You need to visit Orangeburg, and visit Edisto Gardens, also it would be well worth your while to run down to Laurens and have a look in the greenhouses at Roses Unlimited. Email them for directions off I-26. Email address is: rosesunlmt@aol.com.

Roses Unlimited has a huge and very nice display garden around the nursery. I do not know how close or far is from Ashdown, but that is a possibility.

Karen, check out when they have garden tour in Charleston in the fall. That means that some nice private gardens that are not open to be the public can be visited.

Hamtpon Park in Charleston is (was?)a Noisette garden and planted also with very interesting perennials and annnuals.

The garden in Orangeburg is a huge collection of modern roses and a really good place to see how roses make it through a hot summer (not much applicable to your garden, but really useful for some of us).
Hampton Park is a Noisette Study Garden and still has noisettes, although not as large as I'd expect them to be. And there is a rose trail through Charleston. Google may find it, or a call to the visitor's bureau.
For large noisettes, the RiverBank Zoo and Botanical Garden in Columbia SC has a great collection of REALLY BIG roses as well as a lovely formal water garden where I wouldn't mind being a contented frog.
In Asheville NC, (on your way and not that far from the Interstate) there is a no spray garden at the American Red Cross (Take the northern interstate through town, the Merriman exit, US 25, go north until you see an Atlanta Bread restaurant, and turn right just before Atlanta Bread, Red Cross will be on your right. I think you might enjoy seeing the rugosas there as well as the huge Mermaid on their fence.

Thanks for your great suggestions. We'll vitis as many of them as possible. We have been to the RiverBank Zoo and Botanical Garden and it was wonderful!

Do not plan on visiting the Wayside GArden/Park Seed complex as there are no rose gardens located there. We spent a delightful fifteen minutes at the gift shop listening to the manager trying to dissuade a caller who wanted him to run outside to the display gardens and comment on a rose in the Wayside Catalog. His desperate tone heightened as the conversation grew ever longer.

And Riverbanks is one super garden; even the white garden works.

JimD