Ease up guys, Gregg hasn't closed yet and may not. We should all support his nursery, buy roses for a friend, buy his rose book for a friend. Don't have any friends? Offer a stranger a band from Vintage, then you'll have a friend. If you are angry and depressed, why not take it out on the public gardens who have lost interest in growing and displaying his roses and old garden roses in general? Some of our most famous collections ( I can only speak for the current status of east coast collections) need a kick in the ***. They are letting the rose collections fall into the hands of the "Knockout" queens. Write your local botanic garden president. If you believe in Gregg, he will appreciate this support as well. stephen

It's true that where I am in So. CA, the roses can get really really big in a hurry. Many times I had to find another spot for a rose because it got much bigger than any description in the book or catalog. Some tolerated the pruning and some wanted to be left alone. I think you just have to try and see what works best. I was trying to keep my Heritage at 4 feet like I saw at the LA Arboretum, then I saw a big poofy one in someone's yard and was smitten by that look. I have an old no name climber going up an apple tree that I ignore. It has a few ancient canes and all the young growth is sky high. I never see any new growth from lower down and I wonder if I should have cut it back years ago. Whatever happens, I'll just enjoy the plant as long as it's there. I think it's too late now to try removing the old canes. When the HTs are left alone, they get so tall. Lagerfeld/Starlight and Honor will go way over my head and the flowers are up in the sky where no one can see or smell them. Then too, when you cut the flowers, a wierd kind of pruning happens and the canes get shortened by taking the flowers off. I suppose just snapping off the hips is best, but I can't resist a bouquet. Around August, I get some strange tallish looking HTs and everyone is talking about plans for a nice fall flush and how they are going to trim the plants and when. I usually cave in at that point and shorten them down because they look untidy from the street and I have fall flush visions in my head. Besides, the flowers look terrible in the summer heat and I am longing for some really pretty ones in the cooler weather. Some years it's better than others. Last year, I had a great big crop of fall flowers on the DA roses after a light pruning, but the year before was not spectacular even though I thought I pruned them the same. This last year, I left a few alone, thinking they did not like the 2007 fall-flush pruning and they did nothing in the fall of 2008 but are now really dense with wood so I am hoping for a big spring bloom this year. Regarding my modern HTs, I notice that if I just snap off hips, they have intermittent flowers up to the hottest times in summer. Then when it cools off a little,there are intermittent flowers until January. I can't seem to get a big bloom in fall unless I deliberately prune them. By January they are really tall again and it's hard to enjoy the flowers on the HTs when they are up that high. I like it when people can see them and smell them. If they are out of reach, no one pays any attention. The first roses of the year are like celebrities with the fresh mulch and new shiny leaves. If I let them alone and they flower off and on through the winter, I wonder if they would have the big spring bloom I always look forward to.

Thank you, Dianela about the White Wedding recommendation. Rosylady, what is wrong with arborvitae? I planted about nine of them to replace Leylands. I see them quite often around here and most look good and are not too big. There are some tall ones at our recreation center walk trail and they look a bit ratty in full sun and I think sometimes they have needed water. My parents had a yew hedge in the deep south. It grew fine. It is poisonous though but just don't eat it. I will look up needlepoint holly. I have a bunch of boxwoods here that were given to me as a transplant when we bought our house about 36 years ago. They are big boxwoods, round, but I don't know what kind they are. I like the dwarf ones that people sometimes edge their rose beds with.

I am reading "Word from Wormingford" by Ronald Blythe--and today came across this passage describing the summer roses in bloom in the author's rural Suffolk parish. It was written in the mid-90s. I guess I could have posted this in several other threads, but decided to post here: A voice says, 'Cry!' 'What shall I cry?' 'All flesh is grass.' A tolerable image of transience. The washing bleaches on the lawn, the gooseberries are being gathered with the blackbirds looking on, thousands of roses perfume the slight wind. Dark William Lob, delicate Celestine, rich Charles de Mille, susceptible Leda, modest John Clare, the latest to arrive in the garden. We have staggered home from yet one more flower festival at Mount Bures. Few in this high village have much notion of 'arrangement' in today's semi-professional terms and so we see something absolutely different, and flawless of its kind.