I am hoping to attach more photos of ALM’s gorgeous flowers! For some reason, images on the forum have become heck for me to post.

I missed removing an ALM bud and our exceptionally hot temps caused it to open overnight. So, two fragrant flowers in my vase. Originally, this crazy, tiny baby plant was trying to flower with 9 buds! NINE!! ALM really wants to put on a show. I’d call her ”eager to please.”

Carol

@flowersaremusic z5 Eastern WA IF own root roses generally grow and perform well for you, and IF you have the intestinal fortitude to nurse a small plant into a vigorous one, and IF you think your climate and conditions support the slow-to-develop types, try own root. But, you're going to have to pay it MUCH more attention than a budded plant simply because of the extra vigor the stronger roots provide right off the start. Starting ALmD own root is like starting the yellow Tea Noisettes own root. GLACIALLY SLOW compared to 99% of the other own root moderns you'll encounter. It WILL root and it WILL grow, but it WILL be significantly slower and require MUCH more of your attention to keep it disbudded and properly attended to than a budded plant will. It's similar to adopting an infant or a very young puppy or kitten as opposed to a more developed child or animal. If you enjoy the "nursery" part of it, go own root. If time, energy and patience are at a premium (or non existent) go budded. Your description of your soil is concerning. How have multiflora budded plants performed for you?

The bottom photo shows off the delicate shallow vessel shape of the bloom and the slightly fuzzy stipules as well the lovely, elongated foliage.

Yes ma'am, THAT is the issue! She will bloom at the expense of growing, much like so many of the yellow Tea Noisettes and Climbing Teas insist upon doing.

I’ll be on top of disbudding all summer-fall, Kim! I can tell that ALM is going be relentless in her enthusiam. She’d gladly bloom herself to death like a tragic opera heroine ( I’m thinking Antonia from Tales of Hoffman). I have placed ALM’s pot just outside my kitchen door for daily bud checks and removals. Carol

"Antonia", marvelous! Yes ma'am, that's about it. Not AS much so as Grey Pearl or Fantan, but enough to keep her from GROWING.

At one point, I had three own-root ALM, all from Burlington, in my former desert garden. Two were received as bands and I believe one was a 1-gallon. Alm was the epitome of the sleep, creep, leap... and boy does it leap during its third year!! ALM was also very dry heat tolerant, which was a plus.

I know we are supposed to remove buds on bands... TBH, I NEVER do... but I try to adhere to the feeding weakly, weekly... so maybe that helps...

Great to know about creep and leap, Lynn!

Carol, 105 F here yesterday so of course our air conditioning went out last night. Tech coming over to fix we hope as we type.

I never did disbud and my plants are doing great. They are so adorable large and small. They look a lot more graceful than baby Tea roses.

Kim, multiflora does ok the first year, then its downhill. My soil is too dense and heavy for the small roots. Straw said planting in Miracle Grow Potting Soil should solve the problem. I added a significant amount of vermiculite to some roses on Multiflora and they are doing good. The other two I will dig up and replant as she suggested - after this heat wave passes. I wonder if ALM would do well in those conditions. I'm surprising myself by leaning toward grafted to Multiflora and starting her off in a pot of Miracle Grow Potting Soil, then transferring to her permanent home in the ground, also in Miracle Grow Potting Soil. Does that sound reasonable to you?

@flowersaremusic z5 Eastern WA "dense and heavy soil" sounds like clay to me. Vermiculite breaks down into clay as both are aluminum silicates. It seems to make more sense to me to add perlite to increase drainage, but if it worked, who am I to "fix it"? I can understand the idea of planting a plant in a bagged soil in the ground as that was how I grew Camellias and Gardenias in the Santa Clarita Valley. The soil and water were SO alkaline, excavating a huge hole and lining it with saturated peat, encapsulating the root ball, then covering everything with native soil worked for quite a few years, until the peat completely broke down. All bagged soils are more "organic" meaning they will eventually digest and disappear, leaving a hole where they were, causing the plants to settle and sink. Or, so they have when I've experimented trying such things. It's a large reason I stopped amending planting holes. The organics eventually digested away and the plants settled lower than I wanted them to be.

OMG, Sheila! 105 and AC out?! All 🤞 that it is getting fixed right now. This second. June 2021 is way too hot! PDX is going to hit 105 this weekend. I am scared of July and August.…

ALM more graceful than baby Teas—you can say that again! Teas are the original gawky ducklings into swans.

