thorns" ("prickles" is botanically correct, but culturally we have long called them "thorns", no?) on the canes, but there are very small prickles on the undersides of the leaf midribs.

Hi Kate For what it's worth, I have Alfred Colomb and it doesn't blackspot particularly worse for me than the moderns in my yard, and I know we have similar climates. I don't have the other two, but I've tried Comte de Chambord a time or two and it wasn't remotely winter hardy for me. A zone warmer with you might make a difference on that one. In general, as you're considering classes of OGRs for your yard, you may not have to restrict yourself to moderns and Austins even with your reblooming and disease resistance criteria. What you may end up doing is picking and choosing among members of a particular rose category, since there's a lot of variability among them. My favorite example is Noisettes, which aren't even supposed to be considered in zone 5, but Madame Alfred Carriere is bullet proof as long as she has any surviving cane to work with. Similarly, Madame Isaac Periere and Reine des Violettes are from classes that are supposed to be blackspotted messes, but they're equally reliable for me. Some hybrid musks melt like butter in my winters and some are rock solid. I have several Bourbons and Hybrid Perpetuals that do fairly well, and I'm still working on Portlands, but I haven't given up on them as a class. And then there are the teas... I'm like you that rugosas tend to be plenty hardy and terribly unexciting for me in my yard. Therese Bugnet is highly recommended and has yet to bloom once in 3-4 years in my yard. Rountuit is a Moore creation and it has scruffy quarter sized blooms for about a week in spring and then flops around on an ugly bush. Yet Linda Campbell is a lovely self sufficient true red that reblooms reasonably well and convinced the neighbors they wanted a rose just like it growing into their Black Lace elderberry bush. Just encouraging you not to get discouraged about reblooming OGRs if you want to pursue them. By all means, grow whatever you like and moderns obviously do well for you, but it doesn't necessarily mean particular classes are written off for you because of your requirements. Cynthia