Gold Medal can easily attain 8 feet in Atlanta. It's also a blooming fool. Generally, the first flushes of the season come in singly, while the remainder of the season, buds branch out all over. I've regularly had flushs of 3 dozen or more buds. Still, the stems are long and vertical. The flowers are exquisite, if a bit small, but in perfect exhibition form and perfectly in tune with a Grandiflora. IMHO, it's the only other Grandiflora that matches well with QE's definition of the class.

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Hi Maryl,

You have chosen one of my favorite and best garden roses!! This is a large, rather tall and slender rose here in Louisville,KY. Blooms all summer with those georgous blooms you see above. I love the soft rose scent of this rose and the colors in fall are yummy. This rose is usually the last standing bloomer in the fall.Here, it is not fond of hard prunning. Enjoy your rose, a real winner! Must add, I do spray with Bayer. Lesley

My Gold Medal is just in it's second year but I love it, the flowers are good for cutting and the bush is attractive. I got it in my first large order of roses and it was one of the few that stayed in my somewhat shady garden instead of moving over to my mother's sunnier home, it's doing very well and blooming away.

Beautiful upright bush and great blooms. Give it a yr. to get settled in, then get out of the way. :)

Has Gold Medal given up its bad habit of quickly fading to a creamy color? No one mentioned it--but my memory of Gold Medal which I grew about 5 years ago was its inability to hold the gold color. On the other hand, with its profuse blooms, it usually had a combination of gold and cream colored blooms that were kinda attractive together.

My other memory of Gold Medal is that it was fairly disease-resistant.

However, it had one other bad habit--because it grew so fast, it wasn't as sturdy as you might want--a couple canes just broke off at the base during some strong winds here.

My other problem with it was that it suffered too much die-back by the end of winter/early spring.

I certainly loved the gold bloom, but it was iffy enough on some of these other scores--so I finally gave it away to another gardener. Actually, I kinda miss it now. Perhaps I was too hasty.

Kate

Gold Medal was a very good rose for me, but it was too tender to live more than 3-4 years in zone 5a. I used a rose cone which helped but it finally succumbed. And it did not get 8 feet tall. Nevertheless, it was a splendid rose and it is very difficult to find a yellow rose that is hardy this far north in the first place.

It's very productive, tall and narrow in habit, and as Kate said, it fades quite a bit. This is solved by cutting for the vase. A good but not a great cut flower: 4-5 days is typical. It does hold that beautiful color in the vase. Slight fragrance to this nose. Not a lot of thorns.

I like Gold Medal in my arrangements. Cutting the blooms a little tighter helps extend the vaselife. As Gold Medal ages in the vase, the open bloom is nice, too.

I've been looking at this rose for years but I had heard it was susceptible to B.S. so I've been waiting patiently for another rose with that coloration to come along with better disease resistance. For my climate nothing that I've seen rivals it. I do spray, but am not religious about it, so we will see how it does on my schedule....The pictures you posted Rosetom explain perfectly how beautiful it is. Thank you for posting them....The tall part is a bummer as Oklahoma is very windy, but it is almost thornless so that might minimize leaf damage (and hand damage when trying to prune in our windy springs). The only other rather serious problem mentioned might be winter hardiness. We seem to be in a cycle the last couple of years of being a zone 6b instead of what had been for about 10-15 years a 7b zone......thanks Kay for your input on the weak canes etc. I will have stakes close by. I think you are zone 6a right? If it can't take single digit temps at all, it will more then likely follow the fate of so many other great HT's that I have lost and loved. Tiffany went this year after a few nights of -7 degrees. I won't/don't do much in the way of winter protection, so we will see what happens with GM. Great input from everyone. Maybe I'll get a few years of nice cut flowers from it. And of immediate importance, because of this information I know which of the two open spots I have left in the garden to plant GM in. Couldn't have done that without you all...Maryl

Maryl, have you seen OroGold? That's what I wanted by garden store here only had GM. Gorgeous bright yellow blooms thrived in soutern CA. Hard to duplicate my CA roses in Seattle, rest of garden too, for that matter.