Wow ... we are going from roses to heucheras ! Up here in my arid high summer temps, the dark ones get sun scorched, so I need to grow them in shade. Even dappled shade is not enough.

What are the names of your red mini roses ? Did you buy them as bands ?

Seriously, let me know what roses you are interested in growing and I'll see if I can give you a leg up. Zone 6b is very doable for a lot of roses. They are not inside plants, but you can over winter them inside if you need to, but they do need to be protected from deer. Roses are deer candy.

All of the nursery sites say heucheras are deer resistant, but the deer up here just can't read and will eat them to the crown, if I don't protect them ...

Yes everything you read they say heucheras are deer resistant. But my deer cannot resist them. I think I also really have a groundhog problem too so between the deer and groundhog and sometime rabbits things have been eaten to the ground in one night.

The red rose was a no name from my local nursery they just said red miniature rose. They have garden seminars and the plants are included in the class fee. She buys a lot of odd lots and no names plants for the seminars and then put them in a markdown area of the ones that are not used.

This is the red rose.



I am only looking for a fragrant Yellow and Peach that looks like a hybrid tea. I do not like the David Austins that look like torn up tissue paper.
This is the one I want to replace. Had it at my old house for 20 yrs. Constant bloom all spring to fall. It was at the end of the road that took bad winter road salt and kept ticking. I dug it up and moved it here and it did not survive. Do not know the name. Purchased it from K-Mart did no name was on the pot.



The color peach I want to replace. This is the color peach.
New Years.........

Rose and asparagus are the swine of a garden. They want the most sun, fertilizer and mulch. Stint them and they will sulk and decline.

Tom ....

That is not necessarily true. It is very true for the prima donnas of the rose world ... I can give you a long list of those, too. Roses are weeds when they are happy.

You do have to find the right rose for your garden conditions. Peter Schneider wrote a wonderful book titled Right Rose, Right Place https://www.amazon.com/dp/1603424385/

He lives in Ohio in zone 5 !

There are a lot of right ways to grow roses. It's just that for decades all of the information about how to grow roses was directed towards those who had ideal conditions rather that towards people who had real gardens. Roses were sold as if every rose would succeed in every garden. That's never been true about roses or any other plant.

As for roses being heavy feeders, that is not really true, either. Again, for decades, the American Rose Society was dominated by rose exhibitors who threw all kinds of chemicals and followed an intense feeding schedule to get those "perfect" blooms that the average gardener never needed to to do to grow healthy plants. To have healthy roses, you don't need to feed them any more than you do any other plant in your garden. They need the same kind of nutrients you provide your other plants and they will be happy plants.

Cinta ...

I can't quite tell from your photo, but I think your red mini is 'Red Cascade'. It was bred by Ralph Moore and introduced in 1976. It can be used as either a climber or a ground cover. It is a weed. It is almost impossible to kill that rose ... It can die to the ground and will come back.

Rose (Rosa 'Red Cascade')

I can't identify your yellow, but if you want a cold hardy yellow rose that has stood the test of time, you might want to try 'Sunsprite' It is hardy to zone 5. I don't know how well it grows own root, but I do know it was introduced budded.

Rose (Rosa 'Sunsprite')

It can be grown in a container and you can grow it on your patio.

Keep in mind asking a rose to survive road salt is asking a lot of any plant. Centuries ago, salting the earth was one of the ways of destroying an enemy's ability to grow crops as an act of war.

There are roses that are more salt tolerant. As a class, rugosas are often called "beach roses" because of their ability to handle salt spray.

If you are looking for a spectacular red landscape rose I do have a suggestion ...

'New Year' is no longer in commerce and I could not find a peach colored rose with the right bloom form that is currently available. I can find several pink colored roses that would be bullet proof.

I 'll dig out your list and look, Lyn.

I hadn't been on the rose list the past couple of seasons. I was frustrated by moving stresses and depressed by how many roses I lost.

