Anson Jones, installed in fall is gone. So is Lamarque, also planted in the fall. (Parade - from that same fall planting group - seems to be going great Guns. I still have hope for White Maman Cochet and Ducher.) All three French Lace are decidedly dead. Also planted in August. Celine Forestier planted a year and a half ago, is gone. And It looks like Gardenia will be leaving soon, too. Just too fragile for our yo-yo weather, I believe.

I thought Europeana was dead, but just as I was preparing to shovel prune it, it set a new leaf. So it got a brief reprieve. It was planted in a brutally sunny location in adobe soil, so there were good reasons for it to be unhappy.

Thinking of shovel-pruning Monsieur Tillier. In two seasons it produced three buds and no flowers. It looked healthy through fall, but it lost one of its two canes to frost this winter.

Jude the Obscure is dead and gone. Moved once too often, I suppose. Victim of repeated nibbling is Paul's Lemon Pillar which has grown shorter every year and is now about two inches tall. So it's pretty close to the edge right now.

As a side-note, Blush Noisette, Hermosa, Cardinal Hume, and Rise 'n' Shine had foliage all winter and seem to be coming through fine. I think Baltimore Belle did, too, but it's still not quite the thickness of a ballpoint pen cartridge, after a full year of "growth" so I did not see it much of the time. Lady Hillingdon put out the occasional leaf through the winter and continues testing the waters.

At this point I'm pretty happy with how well the roses seem to have survived winter weather. Now that most of them are leafing out, I really have to concentrate on fertilizing and mulching. I suppose a spray of antifreeze might help them through some chilly nights.

I think your good attitude is admirable! I would be discouraged to lose roses regularly over the winter. I was annoyed just to see that Melody Perfume, who has looked lovely last week and had two huge blooms, is now eaten up with black spot - already!

Steve - Did the same thing today.. almost everyone I thought was alive in the front yard is alive. Only one I'm worrying about is Tuscan Sun. Never was a strong rose for me. In the back, a lot more deaths. Not sure where I'll find another Florescent Fuchsia..). I'll have to wait until next month to really start determining who's dead and who's not. On a bright note, everyone in my "pond area" made it (yay!). So I have lots of blue roses coming up, well, roses! LOL! And my climbers already have leaves, as well as Ruby Ruby (highly recommended).

My Tuscan Sun did ok the first year, but I moved it and it died. Melody Parfume was planted in the same adobe soil as Europeana. It never bloomed in its first year. And it looked like all its canes died this winter. But it has put out three tiny leaves.

I guess I'm such a bad gardener that I just assume the loss rate will be high. Then when something works, I'm pleasantly surprised. Iris are almost rampant here. At least by local standards. Still not sure about roses.

Well, Steve, you can do what Mike did for his parents and dig massive holes to replace the crappy soil w/good soil. I did that with a few roses that I wanted to make sure had the best possible chance of surviving (two I got from England.. Doris Tysterman http://www.helpmefind.com/rose... and Summer Holiday http://www.helpmefind.com/rose...). Also, are you planting them deep enough? I've found that, now that I've buried everyone in mulch, I had much less mortalities than when I didn't bury them deep AND mulch the crap out of them. Right now is the best time to dig.. soil soft and weather nice enough to work outside! Plus it makes digging dead roses out a breeze.. I've found that when they're dead, they pull out of the ground super easy. Just end up getting stabbed with the thorns...

I generally try to bury the rose so that the bud union is a little below the surface of the soil. I'm not very good at mulching, though I know I should. I'm also not good at improving the soil. I'm sure that if I piled on enough good mulch, I could get earthworms to help out a lot.

What I do know is that some roses seem to soldier on regardless of the many insults they are dealt, and some just die if you look at them cross-eyed. I'm also learning that planting early in the year works best for just about all the roses. Fall planting has a fifty percent mortality rate here, even for own-root roses. It seems to be true even for roses planted in September - though perhaps not mid-August. Finally, I'm learning that some roses that are fine with zone 6 weather perish in winters here, in what is now zone 8. Gardenia, for example. I'm sure that if I had a big enough pile of mulch on it, it would survive.

that's why I never plant roses late in the year (ok, I lied.. I planted those two British roses in October, but this winter was weird). If you don't want to mulch, try Water Walls or some other kind of rose protection (rose collars, styrofoam covers, etc). It's the freeze/thaw/freeze/thaw that kills my poor babies. Especially late winter/early spring. Either that, or go with just the Canadian Mordens! You can't kill those badboys.. those and KnockOuts. Can't kill those either (but they're just so boring!)

I'm a minimalistic gardener - sort of Darwinian in my attitude, but the one thing I will do for my roses is mulch them as it saves on watering and weeding; plus it gives me somewhere to get rid of old grass clippings, sawdust, leaves and barnyard manure., etc.. Most people would tell me that much of what I use is not suitable - hah! Around here anything can be mulch, and so far it is working.

Porkpal,
I don't have grass, leaves, or manure. I have been keeping my coffee grounds for the garden. So in another millennium, I will have added enough organic matter for the roses, I suppose. Thanks for the tip on mulch. Your perspective as a "minimalistic gardener - sort of Darwinian" adds a lot of credence to the case for mulch, IMO.