That's Blushing Knock Out. A much more interesting rose than the original Knock Out, IMHO.I can't abide by the color of the original. But Blushing, a sport of Knock Out, has interesting shading to the petals.

I bought 4 Double Knockouts and I like them.
But so do the Rose Slugs....lol

These poor things have been tortured. I planted these as small bands in May of 2012.
They grew somewhat decent but over the winter rabbits ate them to within inches of the ground.
So Spring pruning came and I had to prune just a bit more off.
Then right after pruning and without thinking I threw down enough granular fertilizer for a large bush... *^#@!
Well leaves started burning and things started stunting after a few weeks. We kept getting freezes and I didn't
think these guys would live....lol
I removed fertilizer & watered, watered, watered, to try
and wash the salts out of our softer clay soil.
It took awhile but these guys finally started growing & looking a lot better... Now the Rose Slugs have started chomping away...lol
And I've been taking the flower buds off so it's energy
will concentrate more on root growth, etc....

Your Knockout looks good & healthy! :)

It's not that it's ugly. It's that it's becoming obnoxious. It's over rated and over hyped and just rather ho hum for looks. There are a lot of prettier and more interesting roses out there, besides this plain Jane, that are ignored because of it's unrelenting usage.

I agree with Seil. Its just that there are so many wonderful varieties out there that are passed over because of the Knockout trend. That being said, I do have 2 Knockout roses (doube pink and double red I think). The fact that they were so healthy, is one of the reasons I was so tempted to try out different roses. Once I discovered there is "life after Knockouts" I've been hooked ever since. I don't think I'd plant another Knockout though, now that I know how many thousands of varieties are out there and how many of them are also low maintence.

Tammy

I had to prune one once when I was with my rosé club. No thanks.

If taken care of properly, Knock Out's look very nice. If you just stick them in the ground and walk away, you end up with a mess. On my short street alone there are 6 homes with Knock Out's. Two homes take good care of their's and they look very presentable. The other four don't do anything to their Knock Out's and they look like S*%#. Different stroke's for different folk's. The biggest problem with Knock Out's in my area is they are so over used they are like Azalia's. EVERYWHERE.

How that Knockout made it into my garden, I haven't a clue - after all I'm too sophisticated and knowledgeable to grow anything like that, not to mention next to Tropicana.

But WOWSER! - mixed with my orange and yellow wild flowers it's like salsa, hot sauce, jalapeno, the whole enchilada!

They can make good landscape plants, like azaleas. However, if you love roses, they don't really have a great bloom form, they have no scent and they don't have a great shape. Where I live, they can get 8 feet tall and wide if you don't shear them down every year with a hedge clipper. They don't get blackspot, but they do get powdery mildew and seem to be very susceptible to rose slugs.

What a pretty rose bush! I respect the love of roses and the knowledge of this forum. I also love roses. But I also respect nature which determines what flourishes where. I have 2 drop dead gorgeous double knockouts. They bloom freely from May through October. On a windy day they scatter petals along my walkway and it is somewhat magical.They are in clay soil. Rain waters em and whatever nutrients they need comes from the clay soil.
Someday, I may have the time and inclination to pamper a tea rose and look for perfect blooms. Until then, I trust nature to keep knocking it out of the park.

It is a very pretty bloom! I have 3 knockouts, since they grow quicly & I can be quite impatient for blooms :-)
I prefer the hybrid teas, their blooms are gorgeos & I love the fragrance but my knockouts are great for their abundant, quick blooms

My two blush pink knockouts grow in very poor soil where no other roses would probably survive and thrive like they do. I do not fertilize nor spray insecticide on them. And they do great! I really love them. I wish I can say the same for other knockouts. My double pink, sunny, and rainbow just do not measure up to the blush pink. These require more maintenance and fuss than the blush. Since I have discovered hybrid teas, I have given these knockouts to my church.

What do you think? An Austin or a Knock Out?

Mirror, mirror on the wall,
Who's the fairest of them all?

David Austin's Molineux
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Double Red Knock Out
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I have nothing against Knock Out and have 2 Double Red KOs, as a matter of fact, but as these pics suggest, Knock Out has little going for it other than eye-catching color on a disease-resistant plant.

Don't know about you, but that doesn't even begin to compare with the beauty of shape and form and color blends exhibited by Austin's Molineux (who smells good too and happens to have reasonably good disease-resistance also, just not quite as good as KOs disease-resistance).

KO is no disgrace to have in your garden, but Austin's Molineux is an absolute treasure!

