Admittedly, I don't garden in a desert area, but my garden does experience summer temps as high as 100F, and it's not unusual to have weeks above 90F. We do have occasional drought. Here are the roses I never, or rarely have to supply supplemental water after they have become established. But I always water any new plant religiously for the first year, possibly two, if the plant is small.

Earth Kind Roses https://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/earthkindroses/files/2012/06/36503_earthkind021010.pdf

Earth Kind roses are grown without irrigation after their first year. Only the survivors under a no spray,/no irrigation program qualify for the Earth Kind designation.

I never watered these after their first year:

Lady Banks

Harrison’s Yellow

Any of my ramblers and wichurana hybrid climbers

Many China Roses, esp Mutabilis (barely hardy here, though), Old Blush and close relatives.

All California/Western US native roses (I don’t grow these, but it seems logical to add them. Kim @roseseek might have experience with them):

R. californica

R. Nutkana

R. Woodsii

Any of the found roses that survived with no care for decades before being rescued. These lived through years of everything California summers could throw at them, usually totally abandoned. A short list off the top of my head:

Le Pactole

Devoniensis

Grandmother’s Hat

Pulich Children

Duchess de Brabant

Lamarque

Joasine Hanet

Hopefully Jeri @jerijen will chime in with a more complete list of found roses. Many of the identified cultivars are still sold by some nurseries under their study names, such as Joasine Hanet/Portland from Glendora. HMF will have all the synonyms.

To a Lesser extent: Rugosas, Galiicas, Centifolias.

Gallicas and Centifolias require winter chill, of course.

@fig_insanity Z7b E TN yes, I've grown all three of those species, and quite a few more. While they will "exist" under some conditions without supplemental irrigation, they don't look GOOD, nor are they useful for study or breeding without it. Personally, if I can't keep whatever I am growing sufficiently attractive to my eye and useful to satisfy my interests, I get rid of it. That encompasses providing it with the appropriate light, shade/protection and water. I'm honestly not intrigued with the idea of stressing a plant to the point of near death with no water.

In my very coastal Southern California conditions, with failing rainfall, the Teas and Chinas, and roses close to those, seem to do best. John's List:

Le Pactole -- Good here.

Devoniensis -- Never tried it, as it reputedly mildews

Grandmother’s Hat -- BULLETPROOF.

Pulich Children -- NOT happy here. I think it might have done better with a little winter, or less alkalinity.

Duchess de Brabant -- Failed here (as many Bourbons do)

Lamarque -- I've never done well with it, but it does spendidly in the area.

Joasine Hanet -- Does very well.

Also, some of the many variations of 'La Reine' -- This is "Barbara's Pasture Rose".

Chinas, generally speaking, are splendid here.

I HIGHLY recommend 'Gloire des Rosomanes' ("Ragged Robin") found all over California.

Austins, on the whole, don't do all that well here, but we baby a handful of them along with graywater.

Check out 'Gloire Lyonnaise'

Rugosas don't do well here -- Too alkaline. Same goes for anything with substantial Wichurana background. So I'd definitely check your soil.

Even though I live in the troics...... and would not be considered a drought area.... I do have a rose garden at my office that I put in over 20 years ago in non ideal area for roses..... It is on the west side of the building and gets no morning sun.... I made a raised bed, but that bed sits on top of part of the black asphalt up against the white painted building ..... which is covered by an awning.... so the poor roses do not get the water they deserve..... so take this with a grain of salt.... because as I said I am definitely in the tropics and during the summer we get plenty of rain..... but most of the time that rain is not getting to the roots

My best rose in that bed is Medallion...... It just deals with everything..... It has enormous blooms even under the worse circumstances..... people stop to look at all the time.

@sharon2079 is your Medallion own root or budded? If budded, upon which stock? ROOTS make a tremendous difference. Rugosas generally hate it here, but I can keep them alive and actually looking fairly decent if they are budded on Huey or Fortuniana. Jeri lamented she couldn't grow Eugene de Beauharnais due to vigor and rust, so I budded it for her on VI Fortuniana. She now grows a beautiful EdB which is vigorous, healthy with beautiful flowers. Roots make ALL the difference.

Kim Said: "Roots make ALL the difference."

And, BOY, is that ever the God's honest truth!

roseseek, my Medallion is probably on Dr. Huey. I bought it at box store..... it was not leafed out.... so I doubt that it is on fortuniana.... I can't believe it has lasted as long as it has....

Devoniensis is healthy here, Jeri, but smaller than others.

Thank you so much for these replies everyone!

All the comments here are really interesting and informative, thank you all.

Certainly having a big healthy root system is of utmost importance for drought-tolerance.

