Bobbi, I have been a rose grower my whole life. I am 66 now. I started with grafted bare root Hybrid Teas as a child that I mail ordered from Jackson & Perkins in Oregon. I moved to Alaska after my education and found species roses and rugosas and Canadian roses that did better there. When I retired, I moved to a climate with a longer growing season that I could grow all the different classes of roses. These rarer roses are often Old Garden and Antique roses both European and Asian. Here, I absolutely fell in love with Tea roses, which only grow in warm climates. So you see this is a very complicated question. Antique Roses are often favored by people who seek out rare and obscure own root nurseries who sell own root tiny plants that may take years to make a good show. Hybrid tea lovers often buy in local stores and some spray with chemicals. They can exhibit roses. They often want a showy bloom, and may be less interested in the rose as a shrub. These are I am sure broad generalizations, but it gives you some idea of the different groups. Many gardeners enjoy both types of roses too. The American rose society recently had a President Pat Shanley who put out gorgeous photos of Old Garden roses in the magazines, and now with a new President, is firmly back in the Hybrid Tea Camp touting exhibiting roses. Good luck with wherever you fit in. Some of us are born Antique Rose lovers at heart.

OMG - I think I'm starting to understand! I am going to check out the links you provided. So an Old Garden Rose doesn't necessarily mean it's an "old" rose, it can be new if it is in a class that was old???? And an Old Garden Rose is an Antique Rose? It is confusing but it is fun to learn and I look forward to adding to my garden. This year I started very small, a julia child (which is so pretty) and a couple red roses that I THINK are hybrid teas (maybe?). I did not want to invest a lot of money until I made sure my location was okay for roses. There are not a lot in my neighborhood and my back yard is full sun, very humid, all day long. After the three new ones started to grow, I bought a soul sister which came as a potted plant rather than a bare root. It is soooo tiny but has three or four beautiful blooms already (but it's so small, the blooms lay on the ground). I appreciate everything I"m learning from these forums. I read all the posts and the answers and am trying to learn so I too can grow beautiful roses!!! Thank you again!

Bobbi - the most important thing I have learned about roses in my 32 years of gardening (I did not start until my late 30s) is that the most important thing about any rose you may try to grow is that it LIKES YOUR CLIMATE! Where are you located, geographically? Some types of roses HATE hot humidity, some of them HATE very cold winters, etc etc. The rose books will not tell you this. I had to learn by trial and error. So, once we know where you are, folks on here will be able to tell you what sorts of roses might like your conditions. Another good thing to do is to walk around your neighborhood looking for roses, and if you find very happy and healthy looking ones that you like the look of, ask who they are. Local rose societies are sometimes also good sources of this information. If roses love your climate & conditions, you probably will not need to spray them with any poisons or anything else. This is much better for the environment, for you, your family, your pets, "good bugs" like bees, etc.

I was lucky - I inherited an old garden with many roses which were planted by 3 previous generations of my DH's family. So, I once I got all of them identified (which I did by posting pictures of them on here, or having rose experts come to my house, or taking cuttings of them to local "antique rose" shows where there were old rose experts) I had a good idea of what types of roses like my climate/conditions. Most of them have turned out to be old/antique roses, which is great because those are the types of roses I like best.

Jackie

Jackie indeed got a headstart that makes the rest of us green with envy. "All" she needed to learn was that not every rose was as great for her location as the ones her forebears selected.

But she also started out knowing that roses WOULD grow for her!

So -- you need to add to your posts your location location location . . . Because the roses that excel in MY garden likely wouldn't it yours. But there are lots of folks here who know just what works where you are.

When I started growing roses more seriously, I too was very confused by all the different classes of roses. I mean, when the roses look nearly alike in the photos, why are they in a different class? Why is Great Maiden’s Blush an Alba, Sharifa Asma an Austin, Jacques Cartier a Portland, Francis Meilland a Hybrid Tea, and Morden Blush a shrub? A shrub? Aren’t they all shrubs? The flowers all look fairly similar in the photos, blush pink in the center and white on the edges. It took me a while to realize that a photo doesn’t really tell you that much about a rose, and even longer to understand the differences, which can be significant. Or not, because there can be a lot of overlap, and sometimes a rose switches classes. Photos don’t tell you the size of the flower, and mostly don’t tell you how it grows (upright? bushy? climbing?) or hardiness. I'm probably going to make some errors, and I hope others correct me, and forgive punctuation and capitalization errors please.