Kate

To me, KOs are a valuable addition to the many roses on the market. I really like them, but they are just a small part of all the other roses I grow and love. The original looks wonderful with different colored annuals and perennials, do great in pots. They are used alot because they are good roses, so many get bored with them. I have some in my yard and they are dependable sources of color and I like them alot. Do I want the whole yard planted in them because they are good roses? No. But they are certainly worthwhile. I wish landscapers woud use Belinda's Dream more - its just as disease free and blooms as much. Great rose. I actually like the double KOs the best - They are really pretty combined with Naogdoches or Julia Child - bright yellows. The punch of yellow keeps the much used hot pink from becoming boring. I saw a photo of a row of big shrub KOs of hot pink and blush, alternating, and it was really striking. I will try to find it and post it.
Judith

Ah mes amis -

Problem with Austins is that they're not going to grow no-spray. I actually have one - Climbing James Galway, and it's essentially no-spray, but it's the only one I know of that can make that claim, at least in my area. I'd grow Dainty Bess if I could grow it no-spray but that's why I don't have it here.

Seems much nicer to see a healthy KO than a defoliated rose.

Mzdee - As for pampering teas, if I have to pamper a rose, it goes. I'm not pampering anything. Not doing winter protection, not spraying, not doing anything I wouldn't do for daisies other than trim back the roses. IF you can grow teas in your area, some of them are fantastic. For example, Isabella Sprunt. Very little disease, not a great plant however, as it's twiggy and rambles all over, uniike Blush KO which stays together somewhat. So you need to grow it near a fence or someplace where you can tie it up.

This is what I see outside the window - that's one reason the pic isn't all that great - dirty windows!

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It's Blush KO, Mons Tillier, and Climbing James Galway at the back. They go from smallest blooms to largest and I think the KO's are kind of delicate as compared to the JG. After all, not every rose needs a thousand petals!

Stashed in there is Smith's Parish, which I believe is also a tea and which is also a very twiggy plant that needs support.:

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And La Marne, which is almost as disease-free as KO but also has a rather uninteresting bloom that really fades in the summer. However, it deepens in color and blooms into December every year, when it's the last plant alive in the garden and it looks pretty much like this:

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Scent is more or less irrelevant to me - it's nice if it's there but I don't spend all day with my nose in the flowers - I spend a lto more time looking at them than smelling them so I don't really mind one way or another.

But KO has a lot of virtues, not least of which is that it can be grown free-standing w/out flopping all over. Moreover, it lets a lot of people enjoy roses who never would have otherwise, and it was a pioneeering rose in that it indicated to all the breeders that there would in fact be a market for a rose that didn't defoliate. They're mostly sold own-root so you don't have Dr Huey all over and for their significance in causing breeders to focus on disease resistance, I believe they're UNDERRATED if anything. Over the years in different locations I've gone through maybe 100 roses, which isn't as many as some on this forum but does serve to give me an idea of what's up with them. The best all-around plants so far have been KO, Marie Pavie, La Marne and Phyllis Bide, which is unfortunately only a once bloomer.

Here's a sibling of KO:

{{gwi:297838}}”>

Ah mes amis -

Problem with Austins is that they're not going to grow no-spray. I actually have one - Climbing James Galway, and it's essentially no-spray, but it's the only one I know of that can make that claim, at least in my area. I'd grow Dainty Bess if I could grow it no-spray but that's why I don't have it here.

Seems much nicer to see a healthy KO than a defoliated rose.

Mzdee - As for pampering teas, if I have to pamper a rose, it goes. I'm not pampering anything. Not doing winter protection, not spraying, not doing anything I wouldn't do for daisies other than trim back the roses. IF you can grow teas in your area, some of them are fantastic. For example, Isabella Sprunt. Very little disease, not a great plant however, as it's twiggy and rambles all over, uniike Blush KO which stays together somewhat. So you need to grow it near a fence or someplace where you can tie it up.

This is what I see outside the window - that's one reason the pic isn't all that great - dirty windows!

{{gwi:297835}}”>

It's Blush KO, Mons Tillier, and Climbing James Galway at the back. They go from smallest blooms to largest and I think the KO's are kind of delicate as compared to the JG. After all, not every rose needs a thousand petals!

Stashed in there is Smith's Parish, which I believe is also a tea and which is also a very twiggy plant that needs support.:

{{gwi:297836}}"/>

And La Marne, which is almost as disease-free as KO but also has a rather uninteresting bloom that really fades in the summer. However, it deepens in color and blooms into December every year, when it's the last plant alive in the garden and it looks pretty much like this:

{{gwi:297837}}">

Scent is more or less irrelevant to me - it's nice if it's there but I don't spend all day with my nose in the flowers - I spend a lto more time looking at them than smelling them so I don't really mind one way or another.

