Machiavelli's The Prince, lying in wait to vanquish his political enemies.

State of Grace, still a baby but already showing off

PCdM

PAoK

Trumpeter. Because it kept getting eaten by rabbits and became smaller and smaller every year, I moved it closer to the door this spring and it finally shot a nice new stem. This bright orange-red color is very eye-catching.

It’s been very hot & dry here and the Japanese Beetles are awful, but Peach Perfection looks lovely. It used to fade out badly in the heat, but this rose has definitely improved over time.

Even during a sizzler your roses look fab, Diane.

Elena, Julia Child is a must-have yellow rose for me. Despite only light fragrance I think it’s yet to be beaten. A tree rose of her must be beautiful in full flush.

Heather I love the first peek at and blended colours of State of Grace!

Elena, Feiy, Diane and all other fans of Golden Zest… you might be interested in Delbard’s Souvenir de Marcel Proust.. Pure lemon yellow blooms on healthy, upright canes, with a strong citronella fragrance. I struggled to find the right place for it because it needed sun to bloom well, but I had to shade it from the punishing sun I get!

Hotter now and a new, more apricot bloom on said Golden Zest is flopping onto the agastache:

Thanks, for the suggestion, Nollie. I'm pretty stuck on Golden Zest, though whether I can find a spot for it next year is questionable. I'm used to flopping roses. I don't like it, but Young Lycidas, a fav, is a big flopper. But at least he's blooming away in this icky weather. Souvenir de Marcel Proust is very lovely, but I'm not sure where to buy Delbard roses. I need to check that.

Now, I'll recommend a rose to you, a Carruth rose that I've grown just one year and love. It's heat resistant and a continuous bloomer. I think it will stay pretty small, but who knows in this garden. Mr Carruth did not name it, so I renamed mine, Orange Dude, or officially, Double Easy Orange, currently blooming away. Diane

Nollie, I like the apricot of Golden Zest as well as the golden yellow, and also the fact that Golden Celebration is a parent of this rose. GC is one of my favorite Austins, a giant. Diane

Sadly, I don’t think Orange Dude has made it to our shores yet, Diane, but it’s just my kind of rose - gorgeous colour and form, heat resistant and a continuous bloomer? Yes please!

Here’s the final one of my new Guillot quartet, Notre Dame de Rosaire. The earlier blooms were squashed pancakes of a disgusting, extremely lurid coral that went brown and spotty in rain. These are better, but the jury is still out..

I think you know you're not keeping NDdeR @NollieSpainZ9, but Golden Zest is appealing.

A delicate looking new one from me, its first blooms on disease-free foliage so far. Pheno Geno Rose, Pear, though the colouring is more like apple blossom.

K

It’s OK Tack, I think my moment of coral weakness has passed! Repeating myself here, but there really is no comparison with Versigny, which forms new buds fast:

New flush starting on Mme. de Sévigné, sunglasses essential 😎

Nollie, I'm a bigger fan of Versigny thanks to you. What a gorgeous bloom. I wish I knew who sells Versigny in the US.

Beautiful roses, Mx Chino. Can tell us which they are?

Tack, exquisite rose. I'm not sure I like the name, but understand, I think, why it received the name. Anyway, love the delicacy of the bloom.

Most everything in my garden is burnt to a crisp, but several roses, dark red, are doing pretty well. The Prince admitted defeat two days ago, and all his remaining blooms burnt at once, per his command. That was a shocker to me when I checked on my plants. Diane

Ascot, showing some burning, but still carrying on. Rouge Royale is another doing pretty well

Hi Diane

In order they are Juliet, eustacie vye, earth angel, kiss me kate, beatrice and the mill on the floss

@Feiy (PNWZ8b/9a) does your Fairy Tale open out and age to pure white? I have a new one and, past the bud form, it's always pure white. I wonder if the plant will age with different bloom colouring. Thanks.

Diane, Roses Unlimited are selling Versigny, bought from them this Spring.

Fire zone 9a, north London, UK, yes it ages to creamy white, sometimes with blush like in this photo.

Munstead Wood:

From a small, skinny cutting a few years ago, so good it gets it’s own table!

Amazing @NollieSpainZ9. Thanks Feiy

Wow, NollieSpainZ9 -- that is divine! I haven't seen many photos of a Munstead Wood bush in its entirety (mostly close-up photos), so it's very cool to see such a beautiful specimen in a pot.