Carol

AC fixed now, Carol. It needed a capacitor. Good luck this weekend for you. No wonder Ingrid in So California went into hiding,

Whew! Thank goodness, Sheila.

Ingrid in hiding: No kidding, right? I hope she’s doing okay. Her region has a crazy new global warming kind of hot and dry.

Stay cool in the heat of the day! Cut some Tea roses for a vase and have some iced tea in a frosty glass.

Carol

Thank goodness it ONLY hit 72 here today! But, that's why we moved here.

Kim, yes, it's clay. I didn't know vermiculite turns into clay. I will definitely switch to perlite. I'm just experimenting and trying things I read about here. The areas where I have put down a layer of compost, then a layer of arborist wood chip mulch, is an entirely different kind of soil. Earthworms and dark crumbly tilth. The problem is, I haven't improved enough of my soil for the roses I buy.

Everyone I know in CA just digs a hole and plants the rose. My daughter in Pasadena thinks all the amending I do is excessive. When I lived in Northridge, I could plant in my soil successfully, but not here.

Your Camellias and Gardenias must have been a thing of beauty. I regret that I can't grow those here.

You can often just dig a hole and plant, but not in new developments. The state mandated seismically engineered soil prevents it. Those older lots are great for gardening but houses split up and fall down from the excessive shaking during quakes. Been there, TWICE! Now, we're on engineered soil where the only "gardening" consists of about 5" of "top soil" over physically compacted soil which has NO drainage, NO air space between the soil particles and is so hard, you can't dig in it. But, when the earth moves, the shock waves will pass quickly with little (if any) shaking because the soil is compacted to bed rock hardness. So, even though most of the area is sand, this is sand stone, which is why everything is canned. I do miss the soil at my parents' house near Chatsworth and Reseda in Northridge. Where did you live there?

Even if you do improve your soil, does it result in enough drainage? That's a difficulty of clay. You can excavate all you want (or are able to) but you often end up with a "bucket" of good stuff surrounded by hard stuff which doesn't permit the water to drain from it.

I am frequently surprised here to encounter azaleas, gardenias, camellias and hydrangeas planted in all day sun and they FLOURISH, flowering nearly all year! Remarkable how "Zone 9b" can vary so greatly!

Yeah, I find the whole "zone" stuff pretty lame. I don't know whether in this area of Tuscany we'd be a zone 8 or a 9, but I am sure that whichever it is, it's a totally different thing from the same zone in the southern east coast of the USA!

My ALMcD is own-root. I got it , potted , as a grafted rose from Bierkreek-as far as I know only they and the Polish nursery Rosaplant offer this treasure. I'd already killed off 2 Annies, so this time I was determined to be uber-careful.

My potted Annie , as all Annies do, wanted to bloom constantly instead of grow,and rootstock kept on trying to take over. I thought to try putting it out in my garden a few years ago, but luckily stopped myself; I guess I saw rootstock trying to sprout in the root-ball,and own-roots starting to come from the scion, so I re-potted. and grew it on. Two years ago I finally put the plant out, and-fingers crossed-so far, so good. I am coddling it -well, what counts as coddling in my garden, lol-continuing to water it. Yesterday,when I went to dis-bud I saw what looked like a strong new shoot! but it was a bit wilty, so I put up a shade cover. I feel it's worth it to go to extra trouble. Roses that want to bloom constantly just are going to be slow, perforce, but unlike some of the noisettes, Annie is completely healthy. I trust that in time it really will take off,as long as I'm willing to keep after it. I also wonder if perhaps the fact that the Annies in Europe might be slower for the simple reason that they started life in Holland and Poland, in climates way, way different from California...

@roseseek Thank you! I sent in my order to Steve at wisconsin roses. My own root from rose petals, may not make it. I am babying it, am afraid to move to a bigger pot as it is barely making any leaves or sending new shoots. It's in semi shade area where it gets only morning sun, and gets some fish fertilizer bi weekly. The good news is, it's still alive.

Fingers crossed for both of you!

Thank you :) @roseseek

You're welcome, @111plisa su!

Kim, I've never heard of seismically engineered soil. We left Northridge immediately after the quake and I don't think it exsited prior to that. We lived in the Porter Ranch portion of Northridge in the foothills of the Santa Susanas, above Chatsworth, between Tampa and Wilbur. Your parents house was not far from us. We were planning to move up here, and that just pushed our move sooner. Our mostly intact house - one of very few in our neighborhood that didn't have to be rebuilt from the studs out, sold fast. We had the coveted green form on our front door that indicated it was "safe to enter". Since there were tens of thousands rendered homeless, people were literally lined up to buy any available homes while theirs were being rebuilt.

