your climate and mine are polar opposites, but i do have iceberg, who is a very obedient rose. i have a few, but selected it for the north side of my house where it gets NO SUN half the year. and now, having not had direct sun for six month (bright light)...it is blooming! not flaming blooms, and a bit thin, but healthy, and scattered spring show. so, this one isn't picky, and low light (overcast) is no issue.

another one i love, is Ducher. i have a number of these, they are a very elegant structure, pretty white porcelain (slightly lemony tinted white, but NOT creamy)...and a very tolerant adaptive bush. i noted it, as this is the ONLY rose the famous Ducher family of rose breeders named after themselves. that kind of legacy has to speak of a nice rose. elegant. and healthy.

anyway, those are my best white 'hedge-potentia' roses, maybe winchester catherdral, but it might ball with too much humidity?? others may have more knowledge on that, i just have one.

good luck!! sounds pretty!

How warm are your summers? Is powdery mildew a chronic problem in your climate?

warm? try 100 degrees, last summer was nuts, so do check the zone information on these roses. powdery mildew? never really have this, occasional balling of blooms, but we do have humidity. not like you i'd imagine tho.

just know these are two great roses. i'm in love with ducher, iceberg is more generic. but for a hedge, either.

maybe we'll get someone chiming in on your climate. england is similar so you might check DA, winchester cathedral is zone 4 and listed in my DA book as doing well in cold winter areas, but i'd wonder about height.

In the PNW -- in WA and OR -- I have seen lovely hedges of R. rugosa and R. rugosa alba. These roses seem to love the PNW. I can't grow them well, here in my alkaline conditions, but they're spectacular, there. You can see them used at Champoeg, and also at Shore Acres, where they're interplanted with things like hydrangeas, fuchsias, and rhododendrons.

Jeri

I have a long hedge at my allotment but instead of using shrub type roses, I use ramblers, bending their flexible canes to a tight horizontal and fastening them to a frameork of posts and wire. I have a mix of different types, including multiflora ramblers such as Goldfinch - more upright than most and plentiful foliage. Nastarana - a musk rose which flowers late in the season for me. Ayreshire splendens - this classic field rose has very long flexible canes, easily held horizontal. Iceberg - a graceful white which will accomodate the training and bending and finally, Leontine \gervaise, a wichurana rambler with a decent repeat and good clean foliage and mannerly canes. At each end, I use the little burnet roses as full stops (Altaica and Double White).
I can keep this hedge down to around 4feet high and about the same width - in fact, it is 'thinner' than normal hedges because I have very narrow pathways and each plot is practically on top of the next one. I can increase the height if I want but choose to limit the width or I would be falling into the vegetable beds.
In the UK, we grow many hedges like this, by laying the long canes, often breaking through the wood with a billhook to achieve the appropriate horizontal growth and ensure that stock can not escape through low gaps in the hedge (although we tend to use blackthorn, hawthorn and cherry plum - P.cerasifera and even crab apple.

Thank you for all that. Our climate is sometimes called modified Mediterranean in that it is reliably bone dry July Aug Sept, despite the huge rain the rest of the time. Temps are in the 90's for a few weeks, but usually not that hot.

I had thought of rugosa roses--I do have two Blanc Double de Coubert, but they bloom rather sparsely or dottily over the whole shrub and will not really present a line of white as I envision.

My favorite Rosa moshcata will give you a magnificent display from the middle of summer continuously until frost, but it is a big, big rose that takes up a lot of real estate. I think that with judicious pruning you could maintain it at 6x6, or perhaps 7x7. Be warned that it is quite thorny. It is not a rose that will survive severe winters, but if I understand your climate accurately, you ought to be fine. It is quite fragrant, and the scent wafts, which is always nice in a hedge.

Rosefolly

If you'd be satisfied with 3-4' high, maybe Kronprinzessin Viktoria. It is somewhat resistant to blackspot, won't ball in the cool rain, has a better flower than most rugosas, blooms a lot, likes warm summers. That group of roses (SDLM clan) isn't popular on the West Coast, but maybe someone in your area could comment.