In my no-frost zone 11, I made all my bare-root plantings as early as possible (December and January) to ensure the new roses had a good six months to establish decent roots before the real heat hits in June.

The comments here also raise the issue of grafting. So I have some questions:

Do the lists such as the San Jose one or @jerijen 's only apply to own-root roses?

Are some rootstock varieties preferable for drought tolerance?

@roseseek mentioned Fortuniana: is that the best option for rootstock?

Unfortunately, it's rare to find sellers that graft on it in the US, and nonexistent in Europe: almost everything is grafted on Laxa here.

Can the wrong rootstock "sabotage" a rose's drought tolerance?

@seasiderooftop there is no such thing as a "drought resistant potted rose". Drought resistance requires a root system capable of finding under ground water sources. Potted roses are hamstrung in that there is no under ground water source. Plus, roots under ground exist in significantly cooler, probably damper soil than those in the average pot. Pot size, pot material, exposure to hot wind, direct sun can all increase the heat of that soil ball and literally cook it solid, killing the plant in that pot.

Different stocks have different characteristics which give them particular suitability for different conditions. Multiflora, in general, tends to be quite cold hardy, able to deal with more acidic soils/waters, with a more fibrous root system. Huey is well suited for hot, arid, alkaline conditions. Its roots are woodier, stronger, more suitable for breaking through hard pan. Supposedly, they also are able to acidify the soil around them to help release nitrogen and iron, which multiflora can't. Fortuniana resists nematodes, reportedly because its root system remains higher in the soil than the nematodes usually inhabit. It spreads out extensively so it can forage for resources over large areas. That's not necessarily a good trait, though. Shallow roots can make it easier for the roots to be physically damaged by digging, moles, gophers and freezes which penetrate the soil. It can also make it easier for the roots to be cooked by extreme heat and unshaded soil. Consider, also, roots follow water. If the root system is shallow and the watering is shallow, they will rise to the upper layers where they can be more easily exposed to damage. Others have varying traits making them better suited for other soil, water and climate types.

For growing in pots, you more want "heat resistant" roses not "drought resistant" roses. Putting roses budded on vigorous root stocks in pots may cause them to become root bound faster than own roots may. Of course, an extremely vigorous own root variety is likely to become root bound and stressed as easily and quickly as a less vigorous type budded on an overly vigorous stock.

Jeri's roses are mainly own root, not all, but most. The San Jose Heritage was originally a garden of budded plants. There may be some own roots now but initially budded roses were planted. Yes, the wrong stock might reduce the drought resistance of a rose. It can also reduce the health and vigor of the plant. If the stock is unhappy in the soil and water it is planted in, the rose will fail to thrive. If it requires more iron than it can take up from the alkaline soil and water, it will require heavier applications of fertilizers to provide what it can't absorb on its own. A fibrous type root may not have the strength to pry its way through hard pan clay to bury itself deep enough in the soil to avoid the heat in extreme weather. It might also not be able to push deep enough to find deeper ground water. It may be the same using Fortuniana with its shallower root system where something which grows deeper would provide more heat protection and ability to find deeper water more easily. But, again, for POTS, don't worry about it. No stock is going to make a rose more "drought tolerant" in a pot of soil if that soil is cooked by heat and not kept appropriately watered for the conditions.

Thank you very much for that valuable insight rosesek.

I didn't mean to focus on container gardening at all in this thread. I deleted part of my comment (about Teasing Georgia's happy growth through last summer in a pot with half as frequent watering as recommended) before I saw your comment, so I'm sorry if that makes things confusing, but I didn't want to make anyone think I was just asking about pots in my OP.

But about potted roses:

Of course, I understand and agree that roses in pots cannot survive without watering. However, because of water restrictions (current or future) I still think it can be useful to take drought tolerance into consideration when selecting varieties, although as you say heat tolerance and pot size are the key factors.

With those factors in mind, for those of us gardening in pots, it seems useful to try to find roses that might tolerate LESS frequent watering. If a rose variety can thrive in a pot while being watered only every two or three days even in weeks of 40°c heat, as opposed to twice a day, then that's already a win.

But there is one thing I still don't understand that might be important: are you saying drought tolerant roses are only so because their root systems go deeper? Or are some varieties simply inherently less needy of water? I often hear rosarians describe some of their roses as "water-hogs", so that leads me to think that there must be some that are on the other end of the spectrum too. Is this wrong?

Sorry for the newbie questions, and thank you for all that you have shared in your post.

