What about Portlands like 'Rose de Rescht', 'Jacques Cartier' and 'Comte de Chambord'? They repeat bloom, are very fragrant, and don't get too big.

I think your and my winter temperatures will limit the size of Mutabilis. Mine is large for a china, but no where near the size it gets farther south. And it's so much more bloomiferous than my Portlands.
A zone colder might really limit it, but so far, mine chugs along rather well at four years.

According to USDA zone maps over Europe I should live in zone 6 but most years winter temps are below -10F. I really need to winter protect my chinas. I have not seen chinas make it here without winter protection. So much for zone maps (LOL). I think a Mutabilis would look good at that spot, would fit nicely in with the other colours. This is how my 5 year old Mutabilis bush looks (top of the picture (just behind Perle Dor) its 1 feet tall/wide. But you have hotter summertemps and more sunlight so your roses will probably grow bigger .... how much bigger is hard to say? How large is Ann´s plant?

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That is a good question for Ann. I don't know anything about Portlands, actually, or how large those are, I'll check. I don't want anything massive because it would dwarf the other plants. But something too small would not show out.

Just in case, the Gallicas I was thinking about are Cardinal de Richelieu, La Belle Sultane or Belle de Crecy. What do you think of those for the spot? Thanks!

Mine is five feet tall and about four feet wide. By fall it will be seven or eight feet tall and still four feet wide as there are other chinas planted close to it.
The key for mutabilis is to get year old canes; once they are established, the vertical growth is established.

I grew it outside for a number of years and finally lost it at -29 degrees! So now it lives in a pot. But I grow the little china, Hermosa, and have had that in the open garden for 15 or 20 yars now. Some years it freezes to ground level - last winter it did very well and has been blooming continuously since the 1st of June. You won't get that with gallicas or Portlands.

We hit the upper single digits here last winter and the only wood a number of brand-new but large, well-fed 'Mutabilis' (rooted in May) lost was late-season new growth. Meanwhile, my parents keep mine alive in my former garden back in Minnesota by mounding mulch over it for the winter (which is how I got it to survive its first winter, planted in late November as the ground was in the process of freezing solid from a potted, mostly-defoliated Home Depot sale specimen) and it achieves around three and a half feet each year so far. That's in a raised bed on the east side of the house.

I'm sure you can do well with it.

Stefan

Oh, and they manage the size of 'Mutabilis' in one garden here to around five feet max annually by severely hacking it back in August. The new growth has sufficient time to harden before winter and cold-weather losses are minimal. It's much happier to tolerate that than most teas.

I wanted to get Mutabilis myself, but knew it wouldn't make it in my zone, so I chose Flutterbye shrub rose, because it looks similar. So far I love it, but may need to move to a sunnier site. Hope you find what you're looking for! :0) Phyl

Ann, I was not sure what you meant by the key is to get year old canes...I am too new still to understand it. Would this shrub require a hard pruning, light pruning or no pruning at all?