Gorgeous bloom!

Is your Shakespeare well-located in a place that gets about 6 hours of sun? That should help with the blackspot, but , yes, it is true that Shakespeare needs to be sprayed occasionally. On the other hand, if you throw out every roses in your garden that has a few spots, you will have NO ROSES left in your garden. There is no such thing as a disease-free rose--just roses that are more disease-resistant than the other roses that are disease-magnets.

I no longer grow Gertrude. She had many problems, and as I remember, she blackspotted worse than Shakespeare ever did.

How old are your roses? How long have they been planted in the garden? How much sunlight? If you could answer some of these questions, we might be in a better position to find some solutions to any problems your roses might be having.

Kate

Hey,
I'm not a real gardener. I bought my first flower ever last year which hapened to be a rose.
All I'm looking for is landcaping flowers and I will be using roses only. Probably because it is a challenge to grow them in zone 4.
My Gertrude Jekyll is cleaner than William Shakespeare who has gross ugly blackspots. Most of my roses were purchased this spring, I got five of each for a total of 40 plus I had 7 from last year. Most went right into the ground, and five in pots. All my roses get full sunshine from morning to evening. The ones I will keep and add to are Eutin, Alec's Red, Quadra, Henry Kelsey, Champlain, Hope for Humanity (has blackspot issues but controlable). The Austin's blooms don't last long enough.

Lovely roses!! How nice that you have decided to use roses for your gardening. You should start a thread on the discussion forum and ask what roses people would recommend that are healthy. I can't recommend any since disease isn't an issue where I live.
Carol

If you want bullet proof roses look up the rugosas. If you're planning on using only roses for landscaping and aren't interested in plants that need care and attention then join the herd and stoop for Knockouts. True roses require more than a hole in the ground and a sprinkler system. As the saying goes, nothing worth having ever came easy.