Dear Daisy,
My goodness! Crete? Well, we're neighbors of a sort: I live in northern Italy, in a warm spot in the northern Apennines, and I have all your roses except the last, 'Columbian Climber'. I'm particularly fond of 'Blush Noisette' and 'Archiduc Joseph'--take note that the latter gets very large in a warm climate: mine is about 8'x6', at six years old.
Can you tell us about your weather, soil, and exposure? How is water availability? What other plants are you thinking of putting in your garden?
How interesting to have a member of the forum in Crete! Good luck with your new garden!
Melissa

What a romantic life you are living daisyincrete! First of all, I would love to live in Cornwall for awhile and now to be growing roses on the island of Crete in the Mediterranean! Wow, how great is that! Are you English? How did you decide to live in Crete?

You will love the world of old roses and old-style moderns, because to me they are the most lovely of the roses. Your list sounds wonderful to me. Enjoy and let us know how they do for you.

Chance

What an exciting adventure you are on. Please keep us updated with pictures and descriptions. I hope that you and Melissa connect in person.

Welcome to GardenWeb,

Carol

Welcome to GW .
What an exciting time this must be for you---How wonderful to start a new garden with the help of all the wonderful folks here at the Antique rose Forum.
I think it is great to connect with poeple all over the world sharing a love of roses.

Can't wait to see your garden progress and your roses start to bloom

Waiting for pictures.

Florence

Well Daisy what an adventure you are embarking on. Actually parts of California are known as a Mediterrainian climate so some of us can perhaps be helpful. I am in a colder zone 8. I hope you will keep us all informed on how your garden is growing. My best wishes to you.

Hi, Daisy, welcome! You must be chomping at the bit to get started with SOMEthing - ANYthing! Building a house, planning a garden - what an exciting time.

I live in Florida so though we both share heat, I have a lot more humidity than you and you have less cold than I do. Truly, I think you have year-round growing conditions! I have Monsieur Tillier (your Archduc Joseph) just a year in the ground. I really like him and expect him to be BIG and a bloom machine. He handled the heat with no problems. I have a baby Blush Noisette in a pot for less than 3 months with several clusters of buds - can't wait to see them. It has very pretty leaves, too. Your lot is a little larger than mine, and I have 96 roses. Now I'm not recommending that number, but you can certainly fit a few more than you have ordered already. There are so many Teas and Chinas - we'd like to have all of them. The Tea/Noisette and Noisette climbers are wonderful, too.

By the way, you do know about HelpMeFind.com, don't you? It's a great online resource for roses, clematis & peonies.

All the best to you! Keep us posted. We love pictures - even pre-construction photos! :))

Sherry

Thank-you all for such a warm welcome. It is so nice to talk to other people who feel the same as I do. My DH understands that I MUST have a garden and is very supportive, but doesn't share it.

Dear Melissa, Your garden in the Apennines sounds wonderful. I love the way it seems your roses do so well for you without mollycoddling. They must be happy roses.
The weather here, I am still finding out about as we have only been here since late September. All I know so far is that last autumn was golden, with just occasional rain. This winter has been wet with lots of rainfall, and just one night of light frost.
The soil is better than I thought it was on first viewing the plot. It seemed to be a thin layer over solid rock. However there is a lot more depth to it, and it is certainly supporting a lot of weeds!
The site is fully exposed to the colder north winds, which should prove interesting!
The water is not connected yet. When I potted the clematis and herbaceous plants, my DH had to climb halfway up a steep hill to the village pump to collect water for them. Luckily there has been lots of rain since.

Dear Chance. Yes I am English. I have holidayed on Crete many times and fell in love with it.
I loved Cornwall too, but not the weather. Most of my time was spent staring out of the window waiting for the rain to stop. Frustrating!
I have always loved OGRs. I have to blame Graham Stuart Thomas for that. His writings made me fall in love with them, before I ever even saw any. I am now looking forward to seeing the teas and the chinas which I don't know.

Dear Carol. Thank-you for your welcome.
I can certainly keep you all updated with descriptions. The pictures I will have to learn!!

Dear Florence. It is VERY exciting. The people on this forum I can see are very helpful and supportive to each other. I hope that I can help some in return.

Dear Mendocino Rose. Thank-you for your best wishes.
I am guessing about my zone number. That information is hard to find over here. As it is now winter the daytime temperature can drop to 10c ??f. Everything is very green and the almonds and other blossom trees are coming out.
Whoopee!

Dear Sherry. Yes, I am dying to get started. Luckily the builder has now said that I can start my garden at the far end of the plot away from the build area. So, as soon as I can find a mini-digger and driver that can pull the precious top-soil away from the edge of the terrace above my neighbour's field, its all systems go!
I think you are right, about it being an all year growing climate. The Jasminum polyanthum which grows in our rented place has been putting out the odd cluster of flowers and new growth all winter. The wild flowers have also been growing and flowering too.
HelpMeFind looks good. Thanks for letting me know about it.

Daisy

Hi, Daisy -
I visited Crete once, years ago, and loved it. Had my thirtieth birthday there, in fact. Staring down sixty now - where does time go???

Love your list of roses. What a lot of climbers you have! What are your plans for them?

