Okay, well here's ignorance talking.

One of my pets I left in Alabama is a noisette called Kaiserin Friederich. I planted it late last spring and over the summer it grew well but it never bloomed. It didn't bs either and kept its leaves pretty well. It's one I left in my garden that I'd like to replace, if I can find a place to put it. I still love the rose, even if I've never seen a bloom on it. Here is a link from Peaceful Habitations with some more info - it's what caused me to buy it - I got it from RU as PH doesn't ship. Maybe you live close to PH? I am so curious about this rose. I really think it might be a great rose -

Click on noisettes on the PH site and then again on the Kaiserin Friedrich entry - there's pics and a lot more info...

How's that for ignorance talking...?

Here is a link that might be useful: Kaiserin Friederich on the Peaceful Habitations site

Duchesse, thanks for the tip on Kaiserin. I checked it out on the PH site, it is really beautiful, worth checking into.

Crepuscule is my all time favorite. I have one that is cascading from one huge stem over a fence - it makes everyone swoon! And it blooms all year - in full, hot, all day sun. No disease, no complications - just gorgeous peach blooms. One of my Top 5 favorites! If you dont have it you should get it.

Oh Crepuscule, how I wanted that rose to make it!!! I tried x 2. Both attempts froze out the first winter. This rose must not be too hardy. Strange, because I read of z6 folks having luck with this rose. I currently have LaMarque, Celine Forestier, Rev d'Or, Pleasant Hill Cemetery, Pilarcitos, Jaune Desprez, Mme. A.Carriere, all doing fine and thriving.

Greybird, I am with you. I am on the border of zone 6b and 7a ( officially 6b) and tried hard to grow Crepuscule. For me it survived two winters, but the third one killed it. I had similar experience with Celine Forestier and Jaune Desprez. I tried own root and grafted plants for CF, didn't work. I can grow Teas and Chinas here, no problem, but mAC is the only Tea Noisette that was happy here.
Olga

I am most extremely pleased with Climbing Madame Butterfly. It grew swiftly from its band into a handsome climber. The blooms are beautiful, the plant is graceful and well foliated. It even reblooms. I love it! I agree though most of the tea noisttes are worth growing.

I've been meaning to respond to this post, but first I had to go dig up some name tags! I've had the same experience with Crepuscle. My best 2 - and I've tried lots of climbers including most of the ones you have- are Renae and Pleasant Hill Cemetery. Both are healthy, have no issues, grow well with no help and no spray, and bloom all summer long.

Rosette de Lizy (sp?) is an over-achiever near DFW;
I had to cut it back last spring when heavy rains flattened it across the drive & I couldn't get out to go to work.

Even so, it's now about 8' tall & evergreen, & it blooms like a maniac...
& it's nearly thornless.

You didn't mention color;
it's a beautiful pale golden cream in the center, with soft raspberry outer edges.

Forgot to add that Renae will cover that 8 by 8 by 3 arch in one season. Very vigorous. Very beautiful. And continuous repeat even when young. I'm still waiting for my other climbers to start repeating and they were planted 5 years ago.

I'f you can tolerate a modern Don Juan loves the heat and puts on a great show here all Summer

Thanks for the responses.

I looked up Renae, very nice. I am looking into trying her for another application.

I currently have Rosette Delizy, rec'd from ARE and planted last spring. Is about 3 feet tall and according to ARE, will not top 4' at maturity. Sylvia, you must have a scandent sport to make it to 8'.

Labrea, I love the red blooms of Don Juan, they really hold up in the heat and hot sunlight. The one I have is a grafted bodybag from Walmart, planted about 6 years ago, stays about 2'tall.

I have had this arbor up for about 8 years. I began by planting grafted Golden Showers on it. By the second year, they had grown to about 6 feet tall and put on a spectaular show. The third year, they looked like a trainwreck, yellow, sickly looking canes and ill-formed flowers. I replaced them with own-root "Sombreuil" aka Colonial White. Grew to about 6' by the second year, never bloomed well, then started looking sickly. I replaced them with own-root New Dawn. They just haven't grown much at all in three years: one is about 2' and the other 4'. Real sorry looking plants.
I was thinking maybe the original grafted roses caused some sort of "soil sickness", can this happen? The arch is placed in the ideal eastern exposure, great AM sun and shade from the late afternoon blast of heat.
I am at the end of my rope with the trial and error thing. I am planning on a Barbier rambler this time. Any yeas or nays?