But KO has a lot of virtues, not least of which is that it can be grown free-standing w/out flopping all over. Moreover, it lets a lot of people enjoy roses who never would have otherwise, and it was a pioneeering rose in that it indicated to all the breeders that there would in fact be a market for a rose that didn't defoliate. They're mostly sold own-root so you don't have Dr Huey all over and for their significance in causing breeders to focus on disease resistance, I believe they're UNDERRATED if anything. Over the years in different locations I've gone through maybe 100 roses, which isn't as many as some on this forum but does serve to give me an idea of what's up with them. The best all-around plants so far have been KO, Marie Pavie, La Marne and Phyllis Bide, which is unfortunately only a once bloomer.

Here's a sibling of KO:

{{gwi:297838}}”>

You need to do more intensive research on Austins and other roses. There are many more disease-resistant ones out there. I assure you I do not have defoliated roses in my garden--I have disease-resistant roses in my garden.

Why don't you try Queen of Sweden? It would give you an entirely different view of Austins if you did.

Kate : )

Rosesinny, I'm glad you qualified your blanket assumption about Austins needing to be sprayed by saying "at least in my area". There are huge regions in this country where antifungal sprays are not used because blackspot isn't a problem. Austins are no more demanding than any other rose I grow, hardy, and, since scent is a big consideration for me, smell a lot better than any KO. So, I'd rather be looking and smelling this one. Diane

Around here, there are very few repeat blooming modern roses that can make it no spray.

There are hundreds which claim they can.

It is apparently not practical to expect the nurseries to sort through, and do their own research on what roses deserve their business. So they don't, and the experienced gardening public understands that the nurseries aren't to be trusted.

If you haven't experienced it, you can have no idea the drastic sea change in rose growing that has occurred because of the existence of real disease resistance in a mass market rose. It isn't going to have the effect it might have had because of RRD, but it will have an effect. It used to be that the plants that looked like roses around here were really dahlias. Now, they might actually be roses.

I'm also no spray here in blackspot central, and have around 200 varieties in the ground (I won't get into the number in my pot ghetto because of their imature immune systems), but of the ones I have in the ground, these are the ones that are just as disease resistant as my 2 Knockouts:

R Rugosa Alba
Hansa
Belinda's Dream
Boule de Neige
Ramblin Red & Cancan (also bred by Radler who bred KO)
Rainbow Sorbet
Pomponella
Gideon Lincecum
Not to mention all of my gallicas and a large number of hybrid musks.

I'm sure I'm forgetting quite a few, but those are the ones off the top of my head.

There's also other series of disease resistant roses:
**Kordes as the "Fairytale" series (I grow Lions, Caramel, Pomponella, Red Ridinghood, & Queen of Hearts..and all are truely disease resistant here)
**Ping Lim has "Easy Elegance" (I grow Music Box & Macy's Pride...also both do well her)

...there is life beyond KO :)

Tammy

This post was edited by TNY78 on Sun, Jun 2, 13 at 17:46

"...there is life beyond KO :)"

But what if there wasn't? What if we all submitted to the marketing and agreed that Knockout is the only rose worth growing and is the most excellent easy care rose of all time? What if it had been invented 3,000 years ago and no one ever had to breed another rose?

-The houses of Lancaster and York could duke it out in the "Wars of the Knockouts."

-The perfume industry could use "Attar of Knockout."

-The Empress Josephine could have filled the gardens of Malmaison with Knockouts and impressed the French people with her prudent use of easy care landscaping.

-We could be watching the "Tournament of Knockouts" parade.

-The Beast would have to make Belle fall in love with him before the last petal of the magic Knockout rose fell . (He'd better hurry)

-We could enjoy the hit song, "I never promised you a Knockout garden."

The people who like Knockouts should enjoy them and buy them by all means. Aesthetically they're not my cup of Tea, but I've seen a few well-tended ones look very pretty (I think
Blushing Knockout is the prettiest.) They are not the best roses. Even the best rose wouldn't deserve so much gardening space. Variety is the spice of life after all.

This post was edited by amberroses on Sun, Jun 2, 13 at 16:59

Knowing my love of roses, my two teenage children bought me a pink double knockout, and planted it in a large pot last year for Mother's day. They were so proud to do this all on their own.For all the gorgeous/highly scented roses I have, this plain Jane/ common Knockout will forever be my favorite, nothing ugly about it!