Have to chime in, maybe you won't see this, but I planted a Lavender Lassie about six years ago on advice from Sal Arena at Arena Roses in Paso Robles (no longer in business). He suggested it as better than Cecile Brunner, and everyone who sees it agrees. Huge sprays of double flowers, a bit darker than CB, very vigorous grower, disease free. Also fragrant, a real bonus for me. I do prune heavily every winter. It covers the side of a 13-foot wide garden shed, lots of sturdy new canes every year. Such a winner.

Kind of guessing a bit on some of this but information is scarce. I believe out those 3 rose White Meidiland would be the healthiest and overall best of the three. That said I did have W M and it is a big rose not tall but wide. It also tip roots where ever the canes touched the soil. Mine would easily form a 12 foot diameter circle. I just did not have that kind of room. It would be great for a hillside. So that one is robust and easy to grow. I would stay away from Wedding Dress as the rose just came out and they seem to be getting rid of it already. I would also be leery of Blossom Blanket. Only because it has been around a long time and is recycled occasionally by places like Jackson and Perkins and Wayside Gardens. It sounds okay on Help Me Find but I just have a feeling that it would be a problem rose outside of dry environments. Perhaps someone else has grown this one. So a lot depends on what you need the rose to do. I have tried many ground cover roses. For a white ground cover the best I have found is a Kordes rose Innocencia. It's very healthy and a much smaller size which works for me. There is also a newer drift rose in white that looks good. Not really sure if it is a new and improved white or the old one that they used to sell. I do grow 2 Cape diamond roses. They are own root and have massive root systems. I do think that she would do well in poor soil as long as it's not too wet. She is a large shrub so give her room.

Thanks for all the info, everyone! Though I have to admit, I was poking around and found Cori Ann's old post about Souvenir du Dr Jamain, and now I am seriously considering that one instead of Tess. The tales of blackspot have always scared me off. But that color! This rose will go next to Eden, and I can just picture those wine-red blooms making a dramatic statement next to the soft pink/green of Eden. Anyone care to make a decision for me? Do I go with reliable Tess, or wildcard but stunning SdDJ?

In my experience, most of the "can be trained as a climber" comments apply to warmer climates than your zone 6a. Most Austins can get huge in places like California so those kinds of comments are a warning to people without cold winters to indicate this might be an "octopus arm" Austin. I grow all of the Austins you mention and none of them show the slightest inclination of climbing in my zone 5, with the possible exception of Gertrude Jekyll who is reluctantly reaching out its one and only arm toward a nearby fence. If she would just bloom already I'd be happy (5 years and no blooms so far), and making it to 5' and bushy would make me ecstatic. It might be one of those roses that wants to get to a certain height before it blooms and it doesn't rebound from my cold winters fast enough to reach that height. I planted my Tess at the back of a bed and she still hasn't gotten to waist high after about 3 years. The Pilgrim is a little bigger - reliably 3' or so but not much bigger. Both of them bloom now and then, but they're not in ideal sun. Falstaff is the same size but he's in my virtual zone 6, and hasn't survived at all in a typical zone 5 spot. He had some nice surviving cane this winter and I'm hoping for better blooms this time around. So far he's branching out nicely. In answer to your bigger question, any time I get a long cane on any rose I tend to try to train it horizontally to encourage more laterals to grow. That increases the blooming if it will put out canes off those long branches - some roses refuse to do this, like my Crown Princess Margaretha - but most seem to try. The down side of having a few long canes stretch straight up is that you might get blooms only at the highest point of the rose. My Poseidon is like that, and I've had to do some pretty creative pruning and encouraging of the canes horizontally to get more blooms down the length of the plant. Chris at NewFlora used to chime in to recommend strategic pruning early in the season for roses like Poseidon to encourage them to branch out more. Bottom line is that I doubt you'd need to plant these near a substantial support to climb, though in zone 6 you might get more vigorous regrowth after the winter than I do. Pruning and horizontal encouragement helps with more bloom production, but you don't have to do so if you don't want to. It's your choice - while they're young I'd do no more for these than you'd do for any other rose and let the roses tell you if they want to stretch their arms farther than their immediate surroundings. Cynthia