Grey, did anything grow there before you put in the roses? Have you had the soil checked?

Before the roses, there was nothing but grass, weeds, stickers. There was an old-timey humped-back underground cellar that caved in, had to be filled in and leveled. Some cement remnants are in close proximity to where I have this arch. Maybe there is some sort of contaminant coming up from all of that. As old as that cellar was, there is no telling. People back then dumped all sorts of things around all over the place. In the course of all my digging on the property, I have come across numerous mini "landfills" full of old glass bottles, metal and whatnot. A couple of years back, I found a good sized dump of asbestos shingles.
I have not had the soil checked, probably need to. Where can I have that done?

See if there's a local extension service agent in your county (or some such). The USDA's cooperative extension service often works as a liaison for matters such as soil tests. Most of an extension agent's work involves commercial growers & farmers, but in many or most states they also happily provide assistance to homeowners who want to garden. The agent's assistance is provided free of charge because the agent's work is paid for by the USDA (& thus by our taxes). There's usually a fee for a soil test, but the fee's usually not very large.

First of all, a rose like New Dawn just may not be happy in the dry heat of Texas. I've had falures with a number of workhorse roses, especially OGRs, do well for 2-3 years in my coastal southern California garden, then decline, which I think is do to a weird combo of (1) lack of extended winter chill, (2) murky coastal spring-summer conditions, followed by (3) extended late summer very dry hot weather till nearly December. Quite a few roses look moldy here the first half of the year, then have a brief glory Sept -November when it conforms to the classic southern California climate. If you haven't tried it, a really vigorous Tea-Noisette climber is Manchester Guardian Angel from Vintage Gardens which will put on 7-8 feet the first summer, even neglected, as long as you give it a good deep watering regularly. The thorns are pretty scarey tho altho they are a pretty reddish color. This rose will turn into a big climber and flower very well. But it's a bit monstrous. As for your sickness problem and wondering if concrete might have something to do with it, I've had a similar problems. First, with a small citrus tree planted in a concrete planter -- it simply didn't thrive. A second attempt with another citrus tree also failed to thrive, and the local nursery suggested it might be the concrete planter leaching chemicals. Second, we've got hedges planted atop a stacked broken concrete retaining wall. Altho the shrubs were healthy for years, the past two years they've been sickening and we suspect it could be chemicals leaching into the soil from the concrete pieces, which were salvaged from various driveways and sidewalks torn out by renovators as our neighborhood regentrified. We have an old property (old by Los Angeles standards: 1915) and there was a lot of debris uncovered when we dug up old shrubs & palm trees to create our garden: bottles, large chunks of broken sinks & toilets, tools, horseshoes, pipes, old bricks....it lay pretty much uncultivated for decades. After we added liberal amounts of amendment to the soil the past decade (some purchased amendment & mulch, some from grinding up old palm trees), the soil here is much improved, even rich by southern California standards with plenty of big worms. I've also got a big compost heap going and add that whenever we plant anything or prune roses. So I'd recommend liberal additions of compost & mulching -- get those worms going! BUt you will get more weeds the better the soil gets! I thin Gregg Lowery wrote about this in his pruning blog -- the weeds make a good mulch ;). I think you're lucky you've got the heat to grow all those Tea-Noisettes -- we have a little too much coastal weather here from winter-summer to get the yellow climbers going. I've tried Crepuscule a number of times, and the only place it's finally growing is in the very hottest corner of my yard atop the concrete retaining wall. We'll see if it lasts thru baking in the late summer heat.

Climbing Cecile Brunner, Cherokee, Mutabilis, Penelope, Peggy Martin and Don Juan are pretty tough roses that have survived Hurricanes and drought in my yard.