Lyn is right about growing roots. An alternate to a pot could be a very well prepared and amended planting hole and lots of care and watering. I try to get my roses well established in the ground before winter.

I don't have the budget to buy roses this season. This years garden budget is extremely limited due to medical tests and procedures. I have more tests and such to come. Last October I had two dark spots on my mammogram. They were benign, thankfully, but they hurt. I still need to get them removed once I find a qualified specialist. I have a couple of other things, including a shoulder needing microsurgery, that I have been putting off. Nothing life threatening, thank goodness, but still requiring attention.

I am tending my existing plants and starting seeds that I already have (and I have lots!). If I pick up more work (or some deadbeat clients finally pay me) things may change. I still have garden beds and paths to construct and tons of weeds....

The remains of Chicago Peace and Yves St. Laurent are heading back to the big box store. You warned me about those when I mentioned I got them. With the return and a coupon I could come home with three others. I am leaning towards floribundas with antique form. Bolero and Orchid Romance are doing great! If they have any Romantica hybrid teas, I may give them a shot, but I have to research them more.

I want some more own root antique roses. I want to replace Grus Au Aachen and Souvenir de Malmaison . SdM needs to be planted in a protected position and covered completely in peat moss for the winter, but she is worth the bother imo.

When I add more roses, own root Austins are top of the list! I have to research which ones would be best for me. I like the Kordes fairy tale roses as well, but they seem to vary on whether they do better own root or grafted.

I also want to choose a couple of other Buck roses. I love Honey Sweet.

How are your clematis doing. I remember you were thinking of getting some.

Hi Andi ...

You are wise to focus on health issues first. Our gardens are for our souls and to give us respite, so do what you can without adding stress to your life and let your garden be a source of joy.

Andi ... my part of California is coming out of our historic five year drought, but the water grab is not over. I didn't plant much during the drought because everything was already water stressed. I am kind of glad I never planted a clematis because I think the blooms would fry in my triple digit temps without more shade than I can give the plant ...

I have a hunch the Romanticas may be too tender for you, but I know that all of the Kordes roses introduced after 2002 have been field tested for being suited for being grown own root, so if you do find them in a big box store as own root plants, you can feel comfortable about purchasing them. You are wise to do your research first.

As for own root Austins, many of the early Austins were weak plants even when they were budded. I think you need to get some feedback from others who have grown them as own root plants before you invest money and time in them. They may have pretty blooms, but that does not mean that they are solid plants.

FYI ... on the Rose Forum, I am reading that the Fairy Tale roses can grow up to be very large plants ...

Andi ... for a fragrant cutting rose, you, too, could go with 'Sunsprite'
Rose (Rosa 'Sunsprite')

It has stood the test of time and is quite fragrant

or Bonica, which is quite bullet proof, but not as fragrant

Shrub Rose (Rosa 'Bonica')

Be well ... it's good to hear from you.

I picked up Happy Cappy today. It should look good with Pinata, Amber carpet, and the Popcorn Drift rose. This is a small area along the drive way . It will be the first garden will see as I come down the driveway.

This is what it looked like when I first moved in....

Then I tried this

Then I made it deeper


This will be my third attempt to make this a nice entrance garden.

Cinta ...

How large were the plants you picked up ?

They are in all in 2 gallon pots. Pinata I have been growing on the patio in a large pot that is 4' tall and about 4 ft wide.'

Good, they are not small plants, they already have a good sized root mass.

btw ...your entry gardens look beautiful ...

Most of the time when people pull plants out of containers, they have been taught to open up the roots by tearing into the root mass. Unless your roses are terribly root bound, don't mess with their roots that way. They really don't like that. Otherwise, I am certain you know how to go forward.

I checked the lineage of all of the roses you brought home and none of them have hardy roses in their background, so you would be wise to plan on winter protecting by mounding them with mulch. So as you are siting them in your bed, you will want to keep that in mind.