Thank you Fire and Windowsill, I am very pleased with it’s transformation from twiggy cutting to bushy, very floriferous shrub! Interestingly, it has a totally different form to my grafted ones in the ground, with thinner canes and less angular habit.

Heaven on Earth

the fragrance was the most beautiful too.

Finally getting back to comment on Nollie's fabulous table centerpiece. Of all the lovely roses out there, I would never guess that the irascible, thorny beast, Munstead, would make such a stunning looking thing. Munstead looks well behaved. How do you keep it that way, Nollie, and do you ever plan to grow this Munstead in a larger pot? Does it take a lot of pruning to keep it the current size? And own root, too. Well done, Nollie.

Fire zone and Feiy, what exquisite plants of Fairy Tale. I love it in all its stages.

Berry, you are growing Heaven on Earth. How lovely. I didn't realize it had a beautiful scent, too.

Windowsill, here's a photo of my two Munstead Wood plants. Currently, the blooms are toasted, but they will be back. MW blooms for months on end, and refuses to quit altogether in our heat like some others I know. Diane

Bernstein rose, gett getting better and better. Thanks Disne firvthe recommendation

Eisvogel, pretty jazzed about this one

Nollie, Versigny is so pretty! Does it disease resistant?

Here are some new blooms.

Lady X. Weird name, but she is the longest lasting lavender in my garden. From a body bag, happily growing to 6 feet tall in high shade.

Old Port, still young and in the pot, very fragrant.

Cream Veranda, disease free, one of my favorite apricots. Being pruned lightly this year and she is already 4 feet tall. LOL.

Crazy Dottie. I always miss photo opportunities because she is so small. Excellent single mini. Always makes me smile when I look at her.

Hi Diane, MW is happy in the current pot (17 x 16”) so I will leave it until it busts out. I prune off less than a third in winter and tidy up a cane here and there in the summer, but that’s all it’s needed so far.

I wonder if the cutting dictated the more compact, shapely adult it became? If so it was totally by accident because the traditional, pencil-thick cane length I tried to root failed, but the little runty branched one I shoved in the pot as an extra, triumphed!

Feiy I haven’t had Versigny long and it’s still very small, but so far it seems healthy. A few leaves had a touch of black spot, but then most of my roses have in the weirdly tropical warm, wet weather we’re getting here.

Honey Bouquet:

"I wonder if the cutting dictated the more compact, shapely adult it became? If so it was totally by accident because the traditional, pencil-thick cane length I tried to root failed, but the little runty branched one I shoved in the pot as an extra, triumphed!"

Very interesting @NollieSpainZ9

Fire, I expect you could file that thought under ’Nollie’s Wild Theories’, along with ’Fish food makes my purples more purple’ 😆

Nollie, thanks for your theory on why the runt cane was a successful take. I just may try one of those runts here to see what happens. I thought Spain was hot and dry. How little I know. Here is hot and dry, and I wish we had a little less of each. Fish food does not make purples more purple--ha. Diane

What is the point of gardening if we don't set out to test wild theories?

Diane Brakefield, your Munstead Wood bushes are glorious! I've only ever seen the variety at the the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, which has one rather small and scraggly example that doesn't bloom much beyond the spring flush. (I have to get down on my knees to smell the blooms, but it's worth it!) So, it's very nice to see the full potential of this rose in your and Nollie's photos.

I'm enjoying the first baby blooms on my new Francois Rabelais from Heirloom. Not a whiff of scent on this one, but that's what I expected. I've missed having a red rose and am hoping this one will be easy to grow. So far, the blooms remind me a bit of True Love, though they are larger.

Easy Does it is always fun

Munstead on a transplanted bush finally feeling at home

Thanks, Windowsill about my Munsteads. They bloom from May until late October, and sometimes even later until hard frosts knock it out. Right now, our heat is gearing up again up to 107F and I'm not sure how Munstead will take that. Your Francois Rabelais as another glorious red rose. I don't need scent when a rose lose likes that. Another wonderful red rose without much scent is Ascot. If you can find it and have the space, grow that one, too. Space is essential, though. Maybe the Brooklyn Botanical Garden should try rooting one of their Munstead's scraggly bits and root a new rose like Nollie did-ha!

Kristine, beautiful Munstead and I'm glad it feels now at home growing in its new space. I can't believe Austin is discontinuing this rose. It's still patented, even. Diane

Ascot still blooming through the heat.

I like to post this photo of Munstead going nyah, nyah to the freezing cold a while back in November.