The class of a rose can also generally tell you its character. Keep in mind that when people talk about classes of roses, that it’s how growers categorize roses to talk and think about, but each group is not comparable. For example, when you say “Modern rose” as jerijen says, they are basically saying after the first hybrid tea was created. But it doesn’t necessarily mean hybrid tea, because many roses that are not hybrid teas, such as floribundas, grandifloras, shrub roses, as you mentioned, can also be “modern”, just as Austin roses are also modern. And Old roses can be bourbons, albas, portlands, chinas. Yikes! So when someone talks about Old roses, I think about roses that are generally (but certainly not always) more loosely formed, smaller flowers, and twiggier. They have a big spring flush and can bloom after the spring flush but not generally a lot mostly in the white, pink, and purple-red colors. They generally look best when fully open. They are closer (though not necessarily “close”) to wild roses. When I think about modern roses I think about flowers that are more perfectly formed, often have glossier leaves, and larger flowers, in a broader range of colors, and look best when just beginning to open to half open. I typically think of florist style roses (although this is a gross overgeneralization).

When you say “Austin roses” it’s like saying "Calvin Klein jeans", and as you have already noticed it is a very different grouping than saying “post-60’s fashion” (comparable to “modern roses”). People say Austin roses specifically because they are devoted to his roses. You could enlarge the category to “English roses” which would be comparable to “”designer jeans” which is a broader category than “Calvin Klein jeans”, but I don’t think that term ever really caught on. Other people and companies have bred similar style roses, but after all, Austin is the one who invented and defined the term “English rose”, as a specific style of rose originally based on old roses, but breeding to repeat bloom, and a specific form. You could consider them “modern old roses” or as some people call them “modern reproductions”. I personally don’t think they look very much like old roses anymore, but neither do they look like the stereotypical “modern” rose. You may also hear people referring to Pemberton roses, or Buck roses, and there are people devoted to those breeders, just as people are devoted to certain fashion designers.

As I understand it, floribundas and grandifloras are terms used for modern roses. The creation of the hybrid tea is the defining point of modern roses. Keep in mind that to add to the confusion, “Hybrid Tea” is not the same as “Tea” roses. Hybrid Teas are typically the ones that look like florist or grocery store roses, with long straight stems and beautiful buds. Tea roses are typically old roses, which tend to be bushier, looser in flower form, and are tender so grow best in the milder climates. The two aren’t really similar at all. Photos on the web aren’t good at showing the difference. You’ve got to see them in person. Keep learning, reading (lots of good books out there) and looking and soon you will recognize the differences of the categories of roses. It’s a fun journey.

Thank you all for the comments - my, it is confusing, but I am reading everything I can and hopefully I will be able to figure out the best choices for my location. I am in Zone 7a (according to Google and the various online flower retailers) in Delaware. The winters here are cold but not Massachusetts cold - we may drop down to 3 or 5 degrees a few nights, but generally the lows are in the teens or 20s. The summers are humid humid humid!!! Today it is a pretty cool 88 with about 80% humidity and this coming weekend it will be in the upper 90s and humid (ick). My backyard faces south and I only have one large oak tree which provides dappled shade in the morning. I would love to plant some roses out front but there is not really a spot that gets a full day of sun between facing North and a couple large trees. I am so grateful for all the info - I'm going to re-read everything!

Could you possibly post some pics of your yard and any inspirational photos? That might help narrow things down in terms of which roses might be best in which places. We have slightly colder winters, but similar summers here in the Ohio river valley, but our soil is very basic and clay. There are a few posters from your area. I suspect your biggest issue will be blackspot, so it's best to find roses that are at least somewhat resistant to it in your area and those nearby will know best as there are many different strains. : (( This is very exciting. I, myself have a mix of about 70% "old" roses with the rest Austins and a few moderns. I go more by if it suits my needs, but I'm also a collector and love the history of the older varieties. I reckon if I get enough different roses at least a few will do well. So far, so good!

I get the impression that a lot of these flower classification -- divisions really -- owe a lot to how they used to be displayed at exhibitions of flower societies. In other words they were not completely arbitrary, but not completely logical, either.

To me, "antique" means "anything at least 100 years old", and therefore could be applied to a Modern Rose. And going the other way, there are a few Old Garden Roses that are too young to be considered antiques -- by my own definition, at least. So to make things easier, don't think of them as "Modern Roses" but rather as "Modern Rose Classes". And the same thing for the OGRs -- think of them as "Old Garden Rose Classes".