All of them have good parents and should be good plants.

>> beautiful last year, dug out dead this year, we came to the conclusion it
was likely to clay type soil with poor drainage and we hope with the new dirt and compost for better results.

That's the same thing I was thinking, Linda. But "drainage" is always my first thought when there's a problem.

There are lots of things you can do if you have some slope to work with, even just a slight grade. But it can be hard work to dig trenches, and how many people volunteer to help with something that hot and sweaty?

But without some slope to work with, probably a raised bed is the easiest way to solve poorly-draining soil. Even there, you at least need to wheelbarrow around enough soil and soil amendments to fill the raised bed.

freedombel said:Are roses this time of year suppose to start taking off? All of mine are just twigs with tiny new leaf growth, I thought by now they are suppose to of gained height, bushiness and form buds?

Did you have a late hard cold snap?

That will more or less stun roses.

I have had that happen. They simply just seem to remain at a certain point for x amount of time before they start growing normally again.

RpR said:Did you have a late hard cold snap?

That will more or less stun roses.

I have had that happen. They simply just seem to remain at a certain point for x amount of time before they start growing normally again.

No different winter than usual, We replanted many roses after making a better bed for them with good soil and compost, many of them
are getting new leaves and many buds, looks promising. This winter I am thinking of covering them all.

freedombel said:overing them is an excellent idea.
No different winter than usual, We replanted many roses after making a better bed for them with good soil and compost, many of them
are getting new leaves and many buds, looks promising. This winter I am thinking of covering them all.

Covering is an excellent idea. All it takes is one bad year for disappointment to set in.
Up where my gardens are, the area of the south one thirty below is very rare, but up by my north garden I have seen forty below three time in the past twenty years.

I spoke to a rose professional about the number of roses I lost compared to my total.
He said I was doing better than average; he also said up here, he has never met a person, including professionals who do not lose roses.
Uncovering too soon, is one of the most common reasons up here.
Roses can go through hell in late fall with little harm but uncover them and get a cold snap into the low twenties or teens and some times that is certain death, even though they die slowly.
They kind of just fade away.

Rpr ...

I have to say it ... sorry ... there are far to many variables that come into play to make that kind of generalization. Also, it depends on the rose itself.

If a rose goes into winter stressed, it will be more vulnerable to a cold snap. If it goes into winter healthy and is not a "tender" rose, it can handle a cold snap of of 20s, low teens and even single digits. Roses are tougher than most people think, but the gardener has to select the right roses for the conditions for his or her garden.

If you chose a rose with a lot of tea rose in it's lineage, it will be a "tender" rose in that the tea roses brought the repeat blooming genes into the rose pool. Along with that wonderful characteristic, they brought the inability to go fully dormant. What that means is that the canes hold too much moisture within and between the cells in the wood and those water molecules can freeze and expand. When it freezes, the cells burst causing die back, which impairs the health of the plant. That's one of the criterial factors the gardener needs to keep in mind while selecting roses for his or her garden. It was more of a factor when you are looking at the early hybrid teas, grandifloras, and polananthas, but as time when on and these roses where continuously crossed with more hardy roses, the genes became more homogenized and hardier plants were developed.

However, the rose industry continued to bud these plants to Dr. Huey, which is cold hardy only to zone 6, so often the graft would fail. The solution was often to bury the graft or to bury the whole rose for the winter. Uncovering the rose too soon left the roses vulnerable simply because they did not have the tools to survive the colder temperatures.

Other variables included siting of plants. The age of the roses ... meaning how well they were establish going into winter. Juvenile plants without established root systems are always more vulnerable to all of the stressors mother nature can throw at them. Also, if the are sited in a part of the garden in a micro climate where cold air pooled, the zone information was distorted by nature. Drying winds also have an impact.

Mulching with the wrong material can make a difference.

The list of things that can impact the process goes on and on. Not just for roses but for all plants.

