Hmmm, I'm assuming you and I are in the same climate and Tiffany IS my best pink fragrant hybrid tea: strongly fragrant, great disease resistance no spray, good cut flower. I don't notice that it dislikes wet weather more than others. I grow Elle, The MacCartney Rose, Secret, and Perfume Delight and while all are strongly fragrant, all have more disease problems than Tiffany, so I couldn't really recommend them for the PNW (for no or low sprayers, anyway.) Elle is the most similar to Tiffany (very similar fragrance, similar yellow interior, and better cut flower) so you might want to start with her and see how you find her to open up in the rain. (PS Her growth habit is short and spready, where Tiffany is taller and more upright.) Hope that helps! Dawn

Update: most of my roses are here and ready to go in (hopefully next week). I ended up with: MAC ZD (for porch front and side) GT (for the side of the house, next to ZD) JtheO Comtes de Champagne Peace Sharifa Asma Stanwell Perpetual New Dawn (to train into a tree in the yard) Anne Hathaway Paul Shirville Apothecary's Rose and Alba Semiplena for the herb garden I'm still waiting to find Bolero, which sounds very promising, and Evelyn, which I might keep in a pot to see how it does. Most of the others will be planted in a circle around a small fountain at the front of the house. I'm planning to put MAC at the back; my vision is to have it growing fairly tall to screen our bay window, and to fan out on the sides (assuming i can convince it to do so) to achieve the look of an arching fountain of blooms. Here's my question: I ordered two MACs. Would I be crazy to plant them next to each other to get a more "fountainy" look? I don't know if they will achieve the monstrous proportions here in NJ that I see in pics from CA. Am I better off putting the second one on the other side of the tree with New Dawn, or somewhere else altogether?

People say Duchesse de Rohan is even more fragrant than Marchesa Boccella/ Jacques Cartier. http://www.helpmefind.com/rose/l.php?l=21.235357 Other people also say that it takes a while before it reblooms -- five years, according to someone on garden web. On the strength of this information, I bought one, but it is still a little band. On the other hand, Jacques Cartier is blooming for me -- it is like the ever-ready bunny. The fragrance is divine and the leaves very pretty. But in the hot weather the blooms go by in a flash. I am glad for the roses to take a rest and start up again in the fall when things get cooler. A new David Austin rose to look out for is Olivia Rose Austin, which is not available here yet. People say it could be his healthiest and most fragrant yet.

You already got terrific responses to your questions, but to summarize: 1. Cold zones bury the graft because we need winter survival. Warm zones don't bury it (that's where the advice comes from) because they don't worry about survival and don't want the rootstock to grow suckers if buried. In cold zones, if we don't bury the graft all we may have left is the rootstock surviving, so we don't really have a choice if we're growing fussy HTs and floribundas. 2. You find the best cool tips about things like alfalfa (spreading alfalfa hay around your bushes in spring really can boost cane growth) and other rose ideas here on GardenWeb. Seriously, that's a good reason to keep checking in here and we try to be helpful when we get questions. Paul Zimmerman also has some good tips on his website, though he's in zone 7 and occasionally some of his tips don't apply to colder zones (like pruning recommendations). 3. We only prune to the ground if we have to. If we have 8-12" of surviving healthy cane we throw a rose party nearby. The recommendations to prune a rose back to encourage new growth are also for warmer zones where they don't have significant cane death and need to prune out old growth to rejuvenate it. That is not an issue for 80-90% of my roses, but the few that always have surviving cane will get maybe a third of their canes pruned down to 2' or so every year or two to keep the canes active. As I say, this is almost never needed on HTs but instead shrubs. I wouldn't do that for a climber since you want the main canes to stay long, but you can prune back the laterals that branch off the main cane. A bottom line point to keep in mind as you filter rose advice is to take it from places that are similar to your climate. Warm zone advice doesn't translate well to cold zones, and dry zone advice may not translate well to damp climates. Cynthia