I don't do Knock-outs or Carefrees.

I don't either but wonder if I'd be better off with Carefree and Hostas like this. I now have those Honeybells or similar lining my back steps, but I've not been able to find one with the darker purple blooms like in the photo.

{{gwi:297781}}

Went for a short walk to ask permission to enter a photo in a contest in the local paper (doesn't get much action, just something to keep my mind off other things) which I can't win because I've already won twice and you can only win once every four weeks lol. They encouraged me to enter anyway, just can't win. I told them truthfully that it's not all about winning with me. But it sure is with my garden at least as I would want it to be.

I was looking at what the neighbors were growing. No wonder, and most of them look very nice especially the house with a border lined with bricks only on one side of the curved walkway and planted with assorted plants, spaced well apart, neatly mulched. Their solar lights are exceptionally pretty ones.

It's good to take a step back and see that you can have a beautiful yard with no roses, but I'm hooked on them. Still with only a couple exceptions, I could go for the look in the photo above and be done with the hassles, less weeding and maintenance, too.

Great post BTW.

Catrose,

I'm in just about the same situation as you. I've tried MANY different roses from many of the classes. I've done this no spray as well. Although, most of my roses are NOT in their 5th spring (only roses from my first shopping spree are in that category). So, I still have to give the majority of roses some time.

Last week I was so frustrated with the way my gardens were looking and how too many of my roses were under=performing, that I was ready to give up on roses. Now, however, things are starting to look better. I've decided I don't really need to add anymore roses for awhile. I've got about 600 known varieties and I'm evaluating about 200-300 of my seedlings.

What have I learned?
First, I definitely need to focus on adding evergreen "structure" plants to my gardens. The roses, when they are in their downtime, are not adding continual interest.
Second, most of the roses can't be expected to hold their own all the time. They will shine in the spring flush, but, for the rest of the year, other plants need to be the stars.
Third, most roses grafted on Dr. Huey do NOT like my yard at all!

Robert

Robert,
I greatly envied your garden this spring, but it is a one theme park. There are lots of really interesting ornamental evergreens. Also, camelias. I'm a bit cold here for a good variety of camelias, but you should be able to grow them no problem. They are evergreen and bloom in fall and winter. There's a great camelia nursery in SC.

Grafted roses in general don't do as well for me. I now try to stick to ownroot.
Catsrose

Hi Catsrose,

Thanks for the great post. My findings are right in line with yours. And even though I did not put down milky spore, the JB population in my garden is way down for the third year. I certainly hope that I did not jinx myself by making that statement. But at a minimum, the JB are late to arrive this year. I have seen, and destroyed, less than a dozen.

I am not familiar with a camellia nursery in SC. This past March, I visited an open house at CamForest in North Carolina and picked up some Camellias which are doing great in my yard. As a side note, I also picked up some for Robert as well.

Thanks again for sharing your experience with the forum. It helps all of us be discriminating buyer.

Kathy - who will not look at VGs or RU sale roses because her pot ghetto overfloweth already.

Cat,
Good to read your post; enjoyed talking with you at Connie's open garden gala. Have you considered trying aerated compost teas, ACT. Ron(lemecdutex) on GW converted his huge rose nursery from chemical spraying to aerated teas and after the first year saw considerable improvement. Do a search on this forum. That might be another approach..intend to try it once I get moved and settled.
Jim

catsrose, I do spray for blackspot, but I understand why some don't want to. I can tell you from visiting the ABG (they don't use fungicide) that the china's did/looked the best. Also the teas looked ok, and even in my yard, the teas do not get bs as much as my other roses (the Austins and HTs are the worst). Also the knockouts looked the healthiest. I wish they could somehow cross breed the knockouts with some older roses and come up with a more interesting flower with scent.

It's funny you mention milky spore. I also used it a few years ago, and for the past 3 years have not had many JBs. Of course each time I post that, I feel as if I'm tempting fate. I think I will apply more MS this fall. It certainly can't hurt.

We started to get discriminating about what came into the garden about ten years ago. That was about the same time we realized that the heavily touted Buck roses were not up to the challenge of being here, and in a lot of ways we were on our own in determining what was. The rebloomer list gets shorter every year, while the perennial list gets longer to fill in the late summer.

The biggest difference, however, is how much our standards have changed. In the beginning, we were happy to find roses that didn't defoliate until the end of July. Now, enough of the garden is pretty much blackspot proof to make those roses look like total duds. Most of them are still here, but a lot of times I am looking at them sideways.

Let me put in a plug here for the Explorers. Many people treat them as some sort of poor stepchildren to 'real' roses, yet they may be the only roses after WWII to be bred to handle the blackspot realities of eastern North America. The good ones are very good, and because of their background, they have been studied in a way few roses have. It's actually fairly easy to find objective research on how they will do.

Mad_Gallica,

As best I recall, you've never posted a list of the repeaters that do pretty well under your rigorous conditions. That would interest people here.

It's a list that has always gotten lost in the 'sexier' lists from warmer and drier places. It's also a fairly eccentric list, as would be expected. I'm ignoring the rugosas here. They don't particularly like my conditions, and they are pretty much a known quantity.

