Since I started gardening, I was more into native plants, butterfly and hummingbird plants and such. I have one rosebush (I think is a Marie Antoinette) which is now in too much shade and needs to be moved soon. DH recently asked for more roses. He's disabled and mostly at home, so I'd like to do that. I live in the Hill Country of Texas, where "soil" is scarce and caliche and rocks are common. I'm thinking about antique or older easy-care roses. Now he's got it in his head we could have an arbor with climbing roses also. I talked to someone from a local rose society and he recommended a guy at a nursery that has more such roses and can get us others by request. I'm 71 years old, and DH can't help with doing any of the labor on this. Just starting to look into this.

Hi Linda,

A lot depends on your tastes. Flower color, fragrance, plant size (Pillar, Arch, Pergola), repeat flowering, proven record in a low-maintenance garden, and so on. If you choose a shade of pink to start out with your number of choices will be way bigger than if you were to choose, say, brilliant red or purple. And sometimes a rose that repeats produces fewer flowers in a year than one that does not...

I started growing roses when I lived in Austin and most of the roses I bought were from Antique Rose Emporium. The biggest advantage of buying from them is that many of their roses have been selected as low maintenance roses especially for southern gardens. Many were found growing without care in odd spots throughout Texas. Another advantage is that the plants they send are physically well developed compared to those of most other suppliers I've used. My climbers Zepherine Drouhin and Mme Alfred Carriere are from ARE. Both are a shade of pink. Both have at least some fragrance. ZD can take some shade. Mme Alf. is way too big for a pillar, four can cover a good sized pergola. New Dawn did very well for me when I lived in Texas.

Take a look at their online catalogue https://www.antiqueroseemporiu... .

Two other possibilities are Chamblees and High Country Roses.

Remember to keep them well watered at least through their first season.

Also, the Earthkind roses are roses thoroughly tested for being low maintenance and relatively drought tolerant (for a rose). You can find these roses at any of the places Steve 812 recommended.

Thanks a lot! I forgot to mention fragrance. That's an absolute must-have on having some fragrance. DH is almost blind in one eye and the other is declining quite a bit from Macular Degeneration. In the future, it'll be more a priority. And repeating would be great as long as it produces enough roses. I know that raised beds are necessary out here. And that watering is necessary for any roses here. I look at roses and if it's pretty and fragrant I like it, but my location is problematic for a lot of plants. I'll look at that site...so many eye candy roses!

Figuring out what one wants from a plant is a vital step in building a healthy and mutually beneficial relationship with it. Sometimes those eye-candy photos distract us from more important things...

Tea Noisettes are the first group of roses to come to mind. I've never had a chance to grow any of them because they do require the warmth of a zone 8 garden, but there are some members of the tea-noisette group that are supposed to be very good at climbing, producing fragrance, and repeat-flowering: Lamarque, Celine Forestier, Gloire de Dijon, Marechal Neil, Reve d'Or, and so on. (Antique Rose Emporium or A Reverence for Roses)

Some other random possibilities, not all strictly climbers: Appljack, Climbing Mme Caroline Testout, Clair Matin, Apricot Impressionist. (Heirloom Roses) Marchioness of Londonderry. Marchesa Boccella, Ispahan, Sombreuil, Lady Banks (the white one that smells of violets), Don Juan, Penelope, Teasing Georgia, A Shropshire Lad, and Graham Thomas. (David Austin Roses, ARE)

Some of my roses are underplanted with herbs such as peppermint, spearmint, tarragon, culinary sage, salvias, catmint, and wormwood so that I can crush them as I go through the garden. I also grow an eglantine rose Amy Robsart whose leaves, when crushed, smell of green apples. In six years it has gotten to twelve feet high. The flowers are never more than two inches across and it does not repeat. But I do love the smell of the foliage. (Not sure it is in cultivation at this moment.)

Some roses can be hard to grow in the best sites. Other roses, if given a good start will endure very difficult locations. I think most of the roses I've listed above fall into the second category.

I hope you find a few roses that will suit your needs perfectly!