'Alister Stella Gray'
'Buff Beauty'
Maybe one or two Austins I haven't become familiar with

Ooh does Buff Beauty do well here? It's definitely gawgeous.

The first two have been grown in the area for years. 'Alister Stella Gray' has lived pretty much without care near the south entrance to the Seattle arboretum for probably decades - as far as I know is still there. It is similar to 'Buff Beauty' but more overtly climbing in habit.

Excellent, now all I need to do is choose a white. Some I've been considering are Iceberg, Winchester Cathedral, Tumbling Waters, Kronprinzessin Viktoria, and Blanc Double de Coubert, but I'm still open to suggestions.

You might end up with spots on 'Iceberg'. The other one on your list I know is 'Blanche Double de Coubert'. This is a Hybrid Rugosa with the growth and foliage characters of Rosa rugosa, may therefore not look like what you are visualizing. And if on its own roots may sucker to form a thicket, or if grafted on an incompatible rootstock dwindle away after planting - I have experienced both occurrences myself with R. rugosa cultivars. R. rugosa 'Alba' actually grew under the paved private road here to come up in the garden across the street, with the shoots appearing there being identical to those of suckers on my side - and clearly not ones produced by seedlings. The only other kind of plant I have had send out a rootstock that went such a distance before sprouting was a Phyllostachys bamboo.

A white one seen in local plantings - frequently where no other roses are being grown - that requires no disease protection is being circulated under the study name "Darlow's Enigma". It often produces a tall, twiggy prickly bush; the leaves and flowers are small but the semi-double flowers are sweetly fragrant and appear for months, on a plant that functions in the garden as a carefree flowering landscape shrub.

Yeas, I have reservations about Coubert for the same reasons. If nothing else, those closely spiny rugosa stems are a big buzzkill. I might put it somewhere else but not in this particular bed.

I had read that Darlow's Enigma gets to be a monster with a habit that's nigh impossible to prune. True? Because I did like it when I looked it up.

Not that big for a musk rose and bushy, upright and twiggy, with comparatively frequent branching - the only thing about pruning that could be an issue is the hooked prickles. But most roses are armed.

Yesterday I remembered there's a selection of roses listed, shown and described on the locally generated and oriented Great Plant Picks web site.

I have six Buff Beauty growing in my large Oregon garden and they are wonderful: very robust, disease free, tend to sprawl, covered with buff/yellow/butter-beaten-with-sugar colored fragrant flowers all summer.

White roses can spot in our wet climate, although my experience with Iceberg has been good. Climbing Iceberg, though, has been a complete bust: scrawny, few flowers. There are some lovely very floriferous French landscape (Meidiland) white roses that do not get too tall.

Thanks! I'm going to try out a body-bag Iceberg in my cutting bed and see how it does; also, Darlow's Enigma sounds so nice I found a spot for it in my plans. Buff Beauty sounds very tempting.

Anyone have experience with Penelope? I see that she looks pretty good at the Pt Defiance rose garden, do the roses there get frequent babying?

I have about seven body bag Icebergs and they do very well.