In a mild climate, roses can indeed do better with NO care than with too much! When we moved into our house, the garden had had very little care for at least 25 years. However, it did have winter rain, natural mulch/food formed by the large tree & other leaves that were not taken away, and a Mediterranean climate. I think some roses did die, but those were not well suited to our climate. Some of the roses which had not only survived, but had thrived, and were there for us to discover were: teas: Le Vesuve, Anna Olivier, Mme Joseph Schwartz, Duchesse de Brabant, Safrano chinas: Cramiosi Superior polyanthas: Cecile Brunner, Spray Cecile Brunner, Margo Koster HTs: Cl La France, Cl Peace other: Cl American Beauty, Blaze, and various others still not identified. I think many folks fuss WAY too much with their roses, sometimes doing literally more harm than good. If you spend the time to find the types of roses that actually LIKE your climate, and then don't fuss over them too much, you and they will be happier. Jackie

Hello, I believe I got the AV called Ann last year from either Jo's Violets, Fancy Bloomers or the Violet Barn. I think it may have been Violet Barn. However, I checked, none of them seem to have it right now. Mine did not look as good as that photo. However, I have been using a water agent for a long time that seems to have caused my plants to not grow and develop tiny crowns. The Ann did not have a lot of blooms, as the one in the photo just has a few blooms. Although they were nice. It might be because of the water conditioner I was using. Many of my plants are convalescing now, so I am not removing leaves until they get back to normal. I paid a normal price for it. I saw on EBay that someone was selling a plant or leaves for $45. That is crazy! I would suggest that if you can't find Ann, any of the Apache series are equally pretty. They grow well, have lovely edge variegation, and grow symmetrically. Their leaves are also slightly spooned or wavy like those in the photo above. They are easier to find. Lyon's has a good selection of Apache leaves. I was on a quest last year to find edge variegated plants with double pink blooms that grew symmetrically. Of the various plants I tried, the Apache series seemed to be the most consistent performers. Joanne

I love species roses! My local botanic garden, Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden in Claremont has a really nice collection of California native species roses collected from around the state (and even more in their seed collection). RSABG has R. californica growing on the grounds from Colusa, Santa Barbara, San Diego, and Siskiyou (this plant is spineless), etc. counties, sometimes multiple selections from these counties. I have pics of some of them, but they are not all together in a rose garden per se, but scattered around the garden in the plant communities in which they would be found naturally. This makes it really fun and interesting to see how they grow and what they like. They are not all identical. I have 3 that I have purchased from RSABG: R. californica 'Los Berros' (a selection by David Fross of Native Sons Nursery in Arroyo Grande, California and named for the road, Los Berros, it was found on--Los Berros has larger and darker flowers and larger and thicker leaves than is typical of the species), R. californica 'First Dawn' (a selection from Suncrest Nurseries, California, FD has very pale pink, small cupped flowers and blooms in huge sprays, few thorns), and R. californica grown by RSABG (this is a newly-arrived plant in a 1 gallon pot that I bought at their spring nursery 50% off sale, it has just produced its first flower for me which was a light to medium pink). All 3 are extremely fragrant. Los Berros has particularly "plushy" feeling leaves. It is also very, very thorny whereas First Dawn has few thorns. The latest arrival has almost no thorns. Unfortunately the label on the pot doesn't identify from which county this plant originated. RSABG does have R. nutkana in its plant communities. I have pictures of their R. nutkana from Sonoma county, both this year and last (I'm pretty sure I took some of its hips), but I don't have any pics (easily remedied!) of their R. nutkana var. muriculata from Del Norte county. They also have R. pinetorum and R. gymnocarpa (I just recently took photos of this one in bloom during a neat spring walking tour led by one of the RSABG volunteers). My hard drive now has, I'm afraid to say, easily hundreds of photos taken at RSABG.;) Maybe now is a good time to try out the new photo posting utility for this forum. It always seems to take me forever to get things posted first on Flickr. Hopefully I can get some photos uploaded for you to see and maybe they will be helpful. Below is R. nutkana from Sonoma county.

Linnea: I don't know anything about peonies but it sounds like you got some sage advice above. But let me tell you about my rose 'Mary Rose' that we moved a couple weeks back. This rose did great last year and really dragged this year. Mainly due to a lack of sunlight. So I think two weekends back we decided to move it into a pot and then we plan to sink the pot until next spring when it can be re planted. To that end my husband who can be a bit impatient at times went out to the where the rose was planted, shoved the shovel in the ground about ten inches from the base all around the perimeter of the plant, and then kind of unceremoniously pulled it out of the ground. I could only stand there speechless! Rough treatment for sure. We then put the poor baby in a very large pot filled with potting soil, a handful of steer manure and some bonemeal and left her in shade for over a week (well watered). At that time I also cut back the canes to about 14 inches tall leaving whatever foliage looked decent. Last week I brought the pot out to where it could get half day sun and then on Saturday up to where other roses in the yard are, nearly all day sunny conditions. This morning I noticed she is getting lots of new growth and has purple foliage coming on in several places. Go figure! I thought after what my husband did to her she was a goner for sure. Roses can be remarkably tenacious. Having blathered on about all that let me ask you this. Were the roses healthy before? Can we see a picture? Do you want to plant them in pots? The ground? What's your plan for doing with these if they make it? I know this is considered to be the wrong time to cut back roses, especially in your zone. So you might just want to focus on getting your transplants stabilized and then if they are still kicking in the spring you can cut back dead/leggy canes at that time. Hope this helps. Kate