That's because, over much of the West Coast, the SDLM clan is noted for powdery mildew at the very least. Nor do the blooms tend to open well.

Frankly, I would consult Gean, and I would speak with the folks at Rogue Valley Roses.

I like Folly's suggestion of R. moschata, but I really don't know how it does up there. I do know that R. rugosa alba is, as I've said, the rose most commonly used up there for hedging -- but . . .

Jeri

Jeri, thank you for the vote of confidence, but I am not sure I have any kind of definitive answer. I think asking Rogue Valley is a good idea since they are in the Willamette Valley.

Buying that many of one rose might be problematic, unless it is Iceberg, as that's pretty popular. How tall do you want these roses to be? If you're talking about Iceberg, that's not very tall. I'm not clear on what you're wanting there. Is this for an edging?

Another thought is you might look at Darlow's Enigma; it is trouble free and blooms a lot. It can be grown as a shrub but it's very tall.

I think the moschata and rugosa ideas are worth thinking about.

I live considerably north of you, in the Puget Sound area, so I am not sure if your seasons are as grey as here - you certainly get a lot of rain - but personally, just my opinion, if I were going to put in a 40 foot hedge like that, I'd use Jeri's suggestion of roses intermixed with some evergreen shrubs and make sure that whatever roses I used had some winter color through hips or interesting structure.

I'm going more and more to roses with hips so there will be more to my roses than just a short summer bloom. Your season is probably longer than mine, though. :) The other thought I had is that if you do go with just roses, I'd be careful that the blooms didn't turn brown and hang on, brown goo. But maybe that's not something that bugs you like it does me. The main thing I'd want to know is what you're using this for - an edging, or a meandering hedge through an open field, or as a windbreak?

Truthfully, if it is just for something to look at I'd think about what it will look like in the fall, winter and early spring.

Ooh, I wrote a lot; I hope there's something helpful in all of this!

Good luck, it will be fun to hear what you do!

Another plug for rugosas -- brilliant color of the leaves in fall, and for most of them, brightly colored hips about the size of cherry tomatoes or small crabapples.

R moschata has a multitude of tiny hips, very pretty, but not the fall color of the leaves. That color is actually rather rare in the rose world.

I, too, look forward to hearing what you choose.

Rosefolly

Thank you all. What I am using it for is basically a line of white above a line of green. It is hard to describe, but my main garden lies on a hill above our house. Looking out our large kitchen/greatroom windows you see the white wall of a retaining wall that defines the far edge of the courtyard just outside. Above this white wall you see still bare earth of the sleep cut (house built 5 years ago) which the retaining wall does noe entirely conceal, the upper edge of which will form a green line once I have planted it with a box hedge (small 1-2 ft tall). This box hedge-to-be bounds a walkway of deep wood chips with a deer fence on the far side. Just behind the deer fence is where the proposed rose hedge would go, a grass field can be seen rising slightly above and behind it. Again, hard for me to describe, but I envision a line of white above the line of green.

I am aware that Iceberg is, in many ways, the least imaginative rose choice. I have many OGRs in my garden, but I was thinking it would serve this purpose like few other things from May to November (rose blooming time here). Rugosas seem to have a less floriferous and more robust nature, not a simple "line" or swatch of white.

well i am a fan of iceberg - it has not become a total classic for nothing. Not much matches the sheer grace of this lovely rose and if you can conceal the bottom bits of bare legs with the box hedge, then I think your idea sounds delightful. It certainly plays a part in my rose fedge (hedge/fence).

It does sound lovely. I would enjoy seeing a photo once you have your white hedge established.

Actually your whole gardens sounds wonderful. Hillside gardens are challenging, but the rewards can be spectacular. I'm thinking of Mendocino Rose's garden as I write this.

Rosefolly

I second Iceberg, however can't say what its growing habits are in your climate but it loves my climate. Blooms nonstop (except for summer here) and mine is easily 6 feet tall and I trim it back twice a year. It's just a great all-purpose rose. It would make a great hedge here.

Having described what you want it for, Iceberg sounds wonderful. I would love to see if when it's all in place.