This crazy awful soil here also has a layer of caliche a couple to 3' down, so we dig very big planting holes. My husband uses a heavy gauge 6' length of rebar, with a pointed end and a pick axe to break it up and also to leverage out the big river rocks. We always test the drainage before we plant, and where it drains very slowly, we know there is a layer of caliche he didn't dig down to. Yes, it is like planting in a bucket. That's one reason I'd rather hand water; so I can monitor the needs of each rose.

I just ordered Annie Laurie McDowell from Steve at Wisconsin Roses this afternoon. If anyone grows her in conditions like mine - dry climate, cold winters, hot summers, short season, poor alkaline soil, please advise me how your Annie is doing so I can know what to expect. I won't be disappointed that she'll be smaller than her potential, I know that from any climber I grow.

I know the area well, flowers! You might want to investigate if there is any kind of azalea/camellia mix you can easily obtain to help acidify the alkaline clay where you'll plant ALmD. Oak leaf mold, peat, that kind of good stuff, things you'd use to plant blueberries, too. If that kind of material can be incorporated in the top few inches so it breaks down and flushes through the alkaline soil, it will help make multiflora happier. You can keep mulching with whatever acidic material available to maintain those conditions. You wouldn't need as much as if you were trying to grow camellias, but just enough to help mellow out the alkaline clay.

This area is mainly sand. The whole valley is pretty much sand. After the quakes and all the damage, the State instituted engineered soil to mimic bed rock. When we added the patio cover, Santa Barbara County required 25" cube concrete footers on each post to secure the thing against the constant winds. I warned the installers about the engineered soil, but they still sent two, young men with pick axes and shovels. There are three posts, each with a 25" cube of concrete and those three holes took those two young men nearly EIGHT HOURS to manually dig. Literally. Oddly, water began collecting in the bottoms of the holes almost as quickly as they finished digging them, but roots don't penetrate into the soil. I used to deal with the Santa Clarita Urban Forest for street trees. They would purchase 24" boxed trees, excavate matching holes in the engineered soil and plug the holes with the root balls. Often, the trees are replaced after three or four years because the holes filled with water and the trees drowned. The soil is manually, physically compacted to be bed rock. Anything built in the state after about 1980 is on some sort of engineered soil, unless it was built on bed rock. The older builds which didn't suffer extreme damage were all due to being built on sold surfaces. The Encino house suffered nearly no damage because the ridge was stone and it was seated squarely on that stone. The newer things around it lost chimneys, walls, garages but not that old house. Other than being seismically stable, the other main advantage to not being able to dig holes is gophers HATE it. They are everywhere there is loose soil, but not in engineered areas. The city uses its parks as rainwater collection and percolation pools so more rainfall is recaptured than runs off into the ocean nine miles away. Those areas aren't engineered so the water absorbs quickly. The gophers LOVE them.

How frustrating that the bureaucrats won't listen to someone who knows what they're talking about and opt to hire inexperienced fellas who obviously don't know what they're doing. They could have at least checked out what you told them. And, those boxed trees are a sad story. Destined to die from the get go.

One reason our Northridge house didn't suffer like the neighbors is that our piece of land was not altered where most of the development was built on fill which became something like jello in the earthquake. You were fortunate to live on that solid stone ridge in Encino.

Poor gophers. Even if they could chew they're way through the engineered soil, there would be few roots to sustain them anyway, forcing them to vacate the area for leaner pastures in the parks.

Roses in pots works beautifully in southern California where they can stay out year round. I only have a few to move to the garage for winter, but it's a chore. And, worse is knowing when it's safe to bring them out again in spring.

I do use Rhododendron, Evergreen and Azalea Food on almost all my plants to help balance out my alkaline soil. We dump our fall harvest of shredded oak leaves around the garden. There is leaf mold in the pine bark mulch made from our own trees. Pine is isn't the best, but it's ours and the price is right. It's a bigger relief than you can imagine to know I'm on the right track.

I actually love Annie Laurie for all the excellent reasons mentioned here, except scent. I detect no scent whatsoever from it except a kind of green-plantiness. And I was not aware that anyone was getting perfume from it, unlike Teas which are variable as to who can smell tham and who cannot.

It is the featured rose at our entryway. I've auditioned several roses for the position over the years, and this is The One.

Thank you, Rosefolly! I'm delighted she enjoys your pride of position! How sad you don't perceive her scent. The neat foliage and lack of prickles were the first attractions for me, then she FLOWERED! Yes, a really pretty "face" but that SCENT. Wow!

