Your roses look great, Karen! Sounds like you made it through a lot of challenges.

Thx Karen, I am in 6a as well. I lost pilgrim, mr Lincoln and cinco demayo. It was a bad winter indeed. Gertrude and Tess suffered some due back but not that bad. I will move scepter d’isle to the top of my list:)

Karen, I got really bad midge damage this year, I was too busy this spring, forgot to treat roses earlier.

Wow they look beautiful! I'm not sure about old garden roses but I imagine the fragrance would be more complex as they aren't bred the heck out of yet to get a hybrid tea shape or disease resistance. Just my guess ! I love the shape of MB and your sceptred isle is beautiful too !! They all are of course!

IT's nice to have a forum to come to enjoy and admire roses, learn about new things, and to vent a little when things are not as rosy for roses. I guess I should expect it with growing anything esp. roses where good blooms are so dependent on so many factors. But it is still hard when you are the one affected.

Thanks everyone for your support and encouragement. It is better to have some good roses than none at all.

Summers, so sorry about your midge damage. I know what it is like! It is still not too late to apply something though. One terrible thing about midge is that it is not going away without intervention.

Lilyfinch, I have not thought of it that way! Now, that makes a lot of sense regarding OGR's fragrance. Its unique fragrance must be one of the greater appeal for growing them. This is my first OGR experience so I am very pleasantly surprised by it. It took these 3 years to provide the nice blooms and the complex scent.

Moses, I think maybe that is why it takes my MB 3 years to produce these nice blooms and this remarkable scent. Mine are own root. I was pretty discouraged about them before this flush because they did not bloom much but just grew foliage. Though whatever its shortcomings may be, its scent certainly makes up for them. I think I am hooked on it. :)

Your blooms look great Karen! Sorry to here about the setback of some of your roses...We have some rose bushes just now starting to bloom because of winter...

Moses, that is so so terrible! How could they even come to such a decision after so much time and resources had been devoted to produce such glorious effect. What a great loss for the garden as well as for the public not to have any more chance to see such beautiful specimens and to smell this wonderful rose. Now that I have experienced MB, I will grow it anywhere that I move to. It has reached a must have rose status. For the scent alone is so worth it that I can easily and readily forgive anything negative about it.

Karen,

Old timer, strongly hybrid tea proponents, who had blinders on their eyes to anything but hybrid tea types. They just could not see any merit in OGRs. The garden's board of directors had personnel changes and the last OGR lover was gone...no one left to defend the OGR beds...then the shovels came out.

Now, I am a hybrid tea lover, especially with the new disease resistant varieties being marketed these days, but I also hold all classes of roses in great regard. Each has its special merits.

I tried Marchesa Boccella in my garden because of how well it performed in the public one, but got it own root not knowing that was a mistake. In spite of my best of care, it limped along with weak canes, but liked to bloom alot. It never got over 20" tall after quite a few years. I shovel pruned mine some years ago. I hope to get a multiflora rootstock version one day soon, since my conclusion is that it will perform outstandingly that way, the way it did in the public garden. The care if got there was only fair. The soil there was not good, yet it did so well. It was sprayer regularly, watered well, and fertilizer adequately, but again, it grew in horrible, almost waterlogged, reported to be pyrite clay soil, about a foot below the topsoil....not a good base. Roots would stop when they reached that base.

Moses