I love the history of the breeders. Especially Rudolph Geschwind, people thought he was nuts to use r. Setigera and he bred some absolutely beautiful and hardy roses. His crops were destroyed and he started over. Stuff like that really interests me.

Plus I just love roses.

I love to watch the bud formation and how petals are formed and then they change color with the stage they are in. Also the fragrance!!

Of couirse they're beautiful, not the just the flowers, but the buds and leaves and growth are so varied and interesting. There are so many different kinds of roses to explore. They're easy! They're tough! They're marvelously fragrant! They grow fast! They're so inexpensive (relatively) and so readily available (relatively)! You can propagate them! But none of this would matter, if they weren't beautiful and fragrant.

What first drew me to roses is their beauty and of course the fragrance and repeat bloom. Even when I was a beginner and didn’t have a clue what I was doing they would reward me with beautiful blooms, and when I finally became knowledgeable enough to learn what I needed to do to help them thrive year after year, that’s when they really became rewarding! Over the years as I’ve become better informed about the different varieties, not just Hybrid Teas, which I still love and have in abundance, I have an even bigger appreciation of their beauty, especially learning about all the different Old Garden Roses. Although my collection of those is very limited, they are so beautiful and fragrant, and for me many are the first to bloom, and bring so much joy to the long awaited season. No two rose years are the same and some are better than others, but even when it’s not a great rose season, there is always something to get excited about!

I love their fragrance and their form -- the movements and patterns created by their petals. There is something sublime in those arrangements. I love their abundance, their generosity, and their ephemerality. The long history of human involvement with roses, and the fact that they are loved by people from so many different cultures, suggests that there is something about these plants that speaks deeply to us as a species. It makes sense, because we have evolved together.

Well said everyone! I too am captivated by their alluring fragrance, form, and color. One of the few flowers that make the heart sings.

The combination of beauty, fragrance, and rebloom. Mainly, I think it's beauty and rebloom - we still grow roses that aren't fragrant because they are beautiful and make good cut flowers, letting us bring the beauty inside. Fragrant roses that are good for cutting (the Mr. Lincolns and Oklahomas of the rose world) persist in home garden commerce even if they aren't the handsomest or healthiest garden plants. There aren't many plants (perennials, anyway) that can rival roses in interest offered for garden space used, IMO.

In my area, if you excluded roses your options for fragrant plants would be mostly once bloomers (usually spring) and some annuals (which can be hard to start or even find). With a rose that sets hips as well, you get fall interest off the same plant that gave you all those flowers over the spring and summer.

...speaking of fragrant annuals, that reminds me - I need to get some stock and alyssum going!

I remember my parents having a large rectangle of roses, and my dad being inordinately proud of the fact that these were specially ordered Jackson&Perkins roses. To me they might as well have been plastic for all the charm and interest they held for me. It wasn't until I visited the UC Berkeley Botanic Garden, and spotted a huge specimen of Mutabilis that was covered from top to bottom in magical, multicolored blooms, that I fell in love......and I fell hard. I read every book about old roses in every library within driving distance, and then bought every book I could find about old roses. It became a passionate endeavor, with my acquiring as many roses as I could in my Sacramento garden. I then moved back to San Diego County and began another rose garden on a 5 acre plot in the country, and then after ten years (and a divorce) in a city garden, and then finally the last garden here in my most cherished piece of land of all. I would have to say that for me it's the incredible variety and diversity of the old roses (and now the modern roses that look "old) that captured my imagination and sent me on flights of history and geography and art and literature. The richness of it all, and the incredible beauty, have held me spellbound ever since.

I grows lots of different flowers and I like them all but I love roses. I guess it is because of their beauty and that there are so many different types. I am never bored.

I have a garden full of all kinds of beautiful flowers but the roses are something special. There is a grandeur about them. They stand regally in their array of beautiful blooms and demand your attention. They are both delicate and strong. They lure you in with their fragrance and then shun you with their thorns. Very complicated and simply beautiful!

So lovely, Lisa, and the white flowers are a perfect foil for the deep pink rose blooms.

That is so beautiful Lisa, and there are so many flowers that make good companions to roses.

