Gardening in general, growing and raising roses from seed, in particular, has taught me patience. Catalog descriptions often indicate patience is needed when they state the rose takes time to perform as advertised. The old AARS trials indicated patience was required. Bushes were tested for two years, climbers for three. The often repeated, "sleep, creep, leap" concerning climbing roses promotes patience.

We expect immediate gratification shopping, web surfing, with news of what's happening around the world. Our marigolds go from seed to flowering plants in a matter of a few months, but many just buy the plants in flower and miss the excitement and patience teaching of watching the baby plants mature. Many of us have the ability to run out and buy bud and bloom roses (perhaps not the ones we WANT, but in bloom) for immediate gratification in our gardens. You can create a full color garden for a weekend party on Friday afternoon.

Fewer and fewer are taught to garden by parents and other relatives. Very few school classes teach maturation of plants. We all see the glowing, full color images and expect the dried out plant, or twiglet we receive in the mail to look just like right now. Remember the questions whether bands planted now will flower this summer? Why can't I have the six inch flower on the foot tall plant? "WE" just don't understand those things. Why should we? Where, other than in our own gardens, are we taught? Kim

Strawberry...you will enjoy Mirandy's scent when mature. I may have stolen a cutting or two from the Park of Roses when I saw a few post bloom canes...haha. Mine is doing alright in really poor soil conditions, but I'm still waiting for the "3rd leg" of it's basal canes to fill it out more. I believe Crimson Glory is one of the grandparents of Mirandy. I'm fascinated by how many different roses I have, yet how many are related to each other since I mostly have Austins...it's one big incest bred garden. XD

I've never understood that either Sal...roses are not cheap. Even if I had one I didn't like, I'd find some use or give it to somebody as opposed to just tossing it in the garbage and wasting my money. Even the Dr. Huey I dug up is getting planted along a back fence line to keep pests out.

I think, tho, it depends upon how much space you have, and how much time you have, in life.

In Southern California's long growing season, Dr. Huey is a glory in the spring, and uglier than sin the other 9 months of the year. I'd elect not to keep him here, for that reason.

If a rose has been here for 5 years, and has proven to be a problem for reasons of disease susceptibility or failure to bloom, I really have no problem removing it.

Patience suffers long . . . but not forever.
Life's too short to grow bad roses.

Jeri

I could see giving one away after 5 years, but not after 5 months.

Lord no Jeff! It's too much work to plant 'em, to give up after 5 months! Or a year, for that matter.

I've seen too many roses straighten up and turn into something wonderful with maturity, to toss 'em without a good long chance.

And then, most things coming IN to our garden now are grown from cuttings, and often really mean something to me. If I'm hung up on searching for the story behind "Richardson Plot," I'm certainly not going to dig it up and toss it.

Jeri

To get back to the original question of why no patience- I think it is the fear of not only having to wait a year to know whether or not the plant is hopeless, but then if it is hopeless it will take a replacement plant another 3 years to get settled in so the idea would be to start that 3-year wait now rather than later.

That said, the late rains and early heat have put paid to my big moving-things-around plans and have forced me to give everything until Fall before decisions are made.

And I missed the Sunday School lesson in patience so I have an excuse. :)

It's a virtue but it can also be taken to far. I've given a few roses 8 or 10 years, they just never thrived. That was too long. A waste of water.

It's not impatience or patience, but the balance between the two. 3 growing seasons is decent, 5 is reasonable, 10 is nutty. For a rose, anyway. It might not be enough for a rare tree or orchid.

OK, I am beginning to get an inkling - other than newbies who are understandably ignorant and panic easily, could part of it be the issue of whether the gardener is a "collector" (me), or a "designer"? I understand that if the design is what is of paramount importance, there would be a concern with the color, shape, size, and style of the rose, and there would be some impatience to see it do what was planned for it when it was ordered. Otherwise, it would have to be replaced with one that would fit in with the plan...

Jackie

"so the idea would be to start that 3-year wait now rather than later. . . . "

But if you didn't have to change roses at all . . .
Look, here's part of the formula ...

Before you plant things do your "due diligence." Find out if there is a better than even shot that said rose will succeed in your conditions.

If you can see it growing like a bear two blocks away from your home, you know it CAN do well. But if you only know how it does miles from where you are, in very different conditions, you need to do more homework.

