Iceberg at dawn. My first full sized rose, and the best performer in my garden. Looks like she wants to put on more height this year.

Wild Edric, my favorite rugosa hybrid so far. All of the toughness with such beautiful flowers. His scent is better than both Blanc Double de Coubert and Roseraie de l'Hay.

More fragrant than any rose, this is Dianthus Corsicus, a Mediterranean variety of carnation with strong wafting peppery scent. Wild Edric in the back.

Teasing Georgia, how big will she get? A very tough rose with great vigor and wonderful scent. She'd probably bloom more if she wasn't against a north facing wall, but that's the only wall I've got up here.

Heritage showing her halo. She was in a shadier spot last year, and her blooms do not seem to enjoy the heat at all. I might move her again.

Charles de Gaulle : his foliage is not very happy with my windy conditions, but he's trying hard to make it anyway. Strong lemon scent, blooms are pinker than I expected here.

Blanc Double de Coubert : growing very slowly, and blooms shatter fast, but he held up well against the storms.

Huddersfield Choral Society: the color got more jewel toned as the temps got warmer. It's an offspring of Blue For You, and like BFY the petals also darken as the blooms age.

I can't get enough of this rose, so here's a bunch of pics showing her different looks.

Perhaps my favorite rose, and her spicy-lemon-rose scent is strong!

Comte de Chambord, thank you Straw for recommending this one, he's perfect!

Boufarik, which may or may not be Rose de Rescht, with some alyssum peeking through.

Jean de Luxembourg, a Ducher rugosa hybrid. Smells amazing, like an apricot pie that stayed in the oven just a little too long.

White Jacques Cartier, not my favorite to be honest, in part because the scent isn't all that, but he seems to have overcome his issues with early blackspot, so there's hope.

Autumn Damask: I just had to have this venerable old rose. Her blooms may not be the prettiest, but the scent from a single one wafts several meters away. Mid flush, it's fragrance paradise.

Roberto Alagna : this is from his first flush, and he's gearing up for the second one now. The color does fade some after a couple days, but still looks good. I'll post more pics with the next blooms.

Pascal Sevran : very badly damaged by the storms and then the bugs. But the blooms make it all worth it.

Darlow's Enigma: weird growth habit and very mean thorns, but wonderful wafting scent from those clusters of blooms.

A feast for my eyes! From your descriptions of their scents, my mind registers the scentuous treat as well! A heartfelt thanks goes out to you, our Maltese Rosarian!

Moses

Mamy Blue, I just love this rose. Very similar to Charles de Gaulle, but more vigorous and floriferous. Scent is fabulous too.

Strawberries! Olivia Rose Austin in the back

Olivia Rose Austin : very impressed with this rose. I was afraid she wouldn't have fragrance but she definitely does, although it's not the strongest scent. Blooms fade to almost white quickly in our heat, but I don't mind.

Heidi Klum, Scent is strong for a quasi mini, but not as strong as I had hoped. Still love her: compact, floriferous, and healthy.

Figs are coming! (Brogiotto Nero variety)

Pink Ekrixis, an Avramis rose that's supposed to be striped, but hasn't been for me so far.

Cornflower mixing with Double White Carnation:

Korallina, a highlighter orange mini that came as a freebie with my Avramis order. Weak neck, which is a shame on such a small rose, but might improve with age?

The latest to join the rooftop roses are the Hulthemias, I wanted to give them a try since they are supposed to be smallish and heat tolerant.

Eyes for You:

Raspberry Kiss:

And finally here is Malta's national flower, Widnet il-Bahar. It usually grows on seaside cliffs, so it really enjoys being up here. The purple pompoms have a honey scent and the bees love them.

Afterthought : these are struggling so bad I almost forgot to post them. Massive storm damage and very slow recovery.

Rosomane Janon:

Desdemona :

Princess Anne:

Roseraie de l'Hay :

Two that have yet to bloom are Schneekoppe (but that was my very last planting, so it's ok) and Crown Princess Margareta, going into its second year here and still not a single bloom!

Lovely, thanks for sharing! I hope your storm damaged ones perk up. And congrats on your first grapes.

Thank you so much @Moses, Pitt PA, cold W & hot-humid S, z6 and @intwilight z6a KS ! I am glad you enjoyed the pics. And I am very much looking forward to the grapes!

I forgot to mention Chios rose among the ones that have yet to bloom. Well, technically it did bloom, I just missed it because I was away! I'll add pics when that one blooms again.

seasiderooftop Thank you for a feast of your tough roses, and I love your exotic ones that we don't have here in USA, such as Pascal Sevran (so pretty), Rosomane Janon, Korallina (nicest orange), Heidi Klum, Mamy Blue, Roberto Alagna (wow orange), Poulsen Victory mini (a darling). I especially like your Choral Society (blooms have more petals & prettier than Blue for You).

You have the best looking & compact & many blooms Autumn Damask .. looks so good that I want to buy & sniff it.

Thank you for the abundant healthy beauties: iceberg, Raspberry Kiss, and Pink