The very first question is: are the roses on rootstock that thrive in your soil? If your soil is shallow, or if the roots only thrive in a shallow cone of 'good' soil, then you're not going to get height, regardless of your zone. When the original poster buys a rose, he's buying a rose that has already been pampered beyond belief, in a green house or poly house, planted in soils that are totally unlike the real world, and fed the rosey equivalent of fois gras, lobster, and eclairs to make it grow. Nothing any of us can do inthe real world will equal that kind of pampering for twelve months of the year. Well, maybe some folks in California's cooler summer/warmer winters areas can approach it, but weather survival wasn't designed into the genetics of modern roses. Not all rootstocks are alike, some force roses to grow 12 months of the year, others may help dormancy happen. Some soils are better for Dr. Huey; other soils will make roses on R. multiflora wonderful plants; still other areas demand R. x fortuniana to overcome soil problems. About public gardens....go there earliest spring. Be sure you're comparing roses there with your own roses by starting to see if their roses made it through winter. We've been to some northern public gardens in early spring and I've been shocked at the number of roses that are replaced in a given year. It's not fair of you to evaluate your home roses by comparing them to roses that last year were in California, and only recently exposed to the last gasps of an Ohio winter. FWIW, I had a hedge of 24 Graham Thomases in east Tennessee. Their main problem was a tendency to put out spring growth early in spring, and that growth would get killed, dependably, by later spring freezes. That frozen growth would then be the locus of a nasty canker that would gird and kill the cane by mid June. The most cankers I have ever counted on a single cane was thirteen on one single cane of Graham Thomas. So, I'd guess Dave protects his GT.

IMHO .... for what it is worth.. plants in pots are HYPER-fertilized .... to increase growth for max potential resale value ... but i cant say i have ever seen a mature growth rate in a small pot ... then we interfere with all that with transplant shock ... and it will take 2 to 4 years for it to settle in .. and then achieve its mature growth rate ... [and as far as i am concerned.. we do NOT fertilize at this stage.. to hurry it all up] .... now.. i am not talking about plants that are repotted and upsized repeatedly to make large specimens .... or planted in mother earth after grafting and a year in a pot ... finally.. i told you the 3 to 4 inch growth rate .... IN FULL DARK SHADE ... do NOT forget that part .... if you cant find any info regarding dwarf or mini growth rate.. then simply presume .. it will grow the same as P pungens ... as far as i recall ... way back when.. i could not find any reference to RK ... nor any indication of dwarf nor mini.. so it does not surprise me.. that its growth rate.. int eh full sun it is supposed to be in... is equivalent to Pp or i am just full of manure.. ergo.. my plants mature faster.. lol ... as i said.. FOR WHAT IT IS WORTH .... just enjoy it.. perhaps bud prune it.. and if in 5 years its looking like it will be too big.. train it into xmas tree shape.. and have the most spectacular indoor tree ever .. ken ps: i can not tell from your pic.. but give us your observation on the whorls on your tree.. i will bet... there is a nice growth from a band pot the year after after grafting.. then a smaller one.. when potted up to one gal ... and then the following one.. perhaps from fert.. larger growth rate ... maybe the last two .. and even if you planted in spring.. that top growth grew.. before the transplant shock ... i would not be surprised.. if there is a regression next year ... observe what you have .. and give us your interpretation of how it reacted within its life .... [are you an engineer ??? you seem obsessed on mother nature being mathematically precise... good luck with that. . lol .. am i right?????]

Oh, definitely the rootstock, sorry I didn't make that clear. edit: So I grafted the two rootstocks. I think one was a M7, and the other an M26, and I grafted a Gravenstein, and a Honeycrisp. I have no idea what I'm doing, and really just experimenting. I used cleft grafts, and it seemed to go really well. Nice tight cambium layer contact. I think cleft grafts are the beginners graft of choice :-)....well, this beginner anyway. I potted one immediately, and I put the other in my garage in some wet newspaper and a little potting mix. I put the pot outside in the shade. Is the pot ok in the shade, or can I give it some sun?

Hey Deborah, I've gotten a couple more roses now, bringing the total to close to 100 roses. I've lost some over the years but have a lot of my original collection that I posted about 3 years ago. For the most part they do get really big, a lot of them even bigger than the estimated sizes that are listed on sites like helpmefind.com (which I use a lot as a resource as far as mature rose sizes). I guess that has a lot to do with having a longer growing season than most (not as long as yours though!) I will say this as far as rose wisdom goes: I now know to pay attention to the growth habit of a rose before buying it. If the growth habit isn't upright and bushy (but not overly so, wider than tall doesn't work in a rose bed with a lot of roses in it), then I probably won't be interested in it. There are specific roses I have in areas where I want climbers. Trying to prune a climber as a bush doesn't really work. Also, it's not a huge deal if my roses don't go dormant in the winter, freezes don't kill them in this zone (there was even a huge cold snap this February in Texas and even though temperatures dropped to as low as 8 degrees and some of my roses died to the ground those were all own-root and came back from it really quickly). I was always really worried about the fact that my roses didn't ever go dormant even as colder weather was approaching. This information is obviously zone-dependent so if you do live a colder zone it's a good idea to hold back on pruning/fertilizing as colder weather approaches. Another thing is that it's very true that prepping the soil where you're planting the roses is far more important than how you feed them afterwards. For the most part I don't feed the roses all too frequently but the soil they're in had a lot of time put into it. The holes were dug deep and wide, and plenty of organic matter was mixed into them. Another thing that I don't think some people realize is that they should really let their roses do their own thing until they do reach their mature sizes or close to it. They want to grow to their mature size, pruning too much before that (other than removing dead growth) is probably more of a hindrance to the roses than anything. That goes back to one of the things I pointed out earlier, trying to control a rose's growth habit is a losing battle, and if you want to put a rose in an area that needs a smaller rose, don't keep chopping back one that wants to grow big. Find one with similar characteristics that has a smaller mature size instead. I don't really take pictures of my roses and I do have some weeding to do in my rose bed, but I will post back here with some pictures...eventually. I will definitely keep you in mind though! Just want to get the weeding done first, it looks shameful as-is!