Well, some roses are more prone to canker, and if you have long, gradual springs with rain, that is a factor.

Some roses prefer a warm to hot growing season, while others like it cooler.

Various rootstocks and own-roots probably differ in their tolerance of poor drainage in rainy climates.

Any time you plant a rose with lots of genes from a wild rose that is native to a climate like yours you have a better chance of success with it. Rosa rugosa is native to the northern Orient & part of Siberia. Since it grows naturally in a climate nearly identical to ours it does well for us. It doesn't grow well in the Southeast. The reason Hybrid Teas are so iffy for you is that they have lots of genes from Rosa chinensis, and other subtropical roses. Those subtropical roses are what give the Hybrid Teas those beautiful individual flowers that make for such incredible pictures while they're opening up, but that genetic heritage creates problems for them in a climate with a cold winter. Rosa setigera is native to the eastern USA, so it's no surprise that it and its hybrids grow well for you. Rosa gallica is native to continental Europe, and so is another rose that grows wild in a climate like ours.

I ran into this with tender roses when I gardened up north. I could bring Gold Medal thru the winter but it eventually became a one cane wonder and just sat there all summer. After 3 winters of this I dug it up and put it in a black nursery pot. After a week or so I noticed new growth and after a while the poor dear finally bloomed! I never put it back in the ground and it was very happy in a container. My other HTs would have severe die back but they bounced back great once the soil warmed. Go figure...

Peggy, Gold Medal devolved into a one-cane wonder for me as well. Possibly it wanted a warmer growing season, or possibly it didn't like severe pruning (required after winter damage).

Vigor is the secret, and it's not necessarily a zone-hardiness thing. A vigorous rose, even if it's not cane hardy, will grow back and bloom, assuming it blooms on new wood. Oh, it won't get as big as in warmer zones, and it will have fewer bloom cycles due to a shorter season, but it can perform well despite dying back to the mulch line.

Westerland is NOT terribly vigorous, as I've seen from its reluctance to grow even under ideal conditions. It's not cane hardy for me either. I could forgive it for not being cane hardy if it was vigorous. Westerland's canes die back to the mulch line in all but the mildest of our winters. That would be ok *if* it grew back with a number of canes that made it to 3 or 4 feet tall and bloomed well. But it doesn't. I've tried Westerland grafted AND own root. No difference.

There are other 1-2 cane wonders that are somewhat cane hardy but have no vigor, so they never really make anything of themselves. As we've seen, they're the ones that barely hang on for a few years. No vigor amongst those pups.

Examples of what I consider vigorous are Ballerina and some of the Austins like Pat Austin and, to a lesser extent, Graham Thomas. None of these roses are normally cane hardy in zone 5. They die back to the protection line almost every winter (I never used winter protection for them). But.....they bounce back in the spring/summer, put out a good number of canes, get anywhere from 3.5 to 5 feet tall, and bloom reasonably well.

Hardiness is zone survival. Ideally, you'd like the canes to be somewhat hardy, but that's not always possible. Vigor is the ability to bounce back, to put out significant new growth and bloom despite the setbacks of winter; it's a mission to grow and reproduce (bloom).

From what I've observed so far, if a rose doesn't throw out canes readily, and it doesn't put out much growth under good conditions, then it really doesn't matter if it's cane hardy or not. It's going to be a wimp.

Obviously, vigor is useless on non-cane hardy roses that require old wood for blooming. :-)

So, good vigor can compensate for cane hardiness, all things considered. The trick is finding out which roses fall into that category.

You know what! I'm finally ready to admit that it's alright to fail with a rose. It's not meant for me. And it's not how I care for it or my soil (well partly but it's difficult to do anything about it) but the rose and it's inherent nature.

Yes vigor is it. Or another term I've used, toughness.

Whew. Onward and upward!

Great post, Lionheart - I found it very insightful, definitely learned something today :)

I was looking at a small bed of "Hybrid Teas" yesterday. What a disaster. My new Duftzauber from Edmunds that grew very well last summer appears to be dead. My Berolina, now 4 years old, is a ghost. Adolph Horstman also from Edmunds last year has a bit of green on one cane. I've tried several other HT's there in the past years.

Why oh why do I keep trying? Or why haven't I put them in big containers and over wintered in my greenhouse? There it sits the perfect protection from winter.

And I was "pruning" another bed with a collection of disasters. A couple only a few tiny buds at ground level. I've had many roses in that bed and only William Baffin remains a stalwart.

So on with the search for roses that like it here. In another bed I planted two new ones amongst my also stalwart Robusta's, Angela or Angelica and Golden Holstein. Both appear dead even though we didn't have an especially hard winter. Angela does well for Valerie in Nova Scotia? so you can't tell based on someone else's experience in a similar zone.

A clue may be how long a rose has been around. It takes time for a variety to prove itself. I once had a spectacular climber, Kordes Falcon. It bloomed its' heart out. But it didn't last the winter or maybe two winters. Now it's not even offered by anyone. Rugelda is another one. It did well for several years but one spring turned up dead. I'm stubborn, ordered another one and will try again.

Oh well, an endless challenge.

Yes, Jim, it can be very frustrating, especially when you start out with such high hopes for a plant.

I do suspect that you have particularly extreme freeze/thaw cycles. I've noticed that Columbia County's microclimate is such that it seems to get warmer during those rare sunny days of early spring. Perhaps that tempts the roses into "starting up" only to get slammed by nighttime lows. Only a guess.

Just a few miles away from me, in the Helderberg mountains, most of the nurseries and the *real* experts, the farmers, recommend zone 4 plants, even though they are in zone 5. They will not guarantee zone 5 plants because of the fierce, bitterly cold winds they get over winter and early spring. Their low temps don't exceed zone 5 lows as a rule (although their lows are usually 5 or 6 degrees lower than those of us in the valley to the east), but the topography and microclimate is such that the winds take a toll.

We can have vigorous roses that aren't winter hardy and they will just die. I accidentally purchased a Louis Phillipe one year from a woman in the South who didn't know what it was, but was offering rooted cuttings. LP grew like crazy and bloomed its fool head off during the summer. So it was very vigorous. But, it would die if I tried to put it in the ground and get it through the winter.

Of course, vigor is very important, but it can't replace the ability of a plant to survive winter. Vigor can make up for a lack of cane hardiness; it cannot compensate for a plant that won't survive a microclimate.

I guess we keep trying because (A) we love roses and (B) we're experimental by nature. :-)

Jim,
I think I have mentioned before that your area is, well, different. When I visit my friends in Red Hook, I sometimes help them garden. I may as well be on another planet. Yeah, its much colder and many more rocks (there is a little soil between the rocks). But the soil texture seems different and its always wet through the spring.

All I can do is wish you good luck.

My wife told me an interesting fact this morning as I lamented the roses in the Baffin bed. (I have a memory problem and she is much younger) At one point it had a lot of mint and according to experts mint secretes a toxic substance. Could be the problem there.