It sounds interesting - pictures would definitely be helpful…..

Thanks for the update, Jackie. Looking forward to "the rest of the story" (in my best Paul Harvey voice, lol).

I love reading this saga! Please continue with more - and photos :)

PART II:

I will start with Anna Olivier. Here she is "before". In the background you can just see the banksia and CB climbing up the taller wall of the house.

Here is the South side of the house after the roses were gone (except for some small bushes I am hoping they will let me keep):

Here is Anna Olivier after we had it cut way down, dug up, and planted in the new garden:

I knew I was in trouble - it was warm and dry weather. I came to this forum asking for help, and I believe it was Kim who told me to put a cage around that sad looking thing, and drape a sheet over the cage, and keep it wet 100% of the time, because if it dried out it would die. It worked! Take note, any of you who might ever want to transplant the base of a very old, huge, rose. Here is a pic I took today:

The ultimate plan for AO is for it to grow tall again, and be trained over the fence of the garden onto the top of the tunnel into the next door garden which my DH also built at the same time as the garden fence. Rosette Delizy and Duchess de Brabant are already being trained onto it from the other side. Pic below:

Moving on to next PART.

Jackie

I'm just so sorry it had to be done.

PART III: Pics of entire new garden and some parts of it (the dark pink miniature climber in the middle is 'Cl Rainbow's End', which was also moved from where it was growing on the house).

Below is after the 2 huge shrubs were removed and the dirt was dug, etc. (note: there was NOT ONE weed in this entire area - the shrubs were thick!). In the background on the middle right you can see a white trellis with a climbing rose on it - that is Fourtune's Double Yellow.

Next is a picture I took today of the garden - the fence, bench, and path are all installed, but the planting is very much the beginning of a work in progress:

Here is a pic from inside the garden looking towards the house - that's Cl RE on the right.

Back fence of garden - same white trellis with Fourtune's Double Yellow on it. You can see the back gate of the new garden on the right.

Last pic - here is my baby bush form of Madam Caroline Testout, with her 2 canes and a new basil shoot coming up in exactly the right place:

PART IV (last part):

Another pic taken inside of the garden:

Next Steps:

1) We have to do something about the very tall (about 3 stories) way older than mature privet tree which is outside of the fence at the back, but making too much shade over the garden - we have an arborist from our tree company coming to look at it next week. Not only is it making shade, but the birds are making privet berry droplets ALL OVER my new garden, including all over the flowers! I don't know if we are going to have it taken out, or just cut way back. Will depend on what I can talk my DH into (if we take it out we will plant another tree there which does not cause so many problems).

2) There are still some very large roses growing on the East and South side of our house - my plan, after the garden has more sun, it to plant 'PAX' and Reve d'OR along the fence line. Those will also be giant bases of old roses, so I am rooting them now, in case they don't make it.

End of story for the moment ( this project was thought up by my DH because I was in such distress about having to take down the huge old roses - it worked!).

Jackie

Those are some pretty impressive roses and an impressive project! I particularly like that tunnel structure although here I wouldn’t grow roses on it. How big is the property?

It's only 1/3rd of an acre, in an old residential area with lots of houses built in the early 20th century, and a few in the late 19th. Ours is the largest lot for blocks - most are 1/4 acre.

Jackie

Wow thanks for the update. i remember your first post and was so sad that you had to move them. looks like it is working out though. I love thst tunnel! so fun and unique

Thanks -

Jeri - me, too.

Namaham - the tunnel is two "Moon Gate" arches from the Kinsman catalogue, joined together and with the top pieces added by my clever DH.

Jackie

The only good privet is a dead privet -- my personal opinion. I removed a half-dozen first thing upon moving here and many in the neighborhood have followed suit (though not completely enough to totally eliminate those endless invasive seedlings). There are so many better trees. Some of the last ones left around here are, unfortunately, my neighbor's and on our fenceline. At least one of them is deeply infected with honey root fungus, to which they are highly susceptible. The presence of those infected roots on my side of the fence means I can only plant resistant species there, and that certainly does not include roses, which are also very susceptible. I keep praying ferverently for their death, or that the neighbor will take them out, considering how wretched they look, but honey root fungus takes a long time to kill entirely.

Good to see 'Anna Olivier' coming back. I have also become an unwilling experimenter with cutting back roses hard (though not moving them, fortunately), due to having to accommodate tent fumigation for drywood termites. A few roses were even unavoidably within the tent due to having to include a pergola. So far, all have come roaring back, though the upper half of 'Narrow Water' did seem to suffer some from the fumigant. It is, however, putting up several strong-looking new basals and a lot of good foliage below the 3' level.

I can't wait until the arborist comes next week to look at the privet tree - I am secretly hoping he will say it should be taken out! My DH wants to keep it, but make it shorter. He has convinced me that the deluge of small dark blue bird droppings all over my garden is very seasonal, and that he will scrub the new bench and the new pavers clean. We shall see...

I had to cut several 20-30 foot tall roses down to 5-6 feet a few years ago because our house was being scaffolded and painted. ALL of them "came roaring back", as you say. I guess the old saying (from English gardeners, I think) that "growth follows the knife" is true. However, all of those roses had very old large root structures which were un-affected by the painting, of course. That is why I was very worried, and then very happy, that AO managed to survive being dug up AND cut down. Thanks again to good advice on here -

Jackie