Dieback Shrubs
Autumn Sunset
Earth Song
Lafter
Knock Out

Dieback after 'Cold' Winter
Trier
Seafoam
Gartendirector Otto Linne

No Dieback
Darlow's Enigma
Jacques Cartier
Quadra
Captain Samuel Holland
John Davis
Frontenac

There are a few things I've moved recently to try and get them some more sun. So far they are doing noticably better, but it will take a while before I have faith in them. Clotilde Soupert, Lilian Austin and Kathleen Ferrier are in that group. I'll have to personally get decent repeat from John Cabot to put it on the list.

What is probably more important is the things that aren't on the list. The Explorers are by far the largest group of roses, and I've by no means acquired all of the good ones.

I'm sorry I disrupted your thread by my blathering & photo, try to keep a few things in my life I can still enjoy. I'm seriously considering just keeping a few of mine, maybe none, and going a different route. I've got a batch of cuttings going, and will be lucky if I get 2, could be surprised. I don't know if I want to replace or not yet, just thought I could compromise, at least in front, with something like the photo.

The roses have mostly become a burden with all the work and problems that takes most of the joy out of it even if I get a nice photo now and then. It's not like that in reality what my photos portray.

And I'm not getting any younger, and it's starting to really slow me down.

Speaking as a gardener who has 400-500 roses at present, I strongly believe gardens need a good range of plants, for the reasons Robert mentioned and others. We don't have a lot of rose bloom in the garden this time of year, and what there is mostly doesn't look that great owing to the dry conditions. On the other hand I've been getting a lot of pleasure from my lavender; and walking around the house garden yesterday evening I was admiring a grouping of agapanthus/catmint/cosmos/tomato/hyssop/rosemary, for example; or my green wall of bay laurel, box, yew, and holly at the bottom of the propagating beds; or the six-foot-tall Salvia guaranitica and its companions; or my succulents that I'm repotting now: agaves and sedums and sansevierias and so on. I yield to no one in my admiration of roses, but gardens also need evergreens and bulbs and herbaceous plants and deciduous trees and shrubs. Personally, I love them all.

Melissa

Kathy, it is Cam Forest I was referring to; I had the map in my mind, but I'm going down to SC for the week-end and my fingers went thataway.

Jim,
It was great getting to know you, too. I'll look into the ACT but Ithink I'm just going to spray those that I have who really need it and then stick to varieties that are less prone.

Mad Gallica,
I haven't tried the Explorers here, tho I've put a couple in my aunt's garden in MA. It doesn't get that cold here, so I haven't felt the need to try them.

One of the things I do with my garden is to plant a lot of the less popular OGR's to keep them in circulation. I always buy heavily from VG's unloved list. So, I'm willing to spray those for the sake of the cause. So I'm juggling a good reliable show and an"educational" selection of classics with what amounts to an archive. I was thrilled to today when I looked up from my dinner and saw one of my neighbors photographing his daughter in my gardens.

Catsrose,

You are SOOOOO right about my gardens being a one theme park....if I understand what you mean. I really got serious about my gardening only when I got into the antique roses...that's what got me hooked. I had always enjoyed gardening, but didn't really have a passion for it until then.

So, for the last four years, I have been adding "almost" exclusively roses and clematis. Last year I added a bunch of edible landscaping (10 different figs, kiwis, pears, persimmons, blueberries, etc). I have about a dozen camellias (thanks Kathy) that I'm getting larger in the driveway before putting out, about a hundred different varieties of clematis, the same with daylilies...but, I have stayed away from evergreens...especially conifers. I am now into them.

As I looked out my door and saw my gardens yesterday, I thought they were beautiful. I think there is a void between the end of my first flush and now....

Robert

Robert and catsroses,

There is a nursery near me which sells some evergreens, but their main focus is japanese maples. I too am trying to find more structure in my garden. I definitely need some "bones" for winter interest.

Kathy

Here is a link that might be useful: Eastwoods Nursery

Catrose, interesting thread. But, you do spray, don't you. I was wondering of those roses you don't spray if their resistance increases from year to year. If you need a reason for not spraying fungicides, it is that fungicides kill the good fungi as well as the bad.

This is my second year of using AACT but I won't know if it is effective until late this fall. We live in such a BS HEL* that I'm not sure much of anything will work.

In downsizing my "rose" garden, I have added other shrubs and perenials. Got a Weigelia, Flowering Quince, Abelia, Red Twig Dogwood, Kolkwitzia, Mock Orange, PG Hydrangea, Witch Hazel, Weeping Japanese Maple (from Eastwoods and it is doing well) and assorted perenials. They are all still small, but I'm hopeful they will bring that interest in times when the roses are under-performing. I have a ton of bearded irises that need dividing, so they can fill in holes-but these are not a low maintenance plant. Also, bunches of daylilies-very low maintenance- that I could divide.

Still, it really is a question of time, isn't it.

Barbara

Robert---My son has a Perennial Farm and I do love some of the very interesting plants he carries----He loves the many grasses some are very interesting-and as he puts it-they make a lovely music with a gentle breeze----and I think Russian Sage is a very pretty easy care plant---

My gardening is very limited nowadays ------

BTW---Ghislaine de Feligonde--is doing well out back in "Elba"-------which is quite shady.

Florence

Perhaps because I'ma landscaper I'm more aware of a "balanced garden," things like evergreens, winter interests, other perennials. Plus, I'm in nuseries a lot, getting plants for others' gardens, so I'm always finding things that interest me. And one of my deer strategies is to surround my roses with plants the deer don't eat. Sometimes it works.

So this is my summer to spray the really bad cases of bs. We'll see...