And, if you are more adventurous (I am!) that's GREAT! Gamble! Take your best shot! Don't be afraid to fail!

Try new things! If they don't work, you haven't lost a lot, and you'll have gained knowledge. Keep learning, and you'll stay young. (Your back may not, but your soul will.)

There are very few certainties in life, and think how BORING things would be, if EVERYTHING was a guaranteed success.

The other thing is, unless you're "prepping for your finals," you've probably GOT time to wait. USE IT.

I'm approaching the big Seven-OH, my DH is already past it. We have less time to wait than someone in her 30's, 40's, and 50's. But still, we experiment. As long as we're here, our garden will never be complete.

Jeri

I read somewhere that the height of optimism is the elderly couple planting a young tree they will never sit under.-

I'm over 80 and I'm still optimistic---well sort of !!!LOL

Florence

Could it also be that ppl are planting the wrong rose for their environment? The roses all look glorious this year due to my complete neglect and this strange weather pattern. All except this one HT budded on who knows what, that I received as a generous gift last year. It is spindly, shriveled, not a leaf, and just sad. It will be a goner soon, not because I will sp it, but because I do not have time to water it every day and baby it along, and so will likely not make it.
If that was my only rose, I would also be disgusted with my ineptitude and sp just to try again and fail again. Thankfully I came upon this forum and the rest... Well, pictures on link

Here is a link that might be useful: Rose pics

Well, sure. WE sure planted all the wrong roses, when we started, and many people do. When they fail, it's not the fault of the rose.

So, part of it is finding the right rose for where you are.

Part of it is what Jackie touched on:
Some of us want a perfectly polished garden.
Some of us are collectors, who are mad to have that special thing, glimpsed once, and not forgotten.

The former are more likely to want a quick response from their plants.
The latter are out there, breathing on the teeny things, urging them to grow.

Neither is wrong, but we who are "collectors" need to consider the needs of the person who queries, and whose goals may differ from ours. Wildly!

Jeri

Florence, the sign of a great man is the eighty year old planting a tree he'll never sit under. Kim

One of the things I love so much about my garden is that it, intrinsically, is teaching me patience. Patience has never been one of my finer qualities. In the spring the year after I first planted roses, I was out of my mind waiting for blooms. Now 3 years later, of course the spring anticipation is still great, but I feel a different sense of calm, of knowing each will bloom in its own time, and each will grow at its own pace. I have yet to SP a single rose, although I am finally considering two for removal - but I don't take removal lightly. I have received too much positive reinforcement for being patient with a number of roses that I had not been completely happy with for one reason or another, and most of those are coming into their own over time. Or with a change in location. Or a change in my individual care of them. Each feels somewhat like an experiment - some go seemlessly, some require varying amounts of work. That reward is worth the wait for those that require it. When the work becomes to hard to make it worthwhile, or the rose makes me cringe multiple years in a row, then that rose can go.

This from some one that planted 9 new citrus trees this year on her 88 year old moms orchard garden.

Gardening is a process. Plants grow and mature and fill spaces. It is hard to see the empty when your mind wants it mature. When I want some instant, that is what the sale flier plants are for at Home Depot for some instant pops of color.

True Mom will never see the citrus full grown, I may not either. But if we can get a few handfuls of fruit off them each year, what more could we ask? We can enjoy the process of them growing and the rewards of seeing the results of our efforts.

Kippy -- That's just what my husband said, when I told him about this thread. This very practical engineer, said:
"It's about the journey."

And if the journey includes detours along the way to include temporary filler plants -- that's fine, too.

Jeri

Jeri-

You are so right and the reward is so much greater for the wait- today I came home and my buds, which hadn't budged in two weeks went poof! and now I have 9 flowers. (I'll get pictures when the sun comes back up) AND my clematis is out! It's such a joy.

I just wanted to try to explain what the newbies are feeling, it's as much fear as impatiance I think.

Oh my goodness, that saying "patience is a virtue" brings up memories of back in the late 50's when I went to a very strict Catholic boarding school; it was used all the time. When lunch came my best friend and I would rip out to the car and head to her house for lunch, madly smoking all the way! Smoking in uniform was grounds for dismissal, so off would come the jackets so we wouldn't get caught; like we didn't reek of cigarettes when we got back, ha! Life is fun...