"Austin Roses" would be those bred by David Austin himself, or his company. There's really not much uniting them except that they're "new old-fashioned roses" and that they came out of the same hybridizing outfit. Because he was inspired by the old roses, you'll see some that appear Noisette-like, Bourbon-like, Portland-like, etc. as well as a few Ramblers and Species-Hybrids. There are also roses of this "old-rose inspiration" by other breeders, and while they'd blend in with Austins in a garden, they're obviously not Austins because Austin didn't breed them. So, because they're all a mixed bag, most get thrown into the catch-all "Shrub" class, though a few are called Hybrid Rugosa, Hybrid Spinosissima, Rambler, etc. where those classifications fit.

:-)

~Christopher

Bobbi, in general I tell people to beware of general rose books, as they tend to be encyclopedic, but give heights sizes, bloom times, etc. which only jibe with where the author actually gardens. However, there is one which you might find helpful. It is written by someone who gardens in Ohio in zone 6, which as Christopher says above, is pretty close to your conditions. The name of the book is "Right Rose, Right Place", and it is written by a person who knows a LOT about roses called Peter Schneider. It contains info on lots of different kinds of roses, antiques, moderns, etc., as long as they will grow in his garden! It is a lovely book, and very easy to understand. It has info about problems, pruning, etc.

Jackie

I just looked Right Rose, Right Place up on Amazon - it is a hardcover with beautiful illustrations. They have used copies for about $12, which is well worth it.

Jackie

I believe she is located in the state of Delaware, not the town in Ohio. Any similarity between the two, aside from name, is purely coincidental.

For more relevant, local information, if you can find Ethelyn Keays book, Old Roses, anything by Leonie Bell, or anything connected with Longwood/Winterthur, those would be good.

Right Rose,Right Place is one of my favorite most used books, but I am in Ohio Z6 and try to zone up most of my roses. Peter's garden is Z5, btw which make it double nice for choosing roses he grows. He's also a wonderful source for unusual roses. ThanKs for the other references Mad.

My comments come late (we've been having problems, now solved, with our Internet connection) but I wanted to add this about the difference between "Old" and "Modern" roses: the distinction doesn't mean that either group has specific physical characteristics that the other lacks. Old, and modern, roses can be repeat-flowering or once-flowering; they can be miniatures, shrubs, climbers; they can have large or little blooms; all the colors of roses can be found in both groups; they can be fussy or tough, disease-prone or healthy; they can have many different flower forms; they can be fragrant or not. Very broadly speaking, the older roses are less hybridized than moderns, though even that isn't always true. I think rose growers tend to fall into two different camps, with plenty of overlap: those who chiefly pay attention to the flowers, and regard the plant as a support system for the blooms; and those who love rose blooms, yes, but value the plant as a whole. Many, not all, old roses are grown by gardeners who appreciate the ornamental effect of their habit, foliage, hips, and other features. I think these same gardeners also frequently like Hybrid Musks, ramblers, the David Austin roses, and any number of modern shrub roses.

Wow - thank you everyone! This is so much great info and advice. I was primarily concerned with winters so I tried to pick roses that would be okay down to zone 5 because I read (on this forum I think) to look for two zones colder than where you are located. I am going to order the book/s listed above. I have looked around my neighborhood and there are not a lot of rose growers - a couple people have knock out roses. There is one home with some beautiful roses several streets away from me so if I ever see anyone outside, I will ask about them. Thank you all again!!!

TBL, I zone up one zone and found that helps immensely. I imagine if you do the same you will be fine as most roses can be grown in Z7. The main difficulty is with climbers or certain non-vigorous roses. It's also important to look for micro-climates. For instance, the area next to my house is growing a vigorous Z6 climber, but down the hill where cold air pools, Z6 and even Z5 bushes have been killed to the ground. I would definitely plan a visit to a local or regional rose garden. It's how I've really seen what does best at different times of the year.

The "hardy to two zones colder" rule was probably intended for roses kept in pots and left out over Winter. If you're in Delaware zone 7, you'd be OK with a great many roses, except for Banksians, and climbing Teas and Tea-Noisettes should probably be grown against a south-facing wall if you want to keep some cane over Winter. Otherwise, most of the rest would get through typical-for-your-area Winters. Don't be afraid to zone-push with some tender things, but if you do, either plant against a south-facing wall, or cover and protect for Winter, or plant in all-day sun so they can regrow what Winters take away.

:-)

~Christopher

Thank you Christopher - it looks like you and I are in the same area. I'm in Northern Delaware, practically on the tripoint so we have very similar weather!