Ahh... In *pots,* I suspect one's definition of "drought tolerance" might shift somewhat. Strategies for drought tolerance in plants in the broader sense vary from those that can tap into scarce water reserves (e.g. with deep roots -- strategy of some roses), those that economize water (e.g. the desert rose species which rapidly shed leaves to limit traspiration), or those capable of storing water like succulents (dunno of rose examples.) Many "drought tolerant" plants are *not* so much when confined to pots where they cannot obtain resources as the evolved to. (That was a cruel lesson I learned when moving from New Orleans to my condo with a balcony in Central Texas. One , and all my "drought tolerant" plants were fried crisp. I only grew succulents at that place from that point on, unless the plants tolerated a lot of shade.)

Here's something I got to help some of my potted plants in summer:

You soak these terra cotta spikes in water for a few hours , then stick in a pot or ground. I fill a wine bottle with water and invert it into the spike. The water is slowly released through the terra cotta. The water in the bottle seems to last about a week and I think it helps some. I bought mine in a box of eight on ebay.

Most of my roses in the ground seem pretty drought tolerant once established. Another thing I do that I think can help , though might not be too attractive, is to put a potted plant of something else near a rose's roots. If you keep that pot watered, the water seeps down through the hole and it generally stays moister under the pot.

The native Wood’s rose (Rosa woodsii) is amazingly drought tolerant here, and looks good (at least to my eye) in this dry, hot summer climate. The value is not in the brief show of small fragrant flowers in the spring, but the colorful hips that last through fall and winter. I wonder if there are regional differences though, as Wood’s rose has a very broad native range, from moist environments to dry.

Here in Sacramento, my number one heat star is Strike It Rich, which blooms even at 105 and higher and the petals never crisp. Elle also keeps blooming, but does crisp a little. My 8-year-old Trader Joe minis in a pot also do really great, surprisingly!
Many of the other supposedly heat tolerant roses get crispy petals, even though they do bloom (such as Firefighter and Pope John Paul II)
Carla in Sac

We have just had our hottest summer on record, with 13 days over 104 degrees, and 32 days over 95. I had already been slowly moving towards a more heat-tolerant, waterwise garden, but this has sealed the deal. Even with extra watering, the leaves and blooms of most roses still scorched. I have decided to rehome most of my pot pets, only keeping my Sophies Perpetual‘s and Munstead Woods. That said, Perle d’Or powered through the heat, as did my in-ground Monsieur Tillier. I think the shade Mr T casts for himself helps with keeping the roots cool. So that is something to consider when choosing plants for hot climates. Devoniensis is another that takes heat in its stride.

Sophies Perpetual has been the MVP, blooming continuously through the heat with no stunting or scorching of blooms.

@Adam Harbeck @sautesmom Sacramento

Thank you both for your recommendations for heat-tolerant, low-water roses! It's great to hear which ones perform best for you in those conditions. That's exactly the kind of experiences I was hoping people would bring here by starting this thread.

Sophie's Perpetual seems like an outstanding rose in so many ways!

@noseometer...(7A, SZ10, Albuquerque) Your woodsii looks really happy! What a gorgeous profusion of hips!

These photos, taken in the middle of July (so at least the 2nd flush), of 'Madame Lambard' growing in an unirrigated cemetery in northern California (the green trees in the background are Gravenstein apples, in an adjacent orchard). There are several, fairly old plants of it, which are kept pruned to relatively compact, geometrical shapes (between 5-6'). Grave markers there date back to at least the 1870s. There are also plants of 'Alba Odorata', several different Chinas, a version of "Old Red Runaround" (hybrid China), and 'La Nymphe' (noisette). Old roses, in general, seem more drought-tolerant than modern varieties, especially the Austins.

Munstead Wood is an amazing rose for me. It starts blooming early and persists on through our hot and dry summers. Then MW keeps blooming until nearly December after many hard frosts. The first photo above was taken July 22, second photo on Aug 8, third photo on November 25, all in 2021. July it averages 95-105F all month, and is dry as dust. We had no rain all summer, but I do use a drip system. Diane

Catspa said:

"Old roses, in general, seem more drought-tolerant than modern varieties, especially the Austins."

*** IMHO, that's because the wimpy ones, that couldn't handle neglect and drought . . . DIED.

As for the Austins . . . We really can't afford to give them the water they crave, but we supplement them with graywater.

Some of the posts above appear to talk only about "heat tolerant" roses, while others talk about "water wise" roses. Those are two very different things, of course. They may co-exist, but it is difficult for me to tell from the posts above. I garden in a warm (usually not horribly hot - maybe one or two weeks a year over 100 degrees F) climate. However, even when we are not in "drought" conditions, we get NO RAIN whatever for 6-7 months of the year. Roses in my garden which were not irrigated mostly reverted to once bloomers, even if they were ever blooming with more water. So, now we irrigate them all during our Summer drought. I have observed roses around here in some parks, vacant lots, hillsides, etc. which bloom heavily each Spring with no supplemental water in the Summer, sort of like what various roses were doing in my garden before we started them on drip irrigation in the Summer.

