I don’t have many HTs. I had to look up Poseidon to verify it’s not one.

Sunny Sky is my best. I think it gets a little blackspot lower leaves no spray in Sept. Foliage is nice color; reasonable fruity fragrance. Good flower production season long, though not as outstanding as something like Cream Veranda. Blooms are nice, though I don’t remember if they fade - I don’t think so, or flatten out - they might - with ageing.

Not a wimpy rose at all, even though I planted it (at least 5 years ago) in 100% homemade compost ( 0% mineral soil), which it supposed to doom a rose.

Dee-lish may turn out to be as good or better. I just got it last year, based largely on your recommendation. So far looks promising.

I won't comment as my roses never get BS, so I can't be of help....but I'm going to enjoy hearing about the healthy roses here (and seeing pictures!). :)

Same as Carol. No disease in the desert, so all my HTs are disease free, and they are pretty nontraditional HTs, too. Ascot, Rouge Royale, Abbaye de Cluny, Dainty Bess, Augusta Luise, Twilight Zone, Wild Blue Yonder, etc. Diane

Lots of humidity here in Georgia so roses have a lot of BS pressure. These roses are completely disease free: Sunshine DayDream, Bliss Perfuma, Earth Angel, Dick Clark, Princess Charlene, Mother of Pearl, Kashmir, mme Anisette. I have more but not really HTs.

For hybrid teas I’m gonna add a vote to

Dee-lish and also mention Wedding Bells and Savannah. I’m trying to remember (and I’ve only got one cup of tea in me so far) but I don’t think any of them had blackspot all year, not even at the end of fall.

@MasLovesRoses_z8a GA I'm not into HTs, but I do drool over Mme. Anisette. Plus, if it smells the way the name implies, I'd love to enjoy that fragrance. Maybe one day 🙃

@Mischievous Magpie (CO 5b) I've had a bumpy relationship with the Madame. Her blooms are absolutely breathtaking but she was a once bloomer for me last year. She has gorgeous green foliage that is about 12 feet tall even with pruning. If she wants to be tall, that is fine. I'll give her something to climb on but she needs to bloom more this year or her little diva bum will be out of here. :)

My only disease free (98%) blackspot free hybrid tea is Dark Desire.

Princess Charlene is decent in full sun also but still loses more than half her leaves. Dark desire here never ever has lost more than a few leaves on the bottom until hard winter, but others haven’t had the same luck. Maybe my strain of Blackspot is just different.

I personally just shy away from almost all hybrid teas. Some of the Kordes grandifloras like Madame A and Crazy love do better when it comes to blackspot here.

Earth angel is not a hybrid tea but she is completly clean here.

Francis Meilland. Super vigor, large flowers, absolutely clean and intense fragrance.

Rifis,

I will place Sunny Sky on my future purchase list....had my eye on it for some time, but wasn't sure about its free blooming nature (which some Kordes roses, as robust as they are, seem to lag behind in, stingy with blooms), or its flower form, even though it's registered for exhibition as a hybrid tea. Some so called hybrid teas are not the classic hybrid tea flower form, which is OK in some ways since I don't exhibit, but not others. As much as I like my Dee-Lish bushes(4), the flower form is not classic HT at all at any stage of the bloom's progression. Of course, it is still a beautiful bloom in its own.

Why I'm stuck on hybrid teas, especially new, disease free varieties, is mostly because of their upright, not too pretty (to most people), standing alone, bush forms. Also, the classic hybrid tea bloom form draws me in. This skinny, perhaps unappealing bush form suits my one and only 18' X 8' rose bed design perfectly. Flowers mostly at the top of a columnar bush make the mass effect I am after work best.

Centerpiece type rose bushes, ones whose bush form is aesthetically balanced visually don't work at all. The room they take up, and the flowers sprouting all over the bush, not just at the top, make them poor candidates. All the side blooms are obscured by neighboring bushes.

If you have seen Memorial Day's bush form (which I don't grow because of its disease issues here), very columnar with blooms at the top 1/4, that's the perfect bush form for my rose bed. Although, MD grows too tall at 6+', also.

Thanks for your input.

Moses

@MasLovesRoses_z8a GA Your Madame Anisette is 12 feet tall! Woah. I thought Poseidon was tall for me and he's only 7 feet by the end of summer. I've only had madam Anisette for two summers and now I'm excited. I have her next to a trellis with native honeysuckle so I guess I'll just train her sideways and see what happens.

Only 7 feet? Lol. Sad zone 5 noises.

Moses, do you have Veterans Honor. If is typical Hybrid tea and the blooms last forever.

Kristine, I don't have Veteran's Honor but will research it. It looks beautiful, and flower staying power is always a plus. Thanks for the recommendation.