Seil, you described what I do exactly - every little volunteer in the garden, unless immediately identifiable as a weed, is a potential treasure! I have a little rose growing in a pot right now that came up in the middle of the lawn (still trying to get the grass out of the pot...). All I know is that it is NOT Dr. Huey - so who knows? I intellectually know it is no doubt a once blooming sad little white thing, but it is growing, and I talk to it as I go by (like Jeri said). I can't wait to see what it will do!

One time I waited 4 years for rootstock from an old tree rose to bloom, and it finally produced these amazing large plump buds, and they opened into large, fragrant, very double gorgeous dark pink blooms - it was "de la Grifferaie", still one of my most favorite roses ever. It is still growing right where it was - we bought it a rose folly to climb on, as it was in the middle of a bed...

Jackie

I was recently a victim of this by posting my concerns about my roses leafing out 6 weeks early and having nightly damage from frost. Not knowing what to expect I posted and was dismissed quickly. I was hoping for some shared experiences from people in my zone and got nothing of any help. This is why I don't post on this forum much any more.
Lucky for me, the local weather station aired a special about this topic. Thankyou cbs Detroit.....

Mark

I'm sorry to hear you felt dismissed, Mark. Usually I try to answer all questions to the best of my ability no matter how basic or if it's been asked a hundred times before or not. And I think most everyone here tries to do the same. Everyone is new at one time and needs to learn the basics. I hope you won't give up on us because of one bad experience.

Also, remember, those of us in mild-climate areas generally won't answer a query like this, as our experiences are irrelevant to your situation, and we might even cause you to do the wrong thing. So, receiving a good reply depends upon someone in your area watching at the right time.
That doesn't always happen.

Sometimes, it's best to have a second string to your bow, and look for a person in your area for an opinion.

We're volunteers. We share as well as we can, and we try very hard to do no harm.

Jeri

My rose knowledge is super limited, I often read posts about other areas of climates, but other than offering a though or suggestion on where to check, my input is worthless!

I do think that getting input from different locations is valuable to some degree anyway. I've often chimed in on questions from people in warm climates even though I'll add that I'm not in their zone. But gather any and all info from different places can sometimes add a new perspective to things. Jeri couldn't be in a more different climate than mine but I've still learned so much from her experience over the years.

Thanks Seil -- but when the question is relevant to the effect of cold, in a Z5 climate, I think I could do little good, and might potentially do harm.

Jeri

Exactly. When I read a question like thorn grower's, I don't answer because I don't have an answer.

thorn grower - I doubt your post was "dismissed" in any way. This isn't a dismissive group. You probably were just unlucky, and your post dropped down in the list before anyone who felt like they had helpful input for you was able to see it. In the 3 years on this forum, I think that's happened to me, maybe twice. If the question is important enough, either put your own comment in to pop it back up to the top of the list in a few days, or post a new one. It's not personal.

How about learned rose education. I have learned from Jeri to wait, observe and give the rose time. Thanks to her advice and wisdom I have not committed to the ground any new roses until such time as....
1. Once in a one for five gallon pot, the roots have matured.
2. I am in LOVE with the specimen? Do I look for a spot to plant in the ground.
3. Observe the color, bloom, growth and needs the rose will demand.

From this new found way of growing my collection this years new observation is, I have bought roses that have the name Gruss an Teplitz and found unknown. After three years I have identified them as Dr Huey. WHAT? Did I really spend money on a rose that is as common as dirt?
YES!!!!
Spend the time to understand what you have before planting and designing. It will save you heartache!
My two cents on a Sunday.
Daun

Mark,

It is sad that you felt dismissed. We are busy (I haven't looked at this site for 3 days) not dismissive. And, in a way, this post is answering your question. None can predict with certainty what will happen to your roses in the near term due to drops in temperature. There are too many variables. In the long term, which is what this post is about, the roses will be just fine (unless an extremely young or weak plant which would die eventually anyway). You might lose a little new growth and retard bloom time but one of the joys of gardening is that plants will come and go but the garden will grow and thrive. Where are the ancient seats of civilization? Gone and covered with vegetation.

When I was a child my father had a weeping willow tree (Salix babylonica) that died. Dead. Two years later it grew, eventually into an enormous specimen. It was enough to give faith not only to the recuperative ability of plants but also the resurrection.

