Tess is such a good rose. It was on the bush 6 days and just kept getting poofier and poofier but held together. Its been a dry heat and in the 90's this past week plus uber smoky from the wildfires and literally 'raining' ash some days. Gotta love Tess! Some others doing well in the wicked heat TIMF Litchfield Angel Jude the Obscure...I swear I couldnt get enough pics of him the other day!! He is sooo ~Dreamy~ I'm obsessed with the way the buds look half open. I could get lost in those buds for hours!

Linrose, I don't know from where you got your (blanket) info on Austins, but the many I've been growing so far are certainly neither divas nor stingy with their blooms nor any less healthy than most other modern roses. Most of them are certainly a lot healthier, more vigorous and floriferous than many HT's, making fantastic garden plants. On the three you asked about: Lady Emma is a continuous bloomer with superb citrus-fruity scent similar to Jude the Obscure's, but a bit sweeter and more complex, absolutely delicious. Well behaved and wide growing, and in our temperate English climate practically evergreen (or ever-bronze, given the lovely color of its foliage). Catches some BS without spray but does not defoliate, and just keeps blooming and blooming. Quite amazing. This rose is a must for its beauty, scent and performance. My Tea Clipper is entering its third season. Its repeat was not great in its first year, but improved noticeably in its second. The blooms are very beautiful when they first open, but they fade teribly fast, within a day or two, into a wishy-washy color, ending up a very light, washed-out yellow-beige with floppy petals. That has been disappointing. Scent is tea. The plant is enormously vigorous with few thorns and quite healthy, even in my no-spray garden. Teasing Georgia - exquisitly beautiful and very healthy with an overwhelming display of flowers in the spring and early summer. Repeat in its first year is not so good, but will improve very noticeably every year. Lovely sweet tea scent. A superb, classic rose. Some more Austins I can recommend for performance: William Shakespeare 2000 Molineux Golden Celebration Sharifa Asma Heritage Abe Darby Crocus Rose Fair Bianca Prospero Lady of Megginch Radio Times Pat Austin Claire Austin Christopher Marlowe Jubilee Celebration The Ingenious Mr. Fairchild Sophy's Rose (not much scent) The Dark Lady (BS susceptible but superb bloomer) The Prince (a smallish plant but a good bloomer) The Herbalist Portmeirion A Shropshire Lad Ann Boleyn (flowers blow fast though) Jude the Obscure is also a good, reliable bloomer (albeit not a bloom machine) with fantastic scent and good health. In my experience, Austins tend to perform better when grafted. DA in Tyler TX sells the biggets, best quality plants. Hope this helps, Andrea

1. Favorite RED / MAGENTA - Maggie. I especially like the flatish (not high-centered) form that looks like nothing so much as a dancer's full array of bright rosy skirts. Even though it's a Bourbon, it's extremely healthy and easy to grow. Low in thorns, large in bloom size. The blooms last a long time in the vase, and you can stare at it forever without tiring of appreciating its beauty. 2. Favorite ORANGE / APRICOT - We don't have this color yet that I've seen, though tiny Crepuscle (noisette), when it gets large enough to bloom, will be a faint shade of this. Maybe. That's a low-thorns healthy rose with large blooms too. 3. Favorite YELLOW - Julia Child. I like its butter yellow color, but even in the summer when it fades some, you can still tell that it's a yellow, not a white. 4. Favorite PINK - General Schablikine. Often called a red, it has always been a dusty deep pink here, regardless of season. We've had it from two different nurseries and the color was a dusty pink in both cases. It's a beautiful, beautiful color that contrasts nicely with the lighter pinks that we have a good many of. Its form is flatish and full-petaled. Fairly low in thorns, good-sized flowers that keep on going late into the fall. Evergreen in North Carolina. 5. Favorite PURPLE / VIOLET / MAUVE / LAVENDER - Reine des Violettes, assuming it's going to eventually get around to blooming here. (I've read that sometimes it takes awhile to establish.) Low/no thorns, and so far the picture of health here. 6. Favorite BICOLOR (Example - Double Delight) - Cinco De Mayo. This is a party rose, pure party rose. If you plant Cinco De Mayo, you must prepare to take a bloom in the house, clinch it between your teeth, put on your dancing shoes and dance all over in a big ruffled skirt. (Guys can wear kilts, I suppose...) The rose's only negative is that it's a bit thorny. Otherwise, it's amazingly healthy, and beautiful in its combination of colors with ruffly edges. It blooms less once it loses much of its sunlight, but it never gets a bit of any kind of disease (grown organically, at least). 7. Favorite WHITE - Lion's Fairy Tale. Healthy, healthy, and will take a bit of shade and still bloom well. Large blooms. 8. Favorite CLIMBER - Madame Alfred Carriere. We don't have it yet, but I'm figuring on ordering it this fall. 9. Favorite FLORIBUNDA - Gruss An Aachen. It's simply a perfectly beautiful rose, and it smells wonderful too if you get it in just the right temperature. 10. Favorite GRANDIFLORA - Eutin. The pictures at Help Me Find are so heavy with the numbers of blooms in its bloom clusters that you'd swear they must have been Photoshopped, but no, those huge numbers of bright red blooms are actually what we're seeing here... growing next to our pergola in far, far too much shade. It is getting a little powdery mildew in all that shade, but a hard spray with the hose once in awhile gets rid of it instantly. If shade is your problem, this is your rose. A little bit thorny, but you can't always have everything, and its interesting foliage looks good in the landscape. Evergreen in North Carolina. 11. Favorite HYBRID TEA - We don't have a hybrid tea, but we've had two pinks (tossed due to Rose Rosette Disease) that show a lot of hybrid tea parentage and we'll buy those two again soon: Belinda's Dream and a tiny very attractive small shrub with a bloom that looks like a tiny version of another Belinda's Dream: Rose Rosette. 12. Favorite Old English, Rugosa, Romantica, or David Austin - David Austin's Mortimer Sackler, hands down. The blooms here have looked exactly like those featured on David Austin's website, and this rose is healthy, healthy, healthy. Beautifully delicate looking and lovely to sniff, too. 13. Favorite LANDSCAPE ROSE OF THE YEAR award (I just made this one up because there's no list that ought to leave out this rose!) - Mrs. Dudley Cross. If you can only have one rose, this one is it. It's luminous creamy colored blooms are breathtakingly beautiful and they're eyecatchers in any vase too. Give yourself a gold star if you buy this one, because you made the right decision! And add a second star if you can also buy General Schablikine to plant beside it; the pink of General Schablikine perfectly reflects the faint dusty pink edging of Mrs. Dudley Cross in cooler weather. They look splendid together in a vase. Quite healthy if grown organically. Evergreen in North Carolina. Ours is a no-spray anywhere any time yard and all these roses are suitable for growing that way, at least in warm and humid blackspot-prone North Carolina. Best wishes, Mary Here is a link that might be useful: Mrs. Dudley Cross

Pink HTs SAVOY HOTEL (probably the most beautiful with many, many blooms) 0-slight fragrance - there has to be some catch.:) - I have 2 of these PINK PEACE - deeper bright pink, but quite abundant and very fragrant blooms - I have 3 FREDRIK MISTRAL - colour not as lovely as Savoy Hotel, but I am very pleased with it - first season for me and it is very fragrant ........Oops, this is going to take me longer than I thought and have to get ourselves ready to go to wedding a couple of hourse away. (we will be staying over) So will have to get back to this. I am pretty sure they are my favourite pink HTs. I have Tiffany too, but it is not a favourite of mine. Will get back to this when I return. Interesting subject to me also - thanks for starting it. Pauline - Vancouver Island