I'm going to reply to bump this up, because I think it is a fascinating topic.

The idea that the previous owner's great grandma planted a rose or two in that yard, and that they are still there, is quite intriguing. I wonder what you have? If you take pictures of the flowers, canes, leaves, and hips this season, someone here might be able to identify your mystery roses for you. You might have something really rare or interesting!

Hybrid tea roses are not, as you indicate, ideal for making tea. Their name comes from the fact that they were produced by crossing various other sorts of roses with old tea roses (which have genetics from China, and rebloom prolifically, but also nod their flowers and form enormous bushes). Those old tea roses sometimes have a scent reminiscent of tea, which could be the source of their name. Another possible source for the name "tea rose" is the fact that they would have been brought over with traders bringing tea from China.

For rose hip tea, my guess is that you will want some old, once-blooming garden roses, or the wild roses you mention, to make delicious hips. Or maybe rugosas, as Shelia mentions. Her suggestion to contact High Country is a great one!

Roses do not have to be difficult at all. How difficult they are largely depends on the sort of rose you are dealing with, and the place you are planting it. If you give your roses a sunny spot in fertile soil, with enough access to water, they should be happy. Some varieties are more picky than others, so do some searching on Gardenweb for varieties that people have success with in no-spray situations. Many old roses do fine in no-spray gardens, and are survivors (like the ones in your garden). They may get a bit of black spot or whatnot, but generally not to a debilitating degree. Pruning requirements vary, depending on what sort of rose it is. One solid rule is: to keep them healthy, remove all dead wood every spring. Underplanting with herbs and flowers is fine, and most people who grow old fashioned roses do this (but you wouldn't want to plant anything really aggressive next to your roses). In fact the Apothecary's Rose (Rosa gallica officinalis) was grown in herb beds and used for medicinal purposes for centuries. Some old roses (including the Apothecary's rose) send out suckers, so be aware of that when planting.

Another thing you might want to look into would be roses whose petals are really fragrant, to add petals to your tea. You could look into the roses that are used for perfume, such as Kazanlik or Ispahan.

When you make you figure this out, and learn about making rose hip tea from experience, please do let us know your findings! I'd love to know more about this topic.

I've had good luck with rosa rugosas I got from Gurneys a few years ago. Make sure you read about rugosa care (I keep reading they hate liquid fertilizers so mine just get mulch, sun, rain). A lot of info says to wait for the hips to be touched by frost before harvest; if I did that, mine would be moldy so I've learned to harvest when they are at their best: plump and red in summer, then I will get another flush of flowers and a few more hips (I'm in 7b). Once at their peak, no point in waiting any longer to harvest them. I've made that mistake, being greedy, thinking they'll get bigger or something... they just decline. Think of them as what they are, a fruit, and harvest accordingly. You can always freeze them until you have enough to process.

Mine are disease free, do best when they get full sun (some years they've been more shaded and that really hurt production). They make a vase-shaped plant and send runners so the patch is growing.

Goes without saying: do not deadhead if you want hips! Inside the hips you'll find seeds and a multitude of tiny little hairs that supposedly were the original itch powder. Google "how to clean rose hips" for some ideas on how to handle that. My rugosa hips are pretty big so I cut them in half, scoop out the innards, rinse, quarter/chop if I want small pieces, then either air dry or dry in the dehydrator. On their own, they make a delightfully fruity tea.

Ditto KS about fragrant rose and their petals. I've added them to teas and made rose petal jam and jelly from a Zephirine Drouhin rose. The jelly is unlike anything else I've ever tasted. Some folks finely grind the petals for other uses (e.g. cosmetics). I air-dry petals then store in air-tight containers; they keep their scent for years.

Oh, and look at this thread: https://www.houzz.com/discussions/best-roses-for-tasty-tea-hips-dsvw-vd~1569033

Alba semi-plena always gives me a nice crop of plump, tasty hips.

These are some rugosa hips from last year; the biggest ones can be close to 3/4" wide. The bigger they are, the easier to clean (you get more fleshy bits).

Oh gosh, apparently I asked about this 5 years ago and plain ole forgot I had done so. Now I feel silly. But I'm getting great responses so far in this thread so very appreciative of my forgetfulness, lol.

The notion of planting a medicinal and/or very fragrant roses appeals to me too. For teas, and also my sister makes soaps and balms and such and probably would like some of that action too. I already grow other plants for this, and I definitely have the space along the border for a few different roses.

The border is in a L shape of approximately 110-140 feet, with the short side facing west, and the long side on the south. It's in full sun all day long. It outlines two sides of the stable yard I'm taking over for future veggie garden space. So having the thorny roses along the fenceline is a good thing.

Good to know about the potential invasive thing with roses. I've encountered this a little bit with some of the thorny berries, but hadn't really thought about roses doing this. But then there's a bush that I don't know what it is other than bigger than me tall and around out back that has been pretty much swallowed by some sort of wild rose that I probably should have figured this could happen. We have a family of birds that live in it. It makes tiny hips and isn't smelly when in bloom.

I think a couple of the rose bushes I have might make hips around the size of what's in your photo FruitCat. There's a bush outside my bedroom that makes nice smelling flowers of little pink blooms and it's all overgrown because I haven't touched it since I moved in here in 2011. And the great gma rose that has seen a lot of stress down by the fence has darker pinker blooms and makes bigger hips.

Those are the two hips I tasted, and now that I think about the timeframe- it was fall of 2016 that I tasted those hips, not last fall. Got to thinking about my sis and I doing a quickie crush test with them using cheesecloth to keep the tinglers out. They were ok, but not, hmm.. vibrant? like packaged rose hips are.. but we picked them after the touches of frost like I had read before about harvest. I think this year I'll cut at least a few of them when they are plump and happy like the fruits I intend them to be.

Thanks for all the help so far folks.

If it was me, since I adore the delicacy of single roses, the distinctive character of the wild bushes and the amazing variety of colours, shapes and textures their fruit come in, I'd be very tempted to grow a really wide variety of species roses - one of each, basically! (Or at least, those available in the US and suitable for your climate.) Then I'd spend a few years having fun experimenting with them all for culinary etc purposes, while enjoying the fabulous autumnal spectacle...

I wish I had a really good reference to give you for pics and descriptions, but sadly, I don't know of any online.

ETA: Just found this:

http://orangeblossoms.orangemuseum.com.au/pages/designers/Roses_brochure.pdf

except you can't see the whole bushes, and the hips are barely big enough to make out...

And this one has a few photos:

https://www.gardenersworld.com/plants/roses-for-hips/

You could look up any that interest you on HelpMeFind for photos and further descriptions; then click on the 'Buy From' tab for suppliers.

Oh, here we go - an article from HMF with a good long list at the end, with hip descriptions. Click on them for more info on the plant as a whole.

https://www.helpmefind.com/gardening/ezine.php?publicationID=251&js=0&tab=1

It's very frustrating that no-one really tells you in detail about specific flavours and suitability for different culinary uses eg tea vs jelly, relishes, etc. But I suspect flavour may be at least in part influenced by soil and other growing conditions (eg so many people recommend rugosa hips, and yet I've also heard others expressing disappointment at their comparatively dull flavour and dry texture. Also, if it's drying them for tea you're mainly interested in, you would probably do better with smaller hips like R. canina, the dog rose - the most common kind traditionally used in Britain for food and medicine.

If you did decide to grow and experiment with lots of different kinds, perhaps you could write the definitive book on the subject!

If you're still around, Beesneeds, check out Sheila's post re some spinosissimas up for grabs, if you're interested... :-)