When you live in a hospitable climate, in an area with abundant and accessible local knowledge, it must be so easy to tell people they need to do more homework. I think before criticizing people for being impatient you need to recognize that many people plant old roses with little to no knowledge if their selection will be successful. These people aren't un-knowledgable because they don't want to be or because they are not willing to do homework. They are unknowledgable because more often than not local information either doesn't exist or if it does exist they can't find it or access it.

I'm a newbie. I have my first 6 bands that just arrived and I've potted up sitting outside my kitchen door. I've spent hours and hours on the internet to select them, but finding anybody local to give me advice in this "all hybrid tea all the time" area so far has been unsuccessful. Maybe I'm just a pessimist but I'm hoping maybe 2 of the six will prove to be keepers. And not because I'm impatient, but because it's a whole lot more likely that with my limited knowledge and experience I've selected things that can't do well than that I have selected things that can. If something isn't thriving after three years I suspect the odds are overwhelming for me that the problem is the selection not that I haven't given the selection enough time.

(It probably doesn't help that I'm interested in creating beautiful multi-plant gardens and not so much in having specimen gardens!)

Subk3 - I think in general, 3 years is a reasonable amount of time to wait. Three months, however, is not, nor is one year for most roses...

I share your taste for "multi-plant gardens", instead of just all specimens of one type of plant (when I am feeling rude, I call those "XXX farms" - fill in with the name of the plant). Here's a picture of part of my garden out by the street that I just took 5 minutes ago - there are 4 roses in the picture, but obviously they have lots of "friends"!

{{gwi:249385}}

Re old roses in your area - I know there are old rose folks in TN who post on here. Why don't you start a new thread, with something like "Need advice re old roses in TN" in the title - I am sure someone will see it and respond. If you only get one or two responses that do not help you, what you need to do is put another comment on the thread, which will put it back up a the top again. Not everyone looks on here every day, but if you can keep your thread near the top for a week, you will usually get the responses you are looking for. That is what I do, and it has worked every time.

Jackie

I found that moving the plants to another location works well if they don't seem to be happy. Some of my plants prefer my neighbors yards to mine! Seriously though, a rose that was a rust magnet here went to a new home where it was the only rosebush and has not gotten rust since. It's so big and happy that sometimes I want to get another but instead will enjoy it as I walk past on my way to the post office.

Well I just went and found Mark's original post. He only received two replies. I have no idea why I never saw it originally but I've posted an answer there now.

I understand that, Jeri, and agree that I couldn't possibly give advise about heat tolerances either. We do get very hot in the summer but it's also usually dripping with humidity and doesn't last for weeks at a time, usually. But hopefully adding my 2 cents worth in about how a rose preforms for me may give some other incite the asker needs.

Daun, there are many people who find the good Dr. to be a lovely rose!

subk, what you are doing is far more than probably most of us ever did. My rose world began pre internet and Mom and I just picked out roses from a catalog that we liked the pictures of. Yeah, like those pictures were accurate, lol! There were no zone guides listed or any place to ask how a rose performed in cold climates. We just bought what we liked and learned the long, hard way what worked and what didn't. The best way to learn about roses is still trial and error and to watch your roses. Learn from them because if you pay attention to the who, what, where, when and why of them, they will teach you most of what you need to know. And every one is different, to boot! I walk my roses every day. Even in the winter I walk my roses almost daily weather permitting. I talk to them and they talk right back in their own way. Most of all though, try to just spend time enjoying them. The rest will come.

Jackie, your garden is beautiful!!! I have mixed up gardens too and I like it that way!
{{gwi:249386}}
That whole bottom tier is my mini bed!

This was a beautiful thread becoming one of my favorites of all time because it is about the experience of gardening, what it teaches us, and the beauty of it. These angry posts are contradictory to all of that.

First, experienced gardeners know that there are no hospitable climates. Great gardens are the result of skilled gardeners.

One of the things so very wrong about many things is how many people refuse to take responsibility for their own actions - for which I have no sympathy.

For examples:
Jackie makes an excellent point about how important the thread title is.
I can't be the only one who reads only threads with titles that pull me in. Do the majority of folks really read every thread?

Jeri makes an excellent point that even with a very good title, the individual with "the right answer" might not spend his or her entire life reading every thread on this or any other forum here.