Moses

Moses, I would only suggest two, but unfortunately, I'm not sure either would survive your winters: Tiffany, and Belinda's Dream (an offspring of Tiffany) are both highly disease resistant. BD is technically a "shrub", but the blooms are classically high-centered, and mostly born singly. I don't grow many modern roses, but I wouldn't be without these two.

John

John,

Belinda's Dream, and I planted a number of them in my garden when I first discovered it some years back, just never thrived for me. It liked to repeat bloom very well, but just did not put on size. Not sure why, but it could have been my winters were too hard on it and come spring, it had to start from such a diminished point that it never gained any headway year by year. Long gone now.

Tiffany is probably one of the top 10 HTs for classic beauty, but alas, it black spots badly here if not sprayed.

Thanks for your valued input.

Moses

Moses, I hate to hear about Tiffany and Belinda's Dream for you, though I suspected one or both might not survive your winters. For me, T is one of my healthiest roses, though I do spray it once or twice...nothing like a "spray program" at all. And BD is nearly spotless here, and quite robust. It just goes to show that a lot of advice is useless if it's not from someone VERY local to you! lol. There are at least five strains of BS in the US. Some areas have none because of climate conditions, and some areas are cursed with all five types. But still, as bad as BS is here on most modern roses, I held out some hope for these two roses for you.

I do hope you find several new roses that suit your needs.

John

I follow @mrs.roselady on Instagram. She had great things to say, in a post today, about Ginger Syllabub and how vigorous and disease free it is. She lives in the very black spot prone Pacific Northwest.

I have a bed a red HTs and accidentally got Dark Desire.

Its completely disease free for me while the others (Oklahoma, Chrysler Imperial, Mister Lincoln, Black Magic) defoliate from blackspot.

The new foliage is a silvery blue and in fact, the canes are purple.

Wedding Bells. It is one of my very cleanest roses and I'm in a very high bs pressure area in the southeast. Surprisingly--considered how big and petal dense the blooms are--I get several excellent flushes a year. Here it is in the middle of October when even my most disease free roses have given up the ghost for the year. Not the greatest picture, but you can see how clean the whole shrub is:

Looking a little nicer:

I should add I do not spray at all for blackspot.

JC,

I think I will give Dark Desire a second try. My first attempt with it ended in a shovel prune mostly because the bloom and foliage color was so dark, it looked like there was a hole in the rose bed where it was planted. Siteing it better may cancel that effect. It sure is a lovely rose.

Thanks for your response.

Moses

subk3,

I have two young Wedding Bells which are showing great promise. Glad I got them. Thanks for reaffirming my adding them to my garden...looks like they will be keepers.

Moses

Stephanie,

Ginger Syllabub is one I had my eye on for some time. Thanks for your affirmation.

Moses

Mine is in afternoon sun only and grafted on Dr Huey.

For color reference, Oklahoma is the dark red to its left in the 2nd photo.

if dianela is experiencing the same level of disease resistence i am, it seems like a good bet.

jc - your DD looks lovely in that spot!!

subk3 - beautiful WB!! Oh my!!

Oursteelers,

Thanks for your votes on: Dee-Lish, Savannah, and Wedding Bells. Planning to give Savannah a second go after seeing a two year bush in my friend's garden this past summer literally blooming like there's no tomorrow. I shovel pruned mine because of the pancake flat full open blooms, but in retrospect I think I was too hard on it for that rather minor flaw. DL(4) and WB(2) are all coming along very well for me.

Moses

Moses, have you grown Memorial Day ? It is one of my best. Huge blooms, fragrance is strong and for me totally clean

Kristine,

Memorial Day is one of my favorites, but alas, it bIack spots badly here if not sprayed. I'm determined to convert my roses to black spot free/minimally effected varieties. I am even planning to shovel prune my Julia Childs because of their black spot susceptibility. That's not easy to do.

Moses

Oh dang! I guess that I am really blessed with low blackspot pressure. I take it for granted and have believed that it is my rose choices, guess not as much as I thought.

If I had to spray I probably wouldnt grow roses. So, I guess that I better not ever move

Moses, Dark Desire might work for what you want. The plants -- I have 3 -- never "filled out", they only went up. I should have planted them closer together. No disease, season long bloom, and no scent here. The plants, because of their dark foliage, show up well from a distance.

@summercloud -- NC zone 7b Can't believe Poseidon gets so tall! I have her on order for this spring. I'm going to need to rethink her placement. In Indy, she was only about 4 feet tall for me.

I see you are in 7b too. When do you normally prune your roses?

@Moses, Pittsburgh, W. PA., zone 5/6, USA Firefighter also stays clean here. Roberto Capucci does get some BS (I don't spray) but he fights it well. Does not defoliate and is a blooming machine all season long. It outperforms all my other HTs in terms of how quickly it fills itself with blooms continuously.

Here is Roberto C. As you can see, the foliage is clean. It gets a little bit of BS toward the end of the season but does not affect performance and only on lower leaves. She does open old fashioned but starts as a high center rose for a good bit.

