I'm interested too, needmore. I have Souv d'un Ami from RVRs. I wonder what form that one is. I have not heard of the "Ducrot" form. I know the Australian Tea ladies version is a Gen Tartas here in the States, I gather, and deeper colored.

The only one I grow on your list is the true Anna Olivier. In my zone 9 garden the very old one (100+ years), growing under trees in dappled shade, got over 7 feet tall and 9 feet wide. One of its rooted cuttings, which we grow as a climber (because of lack of sideways space), has made it 1 1/2 stories up our house. Here is a picture of the middle 2/3rds of it:

Jackie

Glorious Anna Olivier, Jackie! You sure know how to grow ‘em!! Lisa

Pretty sure that my Anna Olivier is from your rose, Jackie! (Schmidt's Buff Giant). Maybe the 'Giant" should have given me a clue that it is a back row rose, lol.

Thanks, vesfl, I will put SdPN in the front row and CFH in the back. I will leave the General in limbo for now, but probably a front row guy if he has that mounding shape.

GG can get quite large but it didn't look that it was pruned recently. Forgot to mention glorious blooms of Souvenir d'un Ami. They were already fading by the time we got there but still had a beautiful soft pink color and the formation of petals into fully double flowers was exquisite.

I can't help much, needmoremulch (great name, and so do I!), because the only one on your list I've grown for any length of time is G Nabonnand. It's about 4 yo now, and I find the branches bend under their own weight much more than many other Teas. It's about 6' high now, and around 9' wide. I just chopped off about a quarter of it, as it was on the ground.

You have so many Teas on your list that I've never seen, and some I've never even heard of. I hope you'll post lots of photos in the next few years.

titian1, quite a few of those have not been available much or at all until recently here - I am pretty excited!

Great selection of roses...I am excited bec your collection is Awesome. I love Nabonnand and you have a number of them( G and P Nabonnaand and Anna Jung) I have to be patience Bec I have already order some and more in March. Then, I have to work more in other parts of yard and I am sure time is going to fly and yours will be blooming . By then , I can have all input from you. I know they will be BEAUTIFUL.

More than half I never heard of but I am looking forward to see yours growing.

Sheila you got me looking into Souv d' un Ami. It is beautiful but it leads me to look at McClinton rose that smells like strawberry cream..Both looks amazing. I enjoy your pics tremendously.

Jackie oh my goodness, your roses are outstanding and Gorgeous. It is WOW factor.

Jin

Opps I forgot to ask you, how much space are you putting btw roses ? Thxs

Jin

Miss Atwood can grow very tall, Souvenir d'un Ami and Alexander Hill Gray were quite a bit shorter in comparison. My Jesse Hildreth is quite young and slow-growing, so I can't comment about it. I haven't grown any of the other ones.

So, so envious here. I need to get back into growing Teas, with proper preparation this time. it's going to take a few years. The only one of these I have, in a reasonably thriving state, anyway, is 'Etoile de Lyon'. She's massive. 6' x 8', maybe? Do not underestimate the size of a happy Tea! Good luck!

Melissa, I know that "small" is a relative term when applied to teas, haha! I am trying to think more in terms of shape and rate of growth.

Ingrid, thanks for helping me plug some more into their proper rows!

Jin, right now I am planning on 10 ft centers. The two rows will alternate like this:

0x x x x x x x x x

x x x x x x x x x x

The bed is curved around the inside of my driveway.

The "0" is just a spaceholder to force the x's to stay in place.

My experience jibes with Melissa's sentiment: there are no small teas (with the possible exception, of the ones in my experience, of Mme. Bravy, who hasn't gotten too big YET, at 4.5' x 5' after 6 or 7 years).

On your list, I have, or had:

Le Pactole: 8' x 12' and still expanding

Souvenir de Pierre Notting: 8' x 10'

Etoile de Lyon: 7' x 15' (no longer have -- first flush nearly always destroyed by humidity or rain, and the browned blooms hung on like grim death)

Arcadia Louisiana Tea: 7 - 8' x at least 16' -- this is a big shrub

Alliance Franco Russe: was 7' x 10' (taken out, martyr to PM here)

G. Nabonnand was smaller, something like 5' x 6', but he didn't seem a happy camper here.

needmoremulch - Yes, Schmidt's Buff Giant is my Anna Olivier. It was identified by the "tea ladies" from Australia who wrote the book "Tea Roses: Old Roses for Warm Gardens". I highly recommend it if you do not have it.