Not sure if anybody is still monitoring this chat, but I'm obsessed with finding this rose and cannot locate anybody actively growing it. Angel Gardens is but there's a waitlist there. Does anybody know where else I might be able to find this beauty? Thank you!

I got mine from A Reverence for Roses, but it's out of stock there, too. I'm hoping to snag a replacement, eventually, since mine died of Bambi depredation, just like my FIRST one :( My next one will be surrounded by a 10' reinforced concrete barrier with razor wire, lol.

EDIT: the nursery name is supposed to be a link to their ALM page, but for me, it's not showing unless I hover my mouse over it.

@SD Shine -Z10a Bay Area my best suggestion is, next year, get in contact with Steve Singer at Wisconsin Roses to have one custom budded. He does NOT have the rose, but he will have the seedling multiflora root stocks upon which to bud it. It will grow own root but it is significantly better budded, when it perform more like a traditional commercial bare root. Own root, it wants to flower at the expense of growing and too few have the intestinal fortitude to prevent it from flowering until it develops into the plant they desire. I strongly advised Pamela Greenwald and Cydney Wade to bud it (or have Malcolm Manners bud one for them) to develop into a large plant they can then harvest armloads full of thick, long, strong cuttings from. Obviously that wasn't done or there would be plants available. Angel Gardens has one (or more) plants in gallon cans Pamela attempts to harvest cuttings from (HER admission) to root and sell. I don't know how Rose Petals or A Reverence for Roses are trying to deal with it currently. But, you will never produce strong plants from small, thin cuttings harvested from tiny plants which never develop into anything worth growing because all of the new growth is continually cut off for production. So, Steve Singer's web site is this. https://wiroses.com/ He is also on Instagram. Watch for when he is ready to begin budding then feel free to contact me through here (my email is my screen name at AOL.com) to arrange for bud wood. Steve spells out the process for ordering custom budding on his site so you'll know how much it will cost and how to handle it when it arrives. Sound like a plan?

I don’t know if this is a good idea or not, but I have six Annie Laurie McDowell flourishing on my garden fence with thick long canes. They bloomed prolifically for me this summer. Kim, I would be happy to try rooting some if that’s ok with you. I know it’s your rose and I don’t want to do anything illegal or unethical, but I would be happy to root some for those that want. Mine wouldn’t be grafted, since I haven’t learned that skill yet. ( I mean to try my hand at that someday!)

Two photos from this fall.

@roseseek you are wonderful, thank you! I'll do exactly that so I can ensure growing it successfully. @judijunebugarizonazn8 these photos are not helping my obsession lol. I'm in zone 10a, East Bay California. I wonder if it might thrive here as own-root as yours does? Do I want to take the risk? I'm not a gambling woman...

@SD Shine -Z10a Bay Area I grew it in 10A Encino, CA for years and in 9b Santa Clarita Valley and 9b north Santa Barbara Countyb) currently. Mine is not own root but one I budded on virus indexed Fortuniana years ago. It actually grows better on Ralph Moore's Pink Clouds than it does on Fortuniana. The huge one on HMF in Valencia, CA is budded on Pink Clouds. It was in Encino I used to root them wholesale. There was real heat there so things pushed like crazy. Here on the ocean? Meh. NO heat, hence no roots. It may grow well for you there. Own root ones are thriving and growing beautifully in Santa Barbara (Zone 9b) but they were treated appropriately by their owners, not permitting them to flower until they were pushing the thick, long growth it needs to support that kind of flower power. IF you want to try budding your own, that can also be arranged. Pink Clouds roots EXTREMELY easily and chip budding to it is EXTREMELY easy to accomplish. https://pushingtheroseenvelope.blogspot.com/2014/11/chip-budding.html Feel free to browse all the chip budding (and any other results) on my blog. All of those were accomplished in that 10a Encino heat. If you grow Pink Clouds, learn to chip bud, then the world is your oyster. All you'll ever need are a few buds of whatever rose you desire and you're golden.

@judijunebugarizonazn8 I have no issue with you rooting them. There are only two or three nurseries offering it who seldom have anything available and I receive nothing from any of them for it. Of course I am delighted when more of them make it out in the world as I'd love for it to achieve its own immortality. I love the rose and I loved the lady for whom it was named. I'm delighted you have them growing so well, thank you! I had great success rooting it using the wrapping method in Encino but whatever method you're accomplished using is great. https://pushingtheroseenvelope.blogspot.com/2011/05/wrapping-cuttings.html And, PLEASE feel free to post photos of yours on HMF! If you're interested in Pink Clouds, please let me know. It's EASY to root and EASY to bud to. And, it's been tested officially and found to be "virus free", just as Annie Laurie McDowell has been.