Mas, your Roberto is really fabulous! I love the color and form.

Mas, I agree with Kristine - fabulous!! What a beauty!!!!

I consider a rose A-OK that gets some black spot on the oldest (lowest), foliage on its bush. That is as long as the black spot only appears from September on, no sooner, and does not loose those black spotted leaves, still staying green in spite of the black spots. It passes mustard. Any black spot starting earlier, particularly starting before The Fourth Of July , in June, and its a no-go. Bushes so affected, will usually be pretty much defoliated by August.

Late season, lowest on the bush, black spotted leaves, as described above, really cause no or very little weakening of the bush. Those spotted leaves did their job all season long in building up the bush's resources to enlarge it, if a young bush, and survive winter in great shape to start off the next spring in prime shape. Also, those spotted leaves are going to be shed very soon, anyway.

Unfortunately, its a trial and error process to know for sure how a new bush will perform regarding its black spot susceptibility. Although I start by doing my homework, learning all that I can about a candidate, and going by the best information available, it still needs to be trialed in ground, in my garden.

Boy, how I wish I could just plant any rose bush I desired, and did not have to deal with whether or not it was black spot prone. I really want to get away from spraying because as we all know, toxic chemicals are, in the end, a losing proposition. I have tried practically all the natural/organic fungus control methods, and none of them worked effectively.

I still prefer the classic, large bloomed, exhibition, hybrid tea type flower form, over the trend among contemporary rose gardeners of growing English (Austin), or Old Garden Rose flower form roses, with their quartered and often flat blooms. In spite of my preference for classic HT form, I grow and am enamoured with a number of these new trend flower form types. Fortunately, many of the modern OGR bloom style roses are highly black spot resistant or even black spot proof, especially those introduced by Kordes' ADR winners.

Moses

@MasLovesRoses_z8a GA I can't believe how big Poseidon gets by fall! I prune more than halfway, to about 2.5' tall, in February or so. I read that you should do it "when leaf buds swell" which is complicated in our zones. Some of my roses are already growing, even though we just got 3" of snow and it' still January! So I will probably go out and prune soon. At this point it seems like the best choice (I guess!).

@Moses, Pittsburgh, W. PA., zone 5/6, USA I've been growing pretty much only Kordes roses since my first year of no-research fails. This year I'm branching out--my riskiest are the DAs Lady of Shalott and Darcey Bussell--so we'll see how poorly they do. If they loose all their leaves like you described: they're gone. No mercy!

Probably because of microclimate or different blackspot strains, Firefighter and Wedding Bells do so poorly here that I have to remove FF this year. My best HTs are Dee-Lish and Ingrid Bergman. They do keep clean all season long. Since I don't spray, disease resistance is important to me. I ordered some HTs coming in spring: World War II Memorial Rose, Nacogdoches, Dancing in the Dark, Snowbird, Sunset Celebration, and Tahitian Sunset. I hope they can be as disease resistant as reports.

Feiy Lo (PNWZ8b) Really your FF gets BS? Mine doesn't until Sept and the rains. Just read, one guy say that there are a ton of different BS strains and that he got BS on certain roses while a friend a mile away didn't get BS on those same roses. Hoping the new ones stay clean for you.

Stephanie, 9b inland SoCal...I read that "PNW has high BS pressure," and I wonder where the author is from. We do have lots of rain (both places in the PNW I have lived) but we also get almost no rain for 3 months of summer when roses are blooming. I wonder if they are overhead watering or possibly they live right near the coast and daily fog?

I even read one American Rose Society writer in PNW say that growing roses was so challenging in the PNW that many people give up....I think why does Portland have a huge test garden with beautiful acres of roses? When I lived near Portland, I never worried about BS even on vintage HT...some leaf loss that was all. It is a huge mystery to me! I am totally confused! First, if you are promoting rose growing and it is so challenging many people give up...maybe promote what grows well, save the planet and people's sanity. But I find that roses grow well in the PNW, less challenging than cold zones and the south.

Ann Beck, I grew up in Western Washington and we had a row of random Hybrid Tea roses purchased bare root at the local hardware store, most likely. We didn’t treat them any different than any other garden plants, no fertilizer, certainly no chemical spraying just water with the hose occasionally in the summer and give composted grass clippings from the pile in the backyard. I never remember seeing diseases on any roses, with one exception, Joseph’ Coat got black spot, but we didn’t worry about it. No rain during the months of June, July and August there. My favorites were Double Delight and a white rose with green edges on the petals with no scent. But I was mostly into the vegetable garden at that age. Now I don’t bother growing vegetables, since those are easy to get at the farmers market.

2if

, LOS does really well here in full sun. DB is a BS disaster in a semi-shady location, but might do better in full sun. THey both bloom a lot.

Annie, FF does get BS, which may be caused by canker that makes it more vulnerable.