I looked up Mark's thread too, seil.

He titled it: "Things not looking well"
See: http://forums2.gardenweb.com/forums/load/rosesant/msg0412072116485.html

I also found that as of last year he's been "growing" roses for "12 yrs or so."

See: http://forums2.gardenweb.com/forums/load/roses/msg0821185117630.html

After being a gardener for 12 yrs I had research down pat.
I think that's a big part of the point of this thread - what gardening teaches us. And that we learn and continue to learn.

In re: subk3

Every forum has the statement: "Before posting a question, please check the FAQ and do a search." Well, OK, I would have it say "search with as many variations of key words and combinations of key words as possible for your question or search the name of the plant you're interested in, etc."
I've been posting here for about 2 years. For about the same amount of time prior to that I read and searched.
I learned a great deal in those two years and I call that doing my homework! The roses I've planted were choices that resulted from that homework and other online and library research - providing reasonable assurance that they would do well. And every one of them has!

And subk3 had already found local advice:
See: http://forums2.gardenweb.com/forums/load/rosesant/msg0212002219820.html

The apologies are not due from veteran forum members. The apologies should come from the authors of the angry posts. Posts which were extremely rude without any doubt.

Patience...

2010:
{{gwi:249387}}
2012:
{{gwi:249388}}

I have often had this very same thought when reading posted "problems". I think the 3 year rule is a good one.

sandandsun I in no way intended my post to be "angry" any more than I suspect the OP intended her original post to be dismissive of the challenges of gardening in less than notable places. I was just trying to point out that the quantity and quality of information accessible to those that want to do research is not a constant across geographical locations (mine or someone else's!) For example, if you happened to live near Sacramento you shouldn't dismiss the wonderful advantage it is to have OGR specific organizations, OGR public gardens and local OGR sales in your back yard. Nor should you assume that is typical.

You can bet I would be happy to give a rose 3 -5 years if I bought it at a local sale, had seen it grow in a local garden and had a local friend who grew it. I'd probably give it 3 years if just one of those things was true! Now compare that to hmf info that is pretty generalized, GW forum insight that sometimes doesn't have even a zone listed with it, for a rose purchased from a nursery half way across the country and from the internet so it didn't even involve a conversation with the nurseryman. I may just have to accept I'm not that virtuous. :-)

As to the local advice I've supposedly gotten that you've linked (which doesn't work for me) I can only assume you would be referring to the very gracious advice of Ann Peck whose gardens are a good 4+ hour drive West of me. If you are not familiar with TN the growing conditions change drastically from one side of the state to the other. So while I've put a very high value on Ann's advice I'm not really sure it can be considered "local" as in someone who actually grows roses here. Perhaps I'm wrong (I've been pretty clear I'm new at this!) but I have to believe that living in/near a metro area with a population of almost 2 million people that there are people that grow antique roses closer than half a state away! My frustration about an inability to connect with local OGR enthusiasts is much more of an off the internet thing. (But really that's it's own thread!)

jacqueline the picture you posted is just breath taking. There is nothing I think I like more than to see roses as structural pieces of a whole view like that. Maybe it is my design background but it is very difficult for me to visually reduce a rose bush to it's bloom. Even on hmf I'm drawn to the photos that show the whole bush!

seil I can't even imagine buying roses blind the way you described. I can hear MY mom saying "ignorance is bliss." Maybe that's my problem. The more research I do the more ways I seem to discover I can fail! I haven't even gotten them in ground yet and I'm half rung out about the RRD in my neighbor's multiflora and the infamous BS pressure around here!

sandandsun I'm sorry if somehow I've ruined this thread for you in it's discussion of the esoteric meaning to be found in gardening. But consider this, maybe sometimes the meaning we get shouldn't be about the virtuousness of patients, but instead the joy in discovering that there are so many fish in the sea?