When it comes to roses, there is always more than one variable that can make a difference as to why a rose fails. It's not just about cold tolerance. Often people think its about cold tolerance when the problem that caused the rose to fail was something completely different.

Roses are actually highly adaptable, but if you push the zones by selecting the wrong rose for your garden, you are setting yourself up for a casualty.

I think it's important to qualify statements like "Roses can go through hell in late fall with little harm but uncover them and get a cold snap into the low twenties or teens and some times that is certain death, even though they die slowly.
They kind of just fade away."

In my rose life, roses continue to surprise me by not following the rules ...

I am not a professional, nor would I ever claim to be an expert. No one knows it all. Even the most expert rosarian has never grown every rose in every kind of condition in every type of soil.

I always fall back of Ralph Moore's statement, "As soon as you think you know everything there is to know about roses, along comes a rose to prove you wrong."

Edited for another of my famous typos

Up here, mid-Minnesota, and the part of Minnesota one lives in determines how much care should be given to Hybrid-Tea roses.

As I said temps. in my Southern garden rarely reach -30, go fifty miles north and add minus ten degrees go sixty miles south and subtract minus ten degrees.
It is standard and recommended that if one covers one's roses , not buries but covers, that the ground should be frozen hard before covering. Than means temp. into the low twenties to high teens.
Approx. ten years ago we had below zero at both gardens by Halloween; I was out laying sod in a snow storm the day before the sub-zero hit.
My uncovered roses survived and a few weeks later I was mowing lawn again.
The fact that there was a foot of snow on the ground probably greatly affected rose survival.
Potted roses vs bare root are the most likely to die. After I quit buying potted roses my loss rate declined a good deal.
This is from experience, if you get that hard a cold snap in the spring, you will lose some roses -- without -- exception.

Now how hardy the rose was obviously comes into play but there were years that a rose I thought might go belly-up did not but one that was tough as nails died.
I used to go to rose seminars and the main answer from the experts for the reason why was, you are not the first person to say this to me but if you are growing roses up here that are out of the recommended zone no matter how careful you are it is still a crap-shoot.
Some defy logic.
If you get a cold snap after uncovering, all, one hundred percent of the sprouts will be dead so your roses will again be starting from zero and be blooming weeks later than they would have without the cold snap.
Some times the sprouts die on some canes even without a hard cold snap.
As the gent told me, it is a crap shoot.

It is only in the past decade that I switched to burying roses verses simply covering them.
My loss rate after that, except by me doing something really stupid, is now near zero.
My last great loss came when I moved some roses to go from two beds to one down south, moving old roses is risky and most of the ones I lost were over ten years old.

If you have never covered your roses due to sub-zero winter temps. it is hard, nor do I expect you , to understand what that amounts to.
For years I did like mom and simply cut the roses down to about eight to twelve inches and piled on three feet, loose before it settled, of preferably Oak leaves.
When uncovered in the spring, depending on how late one uncovered them, the top inch or three would be black from winter kill so you would trim that off.
If you left them covered long enough, they would be sprouting under the leaves.
You would know which ones were in trouble by how much black was on the canes; sometimes, ones where you cut them down to the main stem because the canes were almost totally black would sprout new canes and do well, while those that seem to be OK, would die back and in a few weeks be dead; although you had to leave them for at least a month because sometimes about when you were about to pull them, suddenly out would come sprouts and by the end of summer it would be blooming true to form.

I then tried putting fabric over the trimmed roses and did not trim them down as low as before.
After that I piled leaves over the fabric.
In this method the roses were further along in sprouting to leaf out than they were in the old method but removing leaves from the fabric with a fork became an annoying hassle as the fork tines would pierce and hook the fabric that was off the ground near the rose bush due to the height of the rose bush.
You would get a nice fork full of leaves lift it and end up dumping it over because you had hooked the fabric and it pulled the fork from your hands.

