Here is an awful picture of mine. My 3 plants are still pretty small, so the flower wasn't big or high enough for decent photo. I did like the colors though, so hopefully they come back up after winter.

Brendan: How's the scent in Colette? Do blooms last long on the bush, or blow fast like your Austin Imogen and Claire? Thanks for any info.

@strawchicago z5 Straw, the scent was sweet but not strong at all (like Jubilee Celebration or Carding Mill). I have to wait until next year to (hopefully) have more flowers to test the scent for you. The one flower that did appear this year stayed on the bush a long time though. I think it may have been eaten by bugs, since it looked a little strange like my picture. But I really liked the color. It was kind of a mixture of strawberry hill pink with carding mills copper orange tones.

I’m tagging on to this thread too, since I’ve been considering this one. B- that’s a beautiful flower!

@Sam CO z5 Thanks Sam! Hopefully they'll do ok over winter in our zone.

Mine is a first year own root from Northland. Beautiful blooms and one taller new cane so far here headed into Winter.

@Sheila z8a Rogue Valley OR Ooo Sheila, so nice! I love the different colors, especially the second pic with that glowing strawberry/raspberry pink :) I really hope at least one of mine survives winter so I can see more of the flowers. Hopefully yours makes it too, it looks great!

I've had Colette for several years, and she took off fast, never "looking back". I find her a vigorous grower and and good bloomer. She's very cold resistant, too. But at my age, I don't want to climb stepladders, anymore for pruning, so I'm not sure what I'm going to do with her. I do have a telescoping pruner that could help some, I guess. Diane

Woah @Diane Brakefield

I think I came across one of your pics of Colette late last winter when I was trying to learn about roses and it's what put Colette on my list to find this past spring. That's a beautiful looking plant. A cloud of flowers......perfection. I'm lucky and have a decent amount of space here to garden, so I love seeing how roses might grow (even if they aren't cold hardy in the end). Eventually, I want to train some cold hardy ramblers/climbers on metal supports like you did with your Colette. Great effect creating vertical space for a garden.

What is that purple plant in the last photo above, bottom right of the picture. Maybe a rose? I like the shades of purple in it, they're very red based which is nice contrast to the cool lavender toned plants I have goin in my perennial bed.

Thanks, B. I think Colette is plenty cold hardy, though in your zone, she may not attain size as quickly if you have winter dieback. I have none with this rose. The purple rose in the last photo is Young Lycidas, an Austin. If you check the autumn seasonal thread, I posted a bunch of photos of YL. Here are a few. This rose is quite lax, and I have it growing up against Colette where they both do fine. YL is fairly large but non aggressive, so having it kind of hang a bit on its neighbors works well. Diane

Diane, beautiful! I love the undertones of red in that purple. I'll try growing one and see how they do, I bet with some light lavenders or pinks around it (like you have it with Colette) would look really beautiful.

Thanks, B. I have a small, very crowded garden, so often roses get placed next to colors that aren't the best because I don't have any choice. But it still works out pretty well. YL does have an unusual color, I think. It's nothing like the dark purples I grow, and it's the only Austin I grow with the lax canes. It looks almost antique in its laxness, and plays so well with others. Diane

Diane, your garden looks unreal. So beautiful. I love a crowded look too...my perennial beds have way too much going on but I really enjoy different colors and seeing how things clash and (most of the time) find harmony in crowded spaces.

When you say lax, do you mean that it's canes lay on the ground without any self-supporting, upright growth? Yours looks pretty upright which is nice...maybe I could use a peony cage or something to prop it up if it's so lax that it flops even when mature.

Thanks for sharing the close ups of the flowers....you can really see the unique color tones and shifts. I have so much purple in my garden but that kind of purple is my favorite. The only plant I have with that reddish violet are some asters. Usually purples have much cooler tones around here.

Purple is about my favorite color, too B. I'd love to see some of your purples. As far as Young Lycidas goes, its canes don't droop on the ground at all. But the blooms are big and heavy and tend to weight the canes down so YL is kind of drapey--is that a word? Some blooms face up, some outward, and some semi downward, but not those face down type blooms. I find it does well mixed in with Colette canes or leaning on her. YL also grow outward enough, it sometimes mixes with my huge Julia Child. Diane

Sheila - what a FABULOUS and luxuriant first year rose bush!!! I'm in awe!!! Give it time, and it's going to be a glorious climber!!! Bravo!!

Diane - I'm really glad that you've given up going on a ladder to prune that STUNNING Colette!!! Maybe you could just throw your clippers up there. LOL Seriously, your roses must be watered with happy tears of angels...unbelievable!!!

Thank you so much, Carol. All those flowers are long gone with that early frost.