Jackie

catspat, that echos my experience of Etoile de Lyon, except that the browning is not just on the first flush. It's a very frustrating rose, as 'when it's good it's very, very good, but when it's bad it's horrid'. And it's only good rarely. Mine will be going at the end of the season, but I feel rather sad about it.

My experience exactly, Titian -- nothing could beat Etoile de Lyon during deadly-dry August-September heat waves with temps over 100 degrees F and 10% humidity, and the foliage was always perfect -- but most other times, oh dear, and it was in a prominent spot.

So what you are saying is I should put Etoile de Lyon in a less prominent spot :D

Based on my experience, I would definitely lean that direction. It is no-way-no-how self-cleaning, so I always had to deadhead it (and I don't deadhead anything but the HTs and Portlands in my collection, generally -- otherwise it might be a full-time occupation!). I don't know if the outer petals will get browned and unsightly in your conditions like they did here, but it is not self-cleaning in any case.

I'm pretty sure I've heard - from Jeri , I think - that Devoniensis, though slow to develop, can get pretty big eventually (well over men's head height). (It's sometimes described as a smaller tea by growers, but I think that may be because they write their descriptions based on observation of the first few years only.) Also, I think, that it can be an awkward/ asymmetrical shape with very thorny octopus arms flailing out at odd angles. Not sure whether or not it all fills in/ evens out eventually.

I am just wondering though, in general, how much size may be affected by the mildness or harshness of winters - whether the often massive sizes in California, etc (eg of Jackie's roses) would be in part due to mild year round weather and a more or less continuous growing season.

Possibly where there are usually frosts and snow in winter, tea roses, as well as going dormant, would tend to die back a bit most years, thus keeping them from ever developing to quite such enormous proportions. Maybe it's something to consider, anyway, if you do have colder winters. Hopefully someone knows whether or not that's how it works, since I'm really only speculating.

We have enough heat, and mild enough winters, that teas do get large, though not generally as large as in CA. My Mrs. B.R. Cant is 9 ft tall, in less than ideal conditions. It is a tricky business because some of them will certainly grow low and wide for several years, then send up a tall cane, and the race is on. I expect to have to rearrange a few, but I'm trying to make the best guesses possible up front. Pretty difficult with the limited information on some of them, and wildly different sizes in different climates! I wish Vintage Gardens old website was still available. It used to be very helpful in that regard.

If you can get hold of the old "Vintage Gardens Book of Roses" published in 2006,(sort of an extensive catalogue of every rose they ever grew), it shows growth habits for each rose. I just looked, and it is available right now on Amazon for $7 - well worth it!

Jackie

Comtessedelacouche, So good to have you back with us.

Cath

Sharing sentiments with Cath - so great to see you back and read your comments, comtesse!

It's very possible that seasonal variations that comtesse writes about explain why the sizes of G. Nabonnand and Alliance Franco-Russe in the New Orleans garden we visited were the reverse of those that grow for catspat in Northern California.

$7 for the Vintage Gardens book is quite a bargain!

FWIW, I can share a quick preview in that the VG annotations do not describe individual shrub sizes for tea roses, but rather indicate their general growth habit in terms of 3 categories. I've appended here their growth habit classification for teas. And here's how they classify each of your ordered teas (they don't have some of them listed):

1 - Devoniens

2 - Comtesse Festetics Hamilton, General Gallieni, Isabella Ducrot, Le Pactole, Mme Charles, Miss Atwood, Souvenir de Pierre Notting

3 - Alexander Hill Gray, Alliance Franco-Russe, Anna Olivier, Arcadia Louisiana Tea, Etoile de Lyon, G Nabonnand, Paul Nabonnand, Princesse de Sagan (ARE version is 2)

As you will notice, theirs is yet another version in categorizing the habit growth for some of your teas...

I've also read that the Devoniensis shrub can get large over time. I have the climbing version of Devoniensis and it is own root and in a deep tree pot. It is only a few years old and easily 12ft here and well branched. This year it started blooming a lot. I think it is going to be a lovely monster in my climate.