Diane: Gorgeous deep yellow on your Bernstein rose !! South Africa is on my wish-list since it has deep yellow blooms and dark-green glossy leaves (means it's a waterhog and will like my wet & poor drainage clay with high-rain). Neil Diamond has glossy leaves but it's a total wimp as own-root, I should had bought Parade Day (with glossy leaves) and a better bloomer. Below is my wimpy Neil Diamond: I saw Austin rose Strawberry Hill at nearby rose park (alkaline clay) and leaves are glossy but blooms had zero scent, so I never buy Strawberry Hill. Olivia Austin rose has glossy leaves, but I have too many light pinks already. I took out Falstaff from my order from GardenRoses LLC and replace with GLOSSY leaves The Generous Gardener since it does well for a nearby friend with wet clay soil & high rain climate. I have too many reds already. My experience with glossy leaves roses: prefer wet clay and soil high in potassium. Glossy leaves can take my poor-drainage clay and high-rain climate without blackspots. A friend (Khalid in Pakistan) posted a pic. of his Tradescant with glossy leaves. Another friend recently gave me a rooting of his VERY GLOSSY leaves Tradescant,, below pic. is his .. I'll make sure that own-root Tradescant gets partial shade and in soaking wet clay.

I'll stick with Roses Unlimited; they ship a better-developed rose with a larger root system which is well worth the premium we have to pay. This small park (arboretum) where I volunteer plants one of each variety. I'll order it in the spring and grow it on until we have a good rootball (2 gal.) Hoping it will bloom well with our standard watering. We have a lot of Earthkinds so our roses aren't exactly pampered.

Ann: Princess Charlene de Monaco loves my dense alkaline clay (now at 10 feet tall on Dec. 9), but Queen Nefertiti is wimpy in my dense clay (1.5 foot tall after 2 years) .. I suspect it prefers fluffier soil and full sun, which I don't have .. also it blackspots during tons of acidic rain, so it needs fast drainage. Gravels around plants deter voles .. voles don't like to dig through sharp gravels. From the web: "Voles love to feed on bulbs, especially ones planted more shallow in the soil. You can add pea gravel around the bulb to discourage the voles from eating the bulbs. If that doesn’t work, mesh fencing or chicken wire buried below and above the ground at 4 to 6″ can work wonders in keeping voles out of beds and gardens." From Permies.com: "Michael Phillips (The New Organic Grower, groworganicapples.com) recommends a couple feet diameter circle of gravel around each tree. The voles don't seem to want to burrow through it to reach the trunks." Below is Queen Nefertiti as 2nd-year own-root in my dense clay, 4 hrs. of sun:

Rose varieties that don't branch can be encouraged to by changing the direction of growth of the cane. As long a cane is vertical, it may refuse to branch while a horizontal cane will try to branch and bloom from every node. Different rose varieties require different techniques to encourage branching . Pruning is both a science as an art. I try to find what works and repeat it. These a some techniques I use to promote branching. The simplest is to do no pruning at all and allow the canes to fall over with their own weight. This will create an arching look but does take up a lot of room. A fan shape trellis behind the rose will enable you to train the canes to be more horizontal. For some roses, pruning them in a horizontal plane across the top will work. The outer canes will be longer than the center ones, causing the outer canes to lean away from the center. Occasionally I have used "pegging", pinning branches to the ground with landscape staples.