Here I am posting again. We're all holing up inside as we hit the 100Fs for I don't know how many more days. I'd like to post a few of my favorite combos that were blooming away a few weeks ago. Looking at the pic just above, I am reminded that this area is a land of extremes in temp and things are getting hotter. Diane

A view from the porch steps with Colette, Julia Child, and Ebb Tide.

Lots of snapdragons and Apricot Drift, Tamora, and Ballerina just starting up.

Colette, Young Lycidas, and Julia Child roses.

Tamora and Ballerina engulfed in snapdragons.

As the first heat wave hit in early June, Ebb Tide became multicolored, a Clown Jester to Wild Blue Yonder's Clown Prince.

Jude the Obscure peeks in during his last days to view Apricot Drift, looking distinctly pink, accompanied by white Orlaya grandiflora.

It's hard to believe I had all this such a short time ago. Diane

Diane, those pictures are magazine worthy…perfection!

Diane, your roses are breathtaking as always!

Gemini:

Molineux:

Abraham Darby

Diane, I always enjoy seeing photos of your garden (and then drooling over them. LOL)

Stephen Rulo shows off its beautiful beige tone and looks very similar to Koko Loco. Both are on their ownroots. I prefer SR because the plant is more vigorous than KL.

Purple Buttons looks exactly like the Cardinal Hume, but it's only 18" tall (in a 3G pot), very dark red color that my phone camera can't capture. It looks happy in our recent heat wave and doesn't even have black spots which amazes me.

Mark, your Gemini is spectacular.

It's 91 degrees now just before 11 AM. I managed to slip out and photograph some of this summer's more stalwart troopers.

CP suffers from RMV, as you can see. The only rose in my garden that does. Still, it's doing well in this godawful heat.

Everyone who sang Bolero's praises was absolutely right. Look at this. Supposed to get to 105 today. We've had triple digits for several days now.

I've praised Our Lady of Guadalupe often during the 3-4 years I've had it. Never stops blooming. Delicate and delightful.

Huntingdon's 100th aka Life of the party. Greets visitos by the front door. Fragrant as all get-out.

Little ol' Denise Cassegrain. Actually, she's not old - I just got this polyantha this year from Burlington. Tiny but charming.

A rather ... impressionistic ? ... photo, which is just another way of saying blurry, I suppose. Left to right: OLOG and LOTP in the cobalt vase; Moonstone (flowers nabbed quick before they crould crisp), two of them, above Love Song in the larger green vase; and another OLOG backing two Munstead Woods in the smallest globe-shaped vase.

All snipped from the bush this morning.

Sylvia, I'm impressed with the lovely blooms you are getting in spite of the heat. OLOG is quite lovely and certainly putting out the blooms. I love the grace of that tall cane of Life of the Party. Carry on. I actually think it's hotter here than down your way.

Feiy, thank you so much. Purple Buttons is beautiful and my kind of color. I don't know how hot you have it, but really dark roses can incinerate so easily--and some don't, It's a mystery. Diane

Some of my favorite Evelyn blooms just before they all burned up. Got up to 107F yesterday, but the prediction was 109F, so I won by 2 degrees. Today we're heading for 106F. Diane

Sexy Rexy…2 views today

I have recently installed Ghislaine, Buff Beauty and FC Amber and I love the tones. BB is now getting loads of black spot, which is disappointing. The other two seem fine.

Ghisaline - giving gifts every day since April. Such an array of assorted colours! I think I would vote it, hands sown, the world's best rose, if it had BB's scent.

---

AFC. I love the bud colour. Spotless foliage, even in July

Incredible pictures on here. Diane your garden is breathtaking. Some of the best pictures I think I have ever seen. How many Julia C do you have on each side flanking the path?

My best by far this year is Champagne Moment:

Such a terribly wet July and not one leaf has blackspot. Some stems have as many as 30 buds which are so well staggered in bud formation that you get 4 or 5 flushes per stem.

Oh, I'm glad I dropped in on this thread today. Alfie, what an exquisite rose. I know nothing about Champagne Moment and wonder if it's a florist rose. What a bloomer. Here, it's the usual dry made more miserable by temps over 100F for days, plus now we have smoke from wildfires adding gloom to it all. But your comments have made gardening worth the challenge. Thank you. And those are just one Julia on each side of the sidewalk. They are huge. Diane

How many Julia Child do you have? Diane Brakefield

https://www.davidaustinroses.co.uk/products/champagne-moment

Fire Zone, I have the two grafted Julias across the sidewalk from each other, and one own root Julia in a flower bed in back of the house. It's doing nicely, so I have no complaints about Julia. Diane