So if I start being sane for a while, I shouldn't worry that it will be permanent?

:)

Too much sanity can be cause for concern. At least that's what I must have thought last night when I ordered four roses from Rogue Valley that I did not need but there they were, looking beautiful and tempting. And, I do have a spot to plant one of them.

So there.

Ingrid

One of those old HT's that is some how fascinating is Eclipse. Bred by a Frenchman working for the old J&P in NY. It bloomed for the first time during an Eclipse.

And available from Vintage.

It's kinda funny that, with all this talk lately about people taking advantage of the sales by ordering more roses, I'm not interested in adding more. Perhaps 500 hundred roses is a magic number. When I get the urge for a new rose, I just go find one that is planted in a bad spot too far from the hose, and dig it up and move it closer. It's been working.

Robert

Robert - sounds to me like you will have plenty of room for new roses - further from the house!

Oh is that the problem, I thought by the title of this post that you were having trouble communicating with those who have passed on to another world.

A new obsession is easily dealt with.

rofl, Carol. laughing and laughing and laughing.

Sue

Well, from the title I thought this was going to be about potted roses :-)

The problem with the older HTs is that they are almost all completely without vigor without being grafted, and finding them grafted is almost impossible. Basically I don't think I've heard of anybody in the east have success with them who wasn't arguably zone 8. Pickering used to sell a couple. J&P used to sell a couple. You get the idea - all past tense.

This is a very sore subject with me since my big volunteer commitment is to a local historic garden. It used to be (again note past tense) that all the house museum gardens could get and grow HTs from the 1930's or so - the restoration period of the house. However, since the only thing anybody can get currently are own root roses, they don't grow, and either the gardens have to become perennial gardens or modern rose gardens. Since even grafted roses have relatively short life spans here, cost becomes an issue. It isn't a matter of opening the pocketbook wide once and being done with it - there is the ongoing cost of replacements. So custom budding is pretty much out of the question.

Aren't Radiance and sports an exception to the rule of low vigor? Mine isn't mature yet, but it has grown and bloomed pretty well in its second year, after rabbits demolished the new growth that came after the freeze. It seems as least as hardy as modern HTs.

Oh I'm not ready to order any yet. Still way too much reading
to do! The only rose I MAY order is a climber called 'Dream
Girl'....but not now. Someday.

I knew somebody was going to mention Radiance. Montgomery Place and Vanderbilt ordered about 60 from ARE one year. I don't think any of them lasted more than 3 years. And remember what ARE ships.... and that's more of a cold zone 6 than zone 5.

You folks have to stop filling up all your space with roses right now!

I am rooting some grape cuttings and it looks as though more of them will take than I can use. I was counting on sharing them with my Gardenweb friends. So stop filling up your gardens with roses.

Rosefolly, who grows way more roses than she ever thought she would.

How about growing New Dawn as a shrub as a close substitute for 1930 HTs?

The Bellamy Farriday House may be a useful resource--it is in Zone 5, perhaps the same as your historic garden. Ferriday was a serious rosarian--the library had ARS annuals in the early 70s. There are many roses that are likely to be decades old.

Here is a link that might be useful: Bellamy Ferriday House

The HT beds are much too small for much deviation from HTs. New Dawn, propagated from a plant found at the site, is replacing ramblers on the wall. I think I have that rambler, however it might not make it through a winter one year. It's a mid-pink multiflora thing, and multiflora hybrids hate me.

Right now the NPS has started a major reevaluation of the overall site plan. It has put us into a holding pattern until certain decisions are made regarding the overall purpose of the entire estate. The biggest shock is that the restoration target date, which had been late 1930's for decades, is up for reconsideration.

Once we are over that hurdle, I will probably be asking for shrub recommendations. Originally, the rose garden was surrounded by a wrought iron fence clothed in ramblers. As a federal property, the wrought iron didn't survive the materials drives of WWII. Replacing it is, and probably never will be, in the budget of either our organization or the Park Service. However, the garden restoration gurus are of the opinion that the rose garden would benefit from the return of a sense of enclosure. To my mind the obvious solution is some sort of small flowered shrub that can be kept within the outer bed boundaries (I don't remember whether they are 3 or 4 ft wide) is reliably hardy enough so not need continual replacement, and relatively disease resistant. The garden is currently sprayed by an outside contractor, but I periodically encounter undercurrents that make me think the days of routinely spraying a public garden are numbered. That will mean an almost complete rethinking of what is down there, but I do think that there is much good in reducing the number of HTs to a more manageable 500-600.