However, this Winter was different - instead of our normal 4-5 months of steady rain, we got a huge amount of water in 6 weeks during Oct/Nov (over 20 inches), and then practically nothing, nada, ever since. There are two plants of 'Fortune's Double Yellow' in a park next to the bike path my DH and I use. Neither of them get any supplemental water. I have noticed that one of them (it is kept in a bush form by pruning, but gets no other care) did bloom this Spring, but with only about 1/3rd the blooms it usually does, and those are way smaller than usual. The other one, which is enormous and growing up and over 2-3 large trees, is in more shade and so tends to bloom later. It has set some buds, and 2-3 blooms have opened but it is much later than normal, and it appear to me that its Spring bloom will also be much less than it usually is. Both plants look very healthy, and I did not see any die back. So, I am attributing the smaller and shorter bloom to a lack of water. I realize this old rose from China probably evolved to survive "drought years", but its bloom season is usually glorious, and I miss it.

I am very reluctant to have all of my roses either stop blooming at all, or revert to once bloomers instead of blooming for 10 months as they do now, if they do not get any water in the 7 warmest months of the year.

I may have missed the info in the posts above, and if I did I apologize, but I have a question:

Does anyone grow any roses in a wet winter / dry summer zone 9-10 climate which DO NOT get any supplemental water during the dry season, but are ever-blooming from Spring to Fall? roseseek? Melissa? anybody?

Jackie

Jackie, they don't really "revert." They just go semi-dormant in long periods of drought, and bloom again when there is some water available. Pretty good survival technique.

My Austins don't require any more water than my other roses, and they all receive the same on the drip system. Diane

Jackie, those 'Mme. Lambard' plants in the Sonoma County cemetery get no supplemental water and rebloom at least once during the summer (the photo was taken in mid-July) and, though my visits there have been sporadic over the years, I've seen the plants producing at least that second flush more than a few times. By fall, though, they do look dormant. The 'Alba Odorata' there is also in bloom through a good part of the summer -- it's a rose that generally starts late, anyway, and is at its happiest when it's over 100F.

Edit to add that those 'Mme. Lambard' plants and most of the rest survived the last Great Drought -- amazing isn't it?

Jeri, that's the strategy if push comes to shove with water -- accept that the roses may only bloom once, if at all, and be semi-dormant after that (and a lot of what I've got were collected from survivors of drought and neglect) and wait for better days ahead.

"My Austins don't require any more water than my other roses, and they all receive the same on the drip system. Diane"

Here, Diane, they seem to languish and are no match for teas, for example, when it comes to repeat flowering and making it through droughts, but there may be other factors involved, including punishing heat, alkaline salts, etc. Of the half-dozen or more I've tried, just 'Golden Celebration' remains. They do seem to do much better in Golden Gate Park, in San Francisco (50 miles west and much more cool and humid).

Well, it's not cool and humid here, for sure. It's a semi arid desert. We receive about 10 inches of total precipitation in a year. The soil is alkaline, and we are in an extended drought along with central Oregon, southern Oregon, and eastern Washington. Diane

view from my back yard

I agree that Golden Celebration is a wonderful Austin, probably among my top four. GC is nine feet tall and always in bloom. Here are pics of GC and Boscobel. Diane

Photos above taken in the heat of August, except for the second one, taken in the middle of November, all last year. Diane

This is probably a bit off topic but i wonder if more heat tolerant rose blooms have similar traits like drooping necks or thinner petals that wouldn't hold up in a vase? I only ask becaue the summers where I live are incredably hot the norm reaching 100+ and I havent tried to many chinas or other old garden roses.

Seeingreen - the old Tea roses do tend to nod (we do not call it "drooping"!), but the solution is easy - there is such a thing as a "rose bowl". It is an old style of vase for roses. Many of them are crystal, and I have seen ones made out of ceramic too. The are shaped like spheres, with the top cut off. They are perfect - you just fill the up with old tea rose flowers, which then nod over the edge. Then you put the vase somewhere just above eye level, so that you can see the lovely blooms from below. The same thing works in the garden - in warm climates most old teas will climb a bit, and you can then look up at the blooms also. All of my teas have pretty thick petals, and last in vases indoors just fine. China roses are another kind which are heat tolerant - I tend to leave mine on the bushes, so I do not have much experience with them in vases, except for Le Vesuve, which acts more like a tea rose. Hopefully someone else on here can let you know.

Diane and catspa - thanks for the suggestions! I will have to check out those roses. My issue is not getting rose plants through a periodic drought. but getting them through the endless cut backs on watering gardens we are facing here locally, and all over CA. That is political, and does not always jibe with whether we get enough rain or not.

Jackie