The beauty, the color, the form . . . But all that would be much less were it not for the history ... the stories. In many cases, the specific stories of one rose. When I walk around the garden, every plant reminds me of a place, an event, a person, or persons. And in the round of the garden, I spend time with all of them.

For me it is the difficulty. Being in zone four most roses are not supposed to do well. That and not many Minnesotans have very many varieties. My first house I started planting in clay. Roses were one of the few plants to return after our brutal winters. Hence my obsession started.... And when people started sayingsayi I couldn't... I said watch me!!

Pretty much everything, except thorns sometimes. I, like many, started out with good 'ole hydrid teas and then, thanks to this site and many others, I fell in love with old garden roses, especially tea roses. Thankfully I live in a climate where I can grow them (one of the solaces of living in a hot, hot climate which I don't love). There is just something about old roses that I find enchanting; they are so elegant and graceful. I also love some modern roses as well. Roses are the stars in my garden but I like planting other plants to "co-star" with them.

This plant,the Duranta Repens looks lovely with my pink and purple roses and reminds me of lilacs, which I cannot grow. Anyone grow this in hot climates?

Debby, that's so beautiful. It looks great with the white flowers. I hadn't heard of this plant and that's surprising since I imagine it would do well here, where the climate seems somewhat similar to yours, although perhaps a little cooler.

Ingrid, they are great plants here. Considered invasive in warm, rainy climates but aren't here. They take full sun and some water but not a lot. Very pretty and the pollinators love them. They can grow as a bush or this one has been trained more tree-like (to keep it out of my roses!). They grow well with roses.

Roses remind me of my late mother. Growing up without a father (he died when I was five) things were tight, but my mother always took time to grow roses. She had old fashioned roses that she got from her old home place and the fragrance was unbelievable. She tried to get me interested in helping her take care of them, but being the youthful ignoramus I was, I didn't do it. When I finally decided to start growing my own, she gave me advice, but I always thought I missed something special not working with her when I was growing up. When she passed, I delivered the eulogy at her funeral, and the first thing I said was that I would always remember the perfume she wore because it had almost as lovely a fragrance as the roses she grew.

What a beautiful heartwarming story!

I think there is a word that represents what rose gardening gives me, and that is - hope. With every trip into the garden, I have hope, that, any particular rose on any particular day has given me ... a new bloom, a form I've never seen, a depth of color that is unusual, a fragrance that smells divine, fill in the blanks! Every effort, is for some new and possibly unexpected result in the future. I am consistently "wowed" in the garden. In a world of stresses, and where the news surrounding us sometimes feels devoid of hope, all of my problems and stresses melt away when in the midst of my roses. Deadheading, pruning, preening, mulching, transforms me into a place that feels timeless. I feel like I am always smiling in this world. My pups and outside feral kitties, always seem at peace in this space with me, also seemingly mesmerized by this parallel universe. It is a place of magic, and love, and ... hope!

One day, before massive social media, when print was more in fashion, I saw a picture of a rose on the front of a magazine. I was captivated and purchased the magazine. The rose was Mrs. John Laing. There was also a beautiful picture of Mutabalis in this magazine. There was something about it that captivated me too, unfortunately, it took actual rose growing before I really figured out why.

The next day, I visited the local nursery looking for both roses and stumbled upon knockouts, a bunch of hybrid teas and a few David Austin Roses. We had just completed building a home on a blank slate piece of land, had a swimming pool custom built and installed and landscaped the backyard. Talk about bad timing for the beginning of a rose obsession!

I fell in love with the beauty of rose blooms! Like any obsessed person, within two years, I had purchased 125 roses and watched how they integrated with the existing landscape. Over a decade later, it was a desire for something else, that prompted my internet search, which led me to the Antique Rose Forum. My obsession veered off in that direction. Now, I am "particular" related to roses. I continue to be attracted to beautiful blooms, but fragrance, how a bush fits into the landscape, the leaves and how they move during a gentle breeze, etc., all factor into what I think makes roses so special and keeps me obsessed.

I cannot imagine having any kind of living space sans roses...