What I've gleaned from these posts is that patience is a relative thing and, as was pointed out, also depends on the goals of the gardener, i.e. collecting versus designing or any other wishes someone might have. I believe that fact alone makes a huge difference in how you view the subject, as does your age and your growing conditions. It also depends upon aesthetics. It took me a little time to figure out that most apricot and yellow roses did not fit my color scheme and therefore were a continual affront to my eyes. Did I take them out and give them away or discard them? Well, yes. This might seem like a terrible thing to do for some or many people, but in the final analysis it's my garden and if I'm not happy when I look at it what have I accomplished? I found out very quickly that many roses were quite unhappy in my garden that has an unusual set of circumstances that caused many roses to fry in short order. Not just the flowers, mind you, but the bush as a whole. Good-bye, hybrid musks, noisettes, modern purple roses and assorted Austins. Would some of them have improved if I had waited longer. Most probably. On the other hand Marie van Houtte sat there for three years while I poured tons of water on her and she never grew or bloomed. Another rose followed in that same spot and soon began to die. I now have Amazone there and it's doing splendidly after six months and has multiple buds. There don't seem to be any easy answers. What I do know is that I wouldn't judge what anyone does in his/her own garden because I don't know them or their garden, and a garden is one of the few places, other than your home, where you're free to do as you please. I know some people have been distressed at the number of roses I've discarded/given away, but when I go through the list in my garden journal of these roses, there are only three that in retrospect I regret. Also, through trial and error, I now have roses that for the most part are able to tolerate my conditions and even thrive in them. Nevertheless, I have equal respect for someone who feels the need to nurture every weakling rose and often succeeds in getting it to thrive in the end, as long as unconscionable amounts of water in a dry area or toxic chemicals aren't used as a life support system. I think most of us have a dream about what we want our gardens to be, whether it be a paradise or a laboratory or an exotic collection, and having that dream fulfilled to the best of our ability is what the happiness we feel in our gardens is all about.

Ingrid

Subk3........

You say you are new to roses and are frustrated because you cannot find local advise and just have to go for it and are afraid of failure.... we have ALL been there. That's part of being new to roses or even new to gardening.

I have always considered every rose I plant to be an experiment. Some of them make it and thrive and others, even tho' I have researched them, just don't quite make it. You can see a common thread in the posts on this forum where people are fine tuning the roses they plant because they have discovered that the roses they thought would succeed in their gardens just don't quite make it, even tho' they've researched, followed all the rules for planting good roses, etc.

SandandSun said, "Great gardens are the result of skilled gardeners." ... but he forgot to say that becoming a skilled gardener is the process of finding out what doesn't work in your garden and what does work. In other words, looking at both your failures and successes. It takes time. As far as I know, there are no shortcuts.

Jeri's husband's comment that it is the journey of creating a garden that is the most important part of gardening, which I think is probably most important information about gardening any of us can learn. If you look at gardening this way, even tho' you may mistakes, you still have the joy that comes with gardening.

Jackie's post about patience is one of the most important lessons a garden teaches us. Sometimes, the best fix for a problem in the garden is to just wait and allow the plants to mature. Young plants often outgrow their problems. In my garden, it takes at least four years for a rose to come into its own... I have lousy soil and have to keep working at it.

As you read those posts, underneath the topic, you'll see we are learning from the best teacher out there ... the roses themselves ! When a rose is not thriving, we are looking for the cause. Sometimes it's the soil, or that we have pushed the zones for a rose and it just can't handle the climate, poor drainage, not enough sun or any other of a number of variables.

You are frustrated because others near you don't grow ogrs and cannot help you as you move through this beginning stage. In my experience, most of the gardeners I had hoped to learn from when I joined our local Garden Club are so busy in their own gardens, they have little time to help me, but they are good people, like the people here, and I learn a little from them as time goes by, but for the most part I am on my own.

I live in a very rural area and as I walk through town, I've seen people outside gardening and asked them how they knew what to plant and where to plant it. The answer is often, "Oh, I didn't know. I just tried it and it worked. Some plants live and some plants die."

You will find roses that work for you, and you'll remove some that just don't make you happy even after you have given them the test of time in your garden. Your vision for your garden will change over time. Gardening with roses, and in general, is a process.

Smiles,
Lyn

I hope that no one felt my posts were rude or angry. They weren't intended so.

I know that there is a search function, sandandsun. I've tried many times to use it. However, either I'm terrible at wording my search requests or the search function isn't all that good because rarely have I actually been able to find the answer I'm looking for when I use it. So I can understand why people will post the same questions again and again. Especially if they are new to the forum or rose growing and don't know what exactly they are looking for or exactly how to ask.