Sheila, I agree with Carol that your Colette is going to be a lovely girl--already is with those blooms. Their color is perfect. Diane

Yes, thank goodness for pictures!!

@Diane Brakefield Diane, perfect, thanks for the explanation on it's growth habit. That helps. I love it next to your Julia Child...nice play of colors and contrasts...I've been wondering what to plant next to my Julia Child, although now I am not sure I will have room if it's planning to get as big as yours :) Thanks so much for these pictures.

I will look for some pictures of my favorite purple plants. Most of them are considered "blue" in the garden world but they're true lavenders/purples. Calling purples "blue" is something that drives me a little crazy in the gardening world (and searching for true blue flowers). I'm a painter so I'm really particular about color. None of my purples are roses though since I'm new to roses. Hopefully in a few years I'll have a purple rose collection to show (and more true blue plants ;)

B, a fellow artist and color nut! I was a freelance designer for many years. And I totally agree about so called blue roses really being lavender, and lavender and purple roses being pinkish mauve or magenta. Twilight Zone and Ebb Tide are true purples in my garden. Wild Blue Yonder is a purplish/lavender mostly (my Clown Prince), Love Song and Angel Face are true lavenders here. I have been lucky with the purples which like to stay true in my garden, though Ebb Tide fades out badly in heat. Here is Twilight Zone next to Julia, and I couldn't resist a pic of my Clown Prince, which does his multi color routine every year. I had a rose called Blue Bayou (also shown) which was the closest I've ever seen a rose get to blue, but still wasn't quite there. And, for goodness sake, Big Purple is really Big Magenta--I had two.. They were kicked out of my garden, as well as Sweetness and Heirloom. Diane

Diane, I could tell you had an interest in color from your pics :) Great to hear you were a freelance designer. What kind of design did you do?

I love odd colors so much....probably why I pass over most pure red or white roses...for now. I'm finding some really interesting red ones though on Help Me Find. My favorite colors are ones that can't really be named, the in-betweens as I like to think of them as. Not quite blue...not quite purple, kind of like that beautiful Blue Bayou that is now on my list. What an interesting color. It's almost like a cold steel gray with a lavender glow.

Thank you for the names of the others. I was looking at Ebb Tide, looks pretty but I saw some faded colors of it so I have to think of where to put it since I have too much sun in most of my yard.

I love that photo of your Julia Child and Twilight zone...what an awesome deep violet to contrast the yellow and warm pink tones in the rose to the right. I was actually falling out of love with my Julia Child after seeing the color variations in all my Austins this summer. But then the weather started to cool down and Julia's flowers started having pink highlights and then once the real fall weather hit, they turned to this beautiful saturated, but still light toned coral color. Maybe she read my mind ha.

I watched a movie the other night called The Beautiful Fantastic, about a gardener teaching a young grower about building a garden and he said something about how gardening is like painting, where you're creating textures and shapes for an overall effect. You might like the movie. His comment made me realize how I am thinking of my own gardens. Right now I have a big area I'm filling with roses based (mostly) on color. Hopefully on scents too...but personally I react most to colors and forms. I'm hoping for a kind of multi-colored wave effect, like your photos of your rose bushes with gradiations of color from light to dark and back again. I never realized roses even came in so many color variations, or that they can have a multi-color changing effect depending on temps and weather. The few I started out with this year got me excited to try new things, so hopefully it works. Is Clown Prince the one above Blue Bayou? I like that color too....super saturated deep reddish plum with cooler toned faded color. Beautiful, I have to look up the others you named. My rose list is getting a little out of control. I have a lot of planting to do next spring.

Diane - I never tire of looking at your unbelievably stunning roses!!!! I gasp every time I see them....true works of art!

B & D - wonderful discussion! :)

Carol, I'm following you again. Thanks so much--your comments really help me get through this nerve wracking vote counting. Lots of hard work outside helps, too. I checked our weather predictions after I saw your comment a moment ago on More Rose Pictures. Tomorrow is our last nice day, and then the possibility of rain on Saturday, more chance of rain (and a little snow?) on Sunday. Then it gets fairly cold for the next ten days with lots of rain predicted. The rain is actually exciting to read about, after months of unrelenting dry weather.

