I do and I just adore it. It's going into it's third year. I have it in a spot where the soil isnt great but it' grew and bloomed so nicely. I love the blooms and fragrance, the blooms remind me of pale pink shades of tissue paper. And as for Blackspot the little that it got in my no spray garden didn't affect it and didn't show till late summer/fall. It is one of my favorites ! and in my garden it's already 5 and a half ft tall and throws up canes like crazy. It was my first ogr , and is the reason I'm hooked!

Ps, I'm having trouble with this site as well. Takes forever to load sometimes and gets stuck halfway thru loading. I have to post when I can and read what i can before it freezes up.

Thanks for the quick reply. Sounds interesting!

I forgot to ask, how long do the blooms last for? I'm trying to stay away from roses that only last for a day or two.

Does the scent waft around in your garden? I have a Mayor of Casterbridge rose that kind of reminds me of MPO. He's very healthy and vigorous, but what a shame I couldn't smell much.

For me, Mme. Pierre Oger was awful. She's a stringy long-caned Bourbon, and she bloomed really well for me in the spring, with a few scrawny flowers in fall. Her flowers are small, fragrant, and a really beautiful silvery pale pink. Immediately after blooming, she would get blackspot and her leaves would drop. After dealing with this for four years, each year hoping that THIS would finally be the year that she would stop this nonsense, I faced her down, cut her off, and dug her up. I'm putting Leveson Gower in her place in my row of Bourbons.

Sorry I couldn't be more optimistic for you.

Connie

Mine too went the way of the shovel. Shot out long canes with very small flowers on the ends, scent slight to my nose, not wafting. I live in the hot and dry, and it would defoliate after its only flush in the spring, leaving bare, ugly, sunburnt canes to have to look at the rest of the year.

My MPO probably does all the things that the shovel-pruners have mentioned, but I wouldn't consider taking her out. For a few perfect blooms a year she's worth it to me. But that's my approach to my roses. Few of them are required to perform in any designated way as long as I get to swoon once or twice a season when in their presence. Mme Pierre Oger definitely makes me swoon when she presents me with one of her perfectly delicious fragrant blooms, and for that I thank her every time.

Mine is tall and lanky and has a tendency to want to flop over because of the long canes. The flowers are quite pretty and very fragrant, but usually after the spring bloom, that is it. Rebloom is quite rare, if ever. It is also prone to disease, but I spray so that helps some.

One of the worst of all the OGRs I have ever grown; leafless most of the time, uninteresting blooms on a gawky, upright-but-floppy plant. Truly appalling lack of Blackspot resistance, even when sprayed. By year four it had dwindled down to a lone pencil thick sprig, at which point I simply ran over it with the mower and called it a day.

Agree...agree with trospero. I've coveted this rose, but lost two of them; own root both!

Here is a link that might be useful: Garden Musings Blog

oh dear - no doubt about it, both MPO and her sister, Reine Victoria are two of the most lovely bourbons but frail, so frail. MPO hangs its beautiful head like a consumptive poet, ethereal and delicate but oh so finicky. Blackspot, mildew, chlorosis, die-back, whooping cough - gets em all. Tricky to place too, as they both grow tall and spindly with a tendency to flop rather than arching, gracefully.
Still, in the garden in my head, I would plant this with ox-eye daisies, ammi majus, orlaya, astrantia and tall grasses, to create a meadowy, informal planting. Maybe some helpful pea-sticks for extra support. Add in a couple of easy viticella clems, to ramble and scramble and disguise the sparse foliage on the bourbons. On the other hand, how keen are you on the Nurse Jimmy scenario?

I love this rose, I have three MPO's near a front porch, and Reine Victoria. I do see blackspot late in the season, but have not found the rose to suffer an adverse effect from it, as it regrows its leaves.

It will drop leaves in hot weather, but also, will re-grow the leaves. It repeats well, but takes some time to mature. The fragrance is wonderful, it perfumes the front yard in summer.
The blooms are not large, but are very elegant.