I don't mind answering the same questions if it helps some one out. I also don't know everyone well enough to know if they have just bought their first rose or if they've been growing roses forever. I answer them all the best I can with the knowledge I have. I may have offended a few really experienced rosers by stating the basics a time or two I know. But I guess I feel sometimes it's just best to go to the basics and start there.

Speaking of patience...

The wrong zone planted gooseberry, the one that has never been anything but a stack of dead sticks and thorns, that I was itching to shovel prune out. (I bought it full well knowing this is not the area for them)

Guess what has little green leaves!

Yep, about that patience thing:

I had to laugh this morning thinking of this thread when I noticed a volunteer marigold (self seeded not planted by me) growing near a mini I planted this spring. The mini is quite healthy and happy, but the marigold already has more height and mass! I suppose the mini might be laughing too. It'll be here next year when the marigold is compost.

Patience is looking at the bare stems of hibiscus and empty spots where the dalias will at some point finally come up, and knowing that blooming roses could be there instead, but....

grief yes, Harmony - hibiscus are still ghostly white and naked and the dahlias are still in the greenhouse. Iochroma is the same - bare stems till May. Good job the campanulas are beginning to sprout.

When you have a long winter...you learn to be patient, whether you like it, or not. I'm just so happy when the roses survive, I don't get irritated with them, if they take a bit to grow and bloom. Most of the challenge has been choosing the right rose for the climate, but now, they're all doing very well!

I'm sure the RRD scare has many people ripping out roses, who would have waited to see what might be wrong with their rose, in the past. We haven't had any in my area (at least that I've heard of) but I know it's a big concern, on the forums.

This is a great post----

Kim---thanks so much for the post----I couldn't remember the exact quote---I appreciate it---can I substitute 80 year old lady? ----LOL

Jacqueline---Your garden is gorgeous----wonderful mixture---

Speaking of patience---I have several Zeffys from cuttings of my original bush---they are all lovely and healthy EXCEPT
for one---this one is in a special spot and has been given a lot of attention---nothing I do can help this bush --it is weak and unproductive-----thank goodness I have several others that are great or I would be discouraged---
it has been at least 5 years and it is still struggling---I still haven't given up on her----still hoping---
Florence

My patience story...not with roses, although I did leave a "knocked-out" Knockout alone for a year, and it returned.

When my in-laws moved about 13 yrs. ago, I transplanted a few plants, including a small hydrangea slip from a bush my mum-in-law's mum had given her years earlier for a surgery get well gift. A few years later, her mum died. By then the bush had grown, but no blooms. A few years ago, after 10 non-blooming years, I was ready to move the bush; it had emotional ties, so I couldn't get rid of it, and it did have great leaves.

As I was deciding where to move it, guess what I found - yes, blooms! The first year she bloomed, there were only three, tiny blooms, but now I get lots of them. I never would have believed it, but the hydrangea is actually in a great spot, and just needed time.

Same with some azalea slips I took two years ago from a very old family cemetery...thought they died the first year, nothing last year, but I tearfully found two, maybe three tiny azaleas poking out of the ground this year!

Gardening does require patience...a lesson well-learned!

btw...if you are impatient, and live near me, I'll be glad to take those cast-offs.... :). I'm so nuts about rescuing plants that I transplanted a crabapple tree, lilac bush, and another unidentified bush last month...they were destined for destruction, but I hope George Lilac and Mabel Crabapple will survive, and eventually thrive here.

I've removed roses after a year or so if I knew I had made a mistake.

Being ridden with disease is the most usual reason; not just a few spots, but downright miserable and ugly. Those roses go to the trash. If they are that disease-prone then they cannot be grown in my area without serious chemical assistance, and I am not going to contribute to that needlessly.

On the other hand, if I decide I simply don't much like a rose, having been carried away by my own imagination or someone's glowing prose, then I generally find it a new home. Not all roses that look beautiful in Sacramento or Wine Country or the Southland, not to mention England, look equally lovely here in the Silicon Valley. Sometimes I am auditioning roses, and sometimes they are not the right rose for the role I have in mind. Those roses are best released to other locations, and other gardeners' visions. I've given lots of people lots of roses over the years. Many of them I rooted from cuttings at pruning time but others are these passalongs.

But I would agree that except for cases of serious disease problems, it is best to give a rose a two or three years to show what it can be.

Rosefolly