I hope that my own-root Annie will make it. I got it grafted from Bierkreek, but the rootstock kept insisting on taking over. I insisted on removing these sucker, and now I have no more suckker issues, so I assume the plant's gone own-root. It's still in a pot; I'm not willing to risk putting it out in the garden until it gets big.I do my best to keep up with de-budding it.

This is my third attempt with this rose. First time, got it bare-root and planted it out in the garden, but it succumbed to our awful summers. The second was grafted, too, but was such a tiny, wimpy plant-it wouldn't even grow in a pot. Hopefully three will be the lucky number!

Thank you, Kim! I will be working at rooting some of these and see what kind of success I attain. Thanks for the link showing your burrito method. I read that some time ago and forgot about it, but I think that’s worth a try for sure! I also use those little propagation pods and will root several that way. I’m very interested in trying my hand at grafting someday and will keep your offer in mind!

Thank you so much, Kim! I’d definitely like to try my hand at budding myself, maybe not with such a precious cutting at first. Plant biology is fascinating!

I have several (surplus) well-rooted one gallon plants of Pink Clouds available for adoption. I was planning on starting my budding efforts this past summer, but some real-life issues got in the way. Therefore I am going to wait until next summer to do it. But in the meantime, I have extra plants of Pink Clouds that would love a home with someone who is thinking of trying budding. It roots easily, and the blooms are quite pretty on their own. Kim (Roseseek) has been my wonderful mentor in this endeavor :-D

Bingo! Perfect! Thank you, Susan!

Ooh susan I’d love them! Although I’ve never done this before so I would not want to waste them. I’m a scientist though so this appeals to me on so many levels. Regardless, I’ll take Kim’s advice and try to get a custom budding for ALMD to ensure sucess and, best case, I’ll have a bunch of plants to share! Let’s do this! This gorgeous rose is not going extinct on our watch lol.

Pink Clouds is a tough rose. I have a large one. It must be very tasty as well because whenever any of our baby goats get out, they head right for it. Out of 3 dozen other roses in the same area, they love PC the best♡ lol

@SD Shine -Z10a Bay Area you won't "waste" them. Plant them so they grow then root all the potential root stocks you want from them. They are a never ending supply of cuttings. Sequoia Nursery grew a literal forest of it for decades (mid 1950s until they closed nearly sixty years later) and kept them whacked at about 8' so they pushed strong, straight whips for mini and traditional standards. They maintained it virus free and it is still virus free today.

@SD Shine -Z10a Bay Area: Great! Here's my email, so send me an email and we can work it out. I don't know where you are, and I've only mailed roses to Calif. and Arizona. Either send me an email or tell me here that you got my email address, and I'll delete it (general security reasons). BTW, I am also a science person... medical microbiologist by education and chemistry teacher by profession :-D

(deleted)

Here's a pic of one from six weeks ago:

@susan9santabarbara Hah! I, too, am a microbiologist/molecular geneticist by training, biotech R&D by profession! I'm also in California, Oakland to be precise. You can delete your email now, thank you SO much.

For the sake of anyone whom this might benefit, now or in the future, I wanted to note that this rose does amazingly well in Arkansas. After killing a "maiden" of it, I acquired an own root plant and potted it up for a year when I lived in Seattle. It was the only rose I brought with me to Arkansas (I pruned the heck out of the baby plant and basically bare rooted it, stuck it in a plastic bag, and took it in my carryon luggage. It sat recovering in a pot for probably half a year before I could plant it out. It grew pretty well straight away when I stuck it in the ground.

Here is a picture of it in May of its second summer in the ground:

And here it is in October of the same year:

You can see that both the rose and the rosemary grew quite a bit over the summer. It is an outstanding plant -- almost no blemishes on the leaves, beautiful habit and foliage, prolific flowers that are beautifully fragrant, not thorny! I wish I could have taken it with me on my recent move back to Washington State. Alas, I'm also going to have to find another one soon (but first, I need a garden, lol!)

Here are some more pictures. Folks in the south, try this rose. It is great.

Beautiful, Krista! Thank you!

O, I so hope that things will improve for me and I'll be able to plant out my precious ALMcD in my garden in a year or two...

You are welcome, Kim. I'm always happy to tell people about how much I love this rose.

Bart, I hope so! I wish you luck!