Mme Pierre Oger

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I'll inlcude this pic of Reine Victoria, as it has the same growth habit as MPO. This pic was taken at Mills Rose Garden in Syracuse, NY.

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If you have deer; don't bother with MPO. I can't even get canes on mine; the deer eat the heck out of it.

Strange thing, my friend in zone 4-5 ish also has MPO which does not suffer from any of the horrors mentioned above. It does not get too tall, as too long canes get zapped by the frost above the snowline (so somewhere at 50-70 cm), but otherwise there it is a nice rose, repeats rather well, even does not defoliate that much (my friend maybe remembers to spray her once or twice in a season).

Wow! So many negative reviews on MPO.
The photos do look pretty, but I'm not sure if I want to nurse it.

I don't have much success with old garden roses. Last year, I added a few because some people mentioned OGRs have good disease resistance without spray?? Perhaps I miss-understood.

Anyway, the ones I grow are: Sydonie, Felicite Parmentier, Duchesse de Montebello, La ville de Bruxelles and Souvenir de la Malmaison.

Sydonie blackspot really bad (beacuse I hardly water it) and therefore I had to get rid of it. The blooms were pretty, but I wasn't too keen on those hybrid perpetual foliage and needle-like thorns.

The foliage on my other old garden roses are turning brown and ugly, compare to my Austins which are looking green right now. I don't even spray them.

Thinking of buying Scepter'd Isle and St Cecilia as a substitute instead.

If you aim for rebloom, Austins probably would be a better bet than MPO. Then again, weren't the tea and china roses a good choice for Australia?

I have one and next to it is Pomponella which is a monster bush and repeats like mad. Same little round flowers but bright pink and in sprays. I like my MPO and it took some training to build up the stems and make a thick bush out of her. I would prune a little higher each year so each cane branches more and more and also trim the canes when they become fishing poles in mid summer. Eventually, you get a bush that you can cut the outermost canes lower and the innermost canes the highest. The goal is to get lots of branching so you get the most spring flowers. I get a few flowers here and there after spring and sometimes in fall another set. But I don't let it get sky high over the summer. When I did that years ago, I had fewer canes and it was a tall, thin and floppy shrub. It took a few years to get a big bush- at first I was dissapointed. Patience paid off. If you really like rounded roses, try a Pomponella, but be sure to give it plenty of room.

I wouldn't trade my Mme. Pierre Oger for anything. There is no rose I grow (and I have over 160) like it. I am totally organic too. Her blooms are translucent and wonderful. I hope I can post a photo of one of her bouquets for you later. I transplanted her once in 1999, so she's at least 11 or 12 years old. You need to peg her to get more blooms. They are rounded and just gorgeous. I must admit she gets black spot later on in the season (around second bloom time)... but a lot of my roses do, and I just strip off the diseased leaves.

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Ahhh - that's beautiful!

Oh yes. That photo ALMOST makes me want to try MPO, too.

But I know better.

Does it smell as good as it looks?

That photo of MPO looks deliciously beautiful!

In the old thread titled, 'The Importance of Fragrance," Tivoli_rose wrote:

"Madame Pierre Oger has a fragrance I LOVE. I put up with bad blackspot, really nasty. I put up with huge, unwieldy canes. I put up with not a whole lot of rebloom. But, the bloom form and the fine fragrance is the selling point."

So, what does MPO really smell like??? I'm dying to know.

I was looking for drift. Roses for a bed when I smelled mpo and followed my nose ... OMG great scent no bs small powdery mildew problem . I sprayed her twice with a peroxide mix and she got over . She blooms like crazy . She is just starting to climb my wall ... I am in love

It is really hard to capture the distinctive beauty of the flowers of Mme Pierre Oger and the way they appear lit up from within. Krista's pics of the flowers are the closest I've seen.

IMO Reine Victoria photographs somewhat better. Reine Victoria is also lit up from within but not as conspicuously, since her daughter MPO is lighter and her dark interior hence shows up more. Of course this means thin, translucent petals, not the matte gardenia-like, tropical kind favored by modern growers.