That is when I used the method my neighbor down the block had always used, totally burying his roses.
At first I did just some and when they always looked better than the ones not buried I now do almost all.
The ones I do not are located where burying is hard to impossible but I place loose dirt over most of the plant after cutting it down.
I do put fabric over the buried roses up north as the bed is on the edge of a hill where wind hammers it often.
I also put a fence of wire around the bed to a height of four feet so the deep leaves will not blow away.
I used to use straw or hay bales but bales prices have soared and I got tired of storing bales all summer.
AS an aside.
I feed my squirrels all winter and used to give them peanuts.
Well one spring when I picked up the bales, which were on the ends of the garden, underneath was a path of tunnels in which some were stuffed full of peanuts lined up end to end.
I never saw them but there were probable some rather porky Meadow Voles around some where.

Crown gall took out the last of mom's very old roses which is one reason I stopped using one rose bed now have all in the unaffected bed.
I treated the roses roots and all.

Buck's 'Honey Sweet' is a very pretty peach/coral rose. It is classified as a "shrub" but has the manageable, vase like form and cutting worthy blooms that I wish hybrid teas had in my garden. It is mildly fragrant. I bought mine as an own root plant from Chamblees. It has survived two moves and two polar vortex winters. This is tied with the next rose as my favorite surviving rose.

Rose (Rosa 'Honeysweet') (aka Honey Sweet)

This is another favorite. It also survived moving twice in a year in the worst winters of recent memory. It has classic old fashioned blooms. It is mildly fragrant. It is a beautiful rose,. but can be a large plant. It would need more room than a basic hybrid tea. If you love peach colored , old fashioned style roses, this one is for you!

Rose (Rosa 'Crown Princess Margareta') (aka AUSwinter)

I am mentioning another hardy, coral colored rose because it has been so hardy and beautiful in my gardens. It also survived the moves and the winters. It is a cousin to the knock out roses, by the same breeder. It isn't a cutting rose. No fragrance, different styled blooms. It is a shrub rose, not a hybrid tea, but it will bloom non stop once established. This is the most commented upon rose from my old garden. I think it is stunning planted with dark purple flowering plants. This rose can handle being planted near a walkway or roadway that is snow blown and salted by indifferent maintenance men. Not only will it survive being pummeled by a "kick ball" by neighboring brats, it will teach them to keep their antics away from the pretty prickly plants. If you have a place in your rose garden that you want to grow a rose, but it is too vulnerable for grafted hybrid tea roses, this is a good choice. Likewise if you wish knockouts came in colors other than radioactive cherry red and hot pink (or the always sold out sunny or rainbow).

Rose (Rosa 'Carefree Celebration') (aka RADral)

Star roses is calling some of their floribundas "romanticas" like 'Bolero" and 'Orchid Romance'. It is so confusing. I didn't see any hybrid tea romanticas in the stores, so I wasn't tempted.


Two floribundas jumped into my cart while I was shopping for a couple of tomato plants - Adobe Sunrise and Cherry Parfait. Funny how beauty trumps ones better judgement while strolling around the garden department. AS is going into my front mixed planting bed - the "Tiger Garden". CP is joining my red/white rose circle to detract from the struggling divas.

Guess whose keyboard broke this week. Have to head out to walk Winston the pug and water. It was "almost raining" all day, but didn't. It is also rose tone time in the feeding program.

My roses and my dog are being fed well while I try to reduce (in a healthy manner, of course)

Good news, all the new roses we bought to replace the ones that did not come back are blooming or have buds, amending the soil with fresh
potting soil and compost has likely made all the difference. We had left in the Lincoln rose that appeared DEAD, has new leafy growth on
the bottom. I am learning along the way as I go, but sure should of started with good soil and good dirt....at least I am learning and hope to
keep learning, and this thread has had great advice, thank you all.

freedombel said:

...we came to the conclusion it was likely to clay type soil with poor drainage and we hope with the new dirt and compost for better results.

I don't think it the clay soil - roses are noted for loving clay soils...