Now is a good time of the year to put down some finished yard waste compost. You can throw on some shredded leaves coffee grounds eggshells grass clippings pine straw. Don't get the leaves wet on the roses overnight.

Hi Chelsy, welcome to the rose forum. Where do you live? Rose culture advice tends to be regional. You've started with several very good choices.

I will second everything that Cecily said and wish you the best. I have all three of the non Knockout roses you named, they are all good roses for me, Sheila's Perfume is the least vigorous for me, but I love it, Belinda's Dream and Pink Peace are both great, but it does depend on your zone and other factors too.

I am in zone 7. Middle Tennessee

Hi Chelsey! Did you have any specific queries? (This is partly to bump it up a bit - very busy on here at present..)

:¬)

Welcome to the club. You're starting out with some great roses.

Once your new roses have settled in (gone through a bloom cycle), give them a granular organic fertilizer like Rose-Tone or Holly-Tone according to the instructions on the label.
You're likely to see blackspot by midsummer. Blackspot (BS) is a fungus that is present in the soil. On susceptible roses, it causes leaves to develop black spots, yellow and drop. In my climate, most roses defoliate completely from BS (with the exception of some antiques and Knock-Out). Bare nekkid sticks do not enhance the appearance of your garden LOL. In your climate, with those roses, you may only see a moderate amount of BS but you should know what it looks like and how to control it in advance.

While KO and Belinda's Dream should be resistant, Pink Peace and Sheila's Perfume (and most roses) will get blackspot in Tennessee. They will look better and bloom better if you control it. Most often recommended here is Bayer Disease Control for Roses, Flowers, and Shrubs applied every two weeks with a tank sprayer. Don't buy the combo rose products that every garden center stocks. Buy Disease Control online if need be.

KO should be fully winter hardy in your climate, but the others will suffer freeze damage at 5F and below. Be sure the grafts are buried slightly below grade to protect them.

Espoma Rose Tone and Plant Tone are ideal rose fertilizers.

The active ingredient in Bayer Disease Control for Roses, Flowers, and Shrubs is tebuconazole. This compound is "likely" an effective endocrine disruptor. One of the most recent (2014) reviewed, published scientific papers is (fortunately) available, in full, to the general public. The link below gives the rose forum discussion of this paper.

http://forums2.gardenweb.com/discussions/1705364/new-tebuconazole-full-paper-human-risk-assessment?n=2

The actual paper is at:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214750014000262

This is where the EPA is/was, concerning a ban, as of 2014:

http://www.apsnet.org/meetings/Documents/2014_meeting_abstracts/aps2014abS74.htm

I'd say that some good general advice is to learn about the various types of roses and how you can use them in your garden. Generally, Hybrid Teas are the divas of the rose world, being bred for large, cut-worthy, beautiful, but fewer blooms on sometimes/often temperamental plants. Floribundas were created to provide color impact by interbreeding Hybrid Teas (generally single, large blooms) with Polyanthas (clusters of small blooms) to get something in between. Polyanthas themselves are great for easy-care color on (generally) smaller plants but with a more limited color-range than their Floribunda descendants. Miniatures can vary from the those which are like tiny Polyanthas or Chinas to others that grow larger but retain small foliage and blooms -- you'll have to research them individually to know what you're getting. Shrub roses are a bit of a catch-all, and there are several sub-groups, such as Hybrid Musks (some of which are like big Polyanthas, others are sem-climbing), Rugosas, Hybrid Kordesii (these two are more often grown in cold-climates), and various species-hybrids which take more after their wild ancestors in habit but with some "refinement" of their blooms. Within the classification of Shrubs are David Austin's English Roses, which again are a mixed bag, united only by their breeder who sought to emulate the old rose "look" in modern repeat-blooming roses.

Among the antiques you'll find the old European once-blooming types like Gallicas, Damasks, Centifolias, Albas, Pimpinellifolias, Hybrid Chinas, Hybrid Bourbons, and a few others. Some may wonder why, with so many repeat-blooming roses, we should bother with the old once-blooming varieties. Well, in a mixed garden, they provide an explosion of color (and, usually, fragrance) in their shorter season of bloom -- rather like many other non-rose blooming shrubs like lilacs or azaleas. While a garden of only once-blooming roses will be rather boring for most of the year, there is definitely a place for them in a mixed garden. Also among the once-blooming roses are various ramblers and climbers which provide similar exuberant abundance of color during their respective seasons -- if you've ever seen arbors or houses or even trees festooned with rose blooms, you'll have seen how the once-blooming ramblers also have their place.

There are also a few types of repeat-blooming antiques. Based on your area, you're in a warm-enough climate to grow Chinas and (probably) Teas. These two groups brought the reblooming trait into virtually all repeat-blooming types of roses. Chinas would be akin to the Polanthas (from which they descend) in that they provide at least a few blooms throughout the growing season. Teas generally have more intricate blooms, and often more fragrance, and often can grow to become rather large shrubs over time. Noisettes arose from a cross between Chinas and the old Musk rose, and are somewhat like large Polanthas with more fragrant blooms in shades of pink through white. Tea-Noisettes are often used as repeat-blooming climbers, and like their name implies, they are something between Teas and Noisettes. Bourbons are a varied group, but generally they provide the fragrance of the old European once-blooming roses on plants that either bloom in multiple flushes throughout the season, or two flushes -- once in late Spring, and again in late Summer to Autumn. Portlands are basically repeat-blooming Damasks with a Gallica-like growth habit, sometimes a tad taller. Hybrid Perpetuals are a very mixed bag -- some grow like Bourbons, some like Portlands, some like something else entirely. Generally, they provide a main flush in late Spring and bloom again after the heat of Summer has passed -- if provided another round of fertilizer and given ample water.

If you're wondering which roses to add to your garden, my advice would be to imagine how you'd want your rose to grow in that particular spot, and seek the plant before the bloom. For example, if you want your rose to be an arching shrub, don't get a Hybrid Tea and think you can train or prune it to grow that way. This will avoid buying a particular rose because of its pretty flower only to find that it doesn't "do" what you want. Take a look online for more detailed definitions and descriptions of the various classes of roses to get an understanding of what will work for you. Also seek out any local public gardens -- especially if the collection goes beyond modern roses. Then, when you find a few that catch your eye, check them out individually by searching their names at HelpMeFind to see comments, references, and pictures.

:-)

~Christopher