I really think it depends on your zone and your expectations. I tried growing it and grew it for a few years and it was just not worth the trouble. It's a DIVA.

Amazing in my Florida garden hates chemicals won't tolerate anything other then organic fertilizer or bug spray so worth it love her

I live in Florida zone.9 no watering no spray and this year no dead heading , still kicking but

I love this rose. It stopped me in my tracks when I had traveled 300 miles to a rose garden/nursery. But I have had all the issues with it that others have stated along with deer..(lanky growth defoliating, no rebloom etc

)Deer seem to really like those pale delicate pink roses as they are hammering another one I have. I grew MPO in alkaline soil and thought that was the issue..I guess not..I am going to try again cuz it is SOOOOO Beautiful and that isn't taking into account the fragrance.

Beautiful in z6 central Ohio, terrible here in hot humid SE Virginia. I find the Bourbons best suited to our conditions are Souv. de la Malmaison and relatives-- Kronprincessin Viktoria, Souv. de St. Ann's, Mystic Beauty.

Stems may be on the short side, but they are lovely floated in a bowl. Fragrance is simply wonderful!

Had mine for a year -blooms are never like the ones on photos... i still wonder if mine really is mme pierre oger. Mine gets sun burnt even on nice sunny day which is not really hot!. But I am going to nurture it since it's healthy. Yes it does b/s but I am surprised hiw quickly the leaves grow back once they are pulled out.

So I am curious (my twice replanted MPO died, moved from way alkaline soil to way acid soil area!! UGH!)..is there another rose with the beautiful translucent quality MPO has but better growing habits?

My mother grew Mme Pierre Oger (from Rose of Yesterday and Today) in her Pennsylvania garden, on neutral soil. She never sprayed and I don't think she ever fertilized or even pruned. She was on a hill, almost at the top. Down in the valley springtime came a later and there was a lot more frost. Mme Pierre Oger was (and still is) the most beautiful rose I have ever seen. Superlative in a vase. I don't remember ever seeing any black spot. The flowers, with their long petioles, have a beautiful stance on the bush, which is five foot tall and rather upright.

I think I might have tried it when I first moved here. My "dream come true" roses were all lost in an unexpected April snowstorm a year or so after planting (including New Dawn) and I was so devastated I never tried Mme Pierre or Reine des Violettes again -- couldn't stand the pain. (My back garden in a sort of semi-shady a depression behind buildings.)

There was a beautiful, healthy well-filled-out bush of Reine Victoria, of which Mme Pierre is a sport, for decades at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. It certainly had three flushes, including one in the middle of the summer. At some point they got rid of all their roses because of rose rosette disease and they have never replaced it.

Here is a link to a picture from the web, of a bush grown in Umbria, Italy, showing the petioles: https://www.casanovaumbria.eu/Mme-Pierre-Oger.jpg

Reine des Violettes and Mm. Pierre Oger..2 of my favorites!! Eden is up there to..alright I could go on..

Here in Southern Oregon MPO does pretty well; some BS but not as bad as some others. I don't spray or remove the BS leaves. I have her training alongside an arch w/ some shade in the afternoon. She has the most gorgeous flowers! Scent is very good but I have others that, to me, have a stronger scent and whose scent drifts more. But I absolutely ADORE MPO's flowers.

Please do try pegging if you're frustrated by long bloomless canes. It's incredibly rewarding, makes a lanky shrub look like art at first and then increases the blooms tenfold.

Take any long flexible cane and bend it to create some pressure, tie it to any of the other canes to create an interesting curve. And then tie another, and another. All those empty long canes will start sprouting and, when it's time to bloom, the flowers will appear everywhere. The foliage will cover your ties so they don't spoil your show. This works very well when faced with 'untidy' shrubs. Don't cut off the canes, just bend and tie them. And of course don't try this with spindly young shoots.

The Victorians loved to bend and flatten their canes then peg them to the ground (hence the term) to increase the bloom so it's not a new trick. Look carefully next time you visit a show garden. They all do it!

Not sure MPO is suitable for pegging..it has a rather stiff upright growth habit. Would be hard to bend the canes.