B, thanks for mentioning the movie. I'm definitely interested and making a note of it. Roses seem to have endless color variations, down to a single rose. I'm also more drawn to color and bloom structure. I love roses' scents, but the make or break thing for me is what a rose looks like. Wild Blue Yonder is the actual name of the Clown Prince, and he's not exactly blue, but a bit wild. I don't think the color variations seen on him are standard color fare in all gardens. This seems to be the way WBY responds when it's fairly hot. He doesn't have scent and his blooms blow fast. But WBY is very vigorous and quite huge. I don't think Blue Bayou is available in the US anymore. It's a Kordes rose that wasn't widely released. For me, it had vigor problems and never bloomed a lot. For a while it was available in Europe. If we have a nice long fall that slowly cools off, Julia Child turns a beautiful amber. But in falls that end early with hard freezes this doesn't happen. Below is a photo I've shown a number of times because that year, winter came late. Julia was the last rose blooming in my garden the first week in December. That was 2016 and it hasn't happened since. The rose that has the most marvelous color variations that I grow is Augusta Luise. She's my favorite rose and has the many petaled ruffly look I love. She is also one tough, vigorous rose which belies her looks. Diane

Diane, I'm really enjoying all of your pictures and rose info. They really do come in so many colors and more importantly form. I think I came across this forum last winter, when I was trying to google 'color-changing plants' or something like that. My google image results showed a Bathsheba or some rose flower similar to that...and it caught my eye. I had never seen a rose with such tropical colors or ruffly form. Down the rabbit hole I went. Looking back, I'm grateful because it gave me a lot to focus on once covid started and I had to start quarantining at home. Lots of new planting done and cleared a lot of brush for new garden spaces around my yard. I really like the look of Clown Prince/Blue Bayou. I have a lot more to learn about Kordes roses and all the different varieties. Definitely seems like a lot of the ones that catch my eye are difficult to come by. That's why for now I am sticking with mostly Austins (the 5 year warranty system also helps). But eventually, once I feel a little more confident in understanding what they need as plants, I'll hopefully branch out into others.

I love Julia Child in the cool weather. She really got some of those nice amber/mid-pink tones like you said. Not as high contrast in her color shifts as my life of the party, but similar colors. I'm trying to figure out an area to plant a few JC with a few life of the parties Your Julia look so beautiful, and that Augusta Luise! Your pics of her sent me down that path this summer...and I was all set to order it on Palatine roses or wherever it's sold the morning they became available (along with Alchymist, which I still need to order). I should have planned better and drank more coffee, because by the time I even figured out their website that morning, everything had a sold out sign haha. I remember sitting there confused and checking the website an hour or two later and seeing the same thing. Then later on, I saw a post on here about everyone trying to get the roses that morning and realized what was going on ;) Reminded me of my late nights of trying to win rare succulents on ebay at 4am before bidding closed. Thank god I've moved on from that obsession. Exciting to win, exhausting to play. Maybe next year I'll try again for Augusta. It really looks beautiful, like a giant peony with the best colors.

@Diane Brakefield I actually planted my JC next to my Twilight Zone because of your pics! :)

I am flattered and hope you like the combination. Do you have photos? Diane

@Diane Brakefield I have only one. As you will see, there are only about five blooms total--three on TZ and two on JC. Both plants have had masses of blooms--but never at the same time. Not yet anyway. But in time...they were only planted a year ago. Next to TZ is a young Red Eden with a few blooms.

That looks lovely--every thing is always so green in western Oregon. They are all doing beautifully for such young plants. Diane

Here's my Colette plant..it's a couple of years old and starting to reach the top of an arbor. It's own root. A lot of my roses are too stressed out from lack of rain and heat to rebloom but Colette is about to try. It's a healthy thing. To me the fragrance is strong.

I forgot the pictures.

I have been revisiting this thread while I tried to figure out which climber to plant on the front gate of a split rail fence at the side of my barn (The animals cant reach it lol) . I am going to build an arch over the gate and it can possibly reach up into a tree on that other side as well.

I went ahead and planted Colette in this spot. Hopefully she can take a little late afternoon shade.

She is in a row with 2 earth Angels with a Princess Charlene de Monaco in between them. The other end of this fence line will have a MAC that I can hopefully coax up and over the front of the barn.

That is so romantic, @Diane Brakefield I LOVE IT

Thank you so much, Robert. Diane

Diane that is so, so beautiful, I love the coloring.

If mine looks even half as good as the photos in this thread, I will be thrilled!

Ohhh wow Diane I am sooo glad I read through this post now even tho I noticed it was from last year. I LOVE your Colette. I can’t even count how many blooms are on that spring flush. All your roses are spectacular and Colette is one of my top favorites, of course there is also AL, JC and twilight zone, and your beautiful Tamora and your huge Jude and Ascot and Boscobel (I guess I love them all). I wish you were closer so I could walk by your place and see them in person.

@Diane Brakefield Here is a photo of those two roses today. Quite a bit better than last week's situation. Many more blooms. I just love this combo you created! :)

Colette here.

Actually this is Star of the Republic which is great here.

Colette