Are you familiar with Gertrude Jekyll's Roses for English Gardens? It's one of my favorite rose books. She has a whole chapter on roses for the Riviera, so you may get some ideas of what would do well. She also has some great thoughts about training roses.

Please post photos and let us know how it is going. I'm another California gardener, in zone 9a, and grow roses at home as well as manage a Historic Rose Garden in the Sacramento City Cemetery (500 roses, mostly found, mostly 1915 and earlier - lots of teas, chinas, HPs, and noisettes).
Anita

Here is a link that might be useful: Roses for English Gardens

Another resource is the Mediterranean Garden Society that has a branch in Greece with activities round the country.
There will be a spring meeting for Gardeners in Crete on Sunday 26 April. You will find details on the site.

Here is a link that might be useful: Mediterranean Garden Society

Dear Anita. I think you will be glad to know that Crete, in spite of quite a lot of building work in recent years, is still extremely beautiful. I came here for the first time 25 years ago. I loved it then and love it now.

I have ordered a lot of climbers, because the plot is rather thin and narrow. So I will have to extend the garden skywards!
I have plans for a seat arbour and archways. I planned for one longish archway to take the two Sombreuil, Two Perle d'azur clematis and two The New Dawn. However, I am having second thoughts about this as not only may they get a lot larger than I was expecting, but also they will be in full sun most of the day. How do you think the New Dawn will take this?

Thank-you so much for posting the link to Gertrude Jekyll's rose book, it is fascinating. Gertrude Jekyll is one of my heroes, along with Graham Stuart Thomas and Beth Chatto.

I admire your energy to be able to manage not just your own garden, but also that of the Sacramento City Cemetery!

Dear Mariannese. Thank-you for the link to the Mediterranean Garden Society. I have just joined! I will definitely be there on the 26th April.

Daisy,
It certainly sounds beautiful, and I'm envious, even though it's beautiful here too! One's home is never quite as romantic as distant climes, still, I manage to appreciate the place where I live. Enjoy your garden, and keep us posted.
Melissa
P.S. If you pick the right rose for the site, it WILL prove to you that roses are just blackberries that have died and gone to heaven. They are that tough.

Hi, Daisy -
I made the mistake in my home garden of planting oversized roses on undersized supports. I think that your climber choices will do fine with full sun, but you probably are going to experience what other Mediterranean gardeners do - your roses are going to get much bigger than you expect. Look at Vintage Garden's size illustrations, and the range of sizes indicated on HMF, and expect that your roses will get at least as large. Probably larger.

You also need to consider how manageable the roses are. Years ago, I didn't mind geting scratched, but I do now, more and more. I get injured most when tying up climbers, which I can't do with gloves on. New Dawn is quite viciously armed, and Sombreuil has a lot of prickles.

Pay attention to how the roses grow, too. Depending on the structures/supports that you are using, some roses are better suited. Some climbers have flexible canes that do best going up and over, and others have stiffer canes that may fight you as you try to fan them out or train them horizontally. Vintage's illustrations help you understand that, and you can get great advice on this forum

Your plan to grow the roses skyward makes great sense, and should be beautiful. I'm not trying to talk you out of climbers, just advising you to plan carefully.

I've never heard of Beth Chatto. Need to check her out.
Anita

My roses have arrived!!!
They are all well branched, multiple canes with big fat roots, with the exception of Colombian Climber which have only one cane each. However instead of the two of these that I ordered, Peter Beales have sent me five!! They still have large root systems. I have never seen such large roots with only a single cane before. Perhaps they take longer than most to put on their top growth.
The problem is, I was so excited to see these roses, I immediately ordered six more.
I ordered:
1 Duchess de Brabant
1 Mrs B R Cant
1 Francis Durbreuil
1 Papa Gontier
1 Souvenir d'un Ami
1 Archduke Charles
Please would you all tell me what you think? Any ideas on size, disease resistance etc?

Melissa, There are a lot of blackberry bushes on the site already. Hopefully the roses will take their cue, and grow just as lustily.

Anita, Like you, I cannot wear gloves when training roses.
Thanks for the suggestion to check out the probable sizes on the Vintage Garden site and H.M.F. I think I will leave the archway to Sombreuil and train The New Dawn into two mature olive trees I have growing on the boundary. Mind you I will probably get lynched for it. The local people take their olive growing VERY seriously!

Daisy

I have 'Mrs. B.R. Cant', 'Papa Gontier' and 'Francis Dubreuil'. The first two are great roses, but be aware that the Mrs. can get big: 2m x 2m is a reasonable space to allow her. My PG is still young and I don't know what its mature size will be. I don't love FD as I should, for some reason, considering that it's a healthy, drought-tolerant, good-growing, extremely fragrant deep red rose. Who knows why. But color and fragrance are unbeatable and many gardeners adore it. I don't know the other three, but hear good things about them.

Anita makes a point of the utmost importance. If you've always gardened in Great Britain you may not be able to imagine how big roses can get in a Mediterranean climate. I remember the 'Park's Yellow' I got from Peter Beales. The catalog gave its size as 6'x4'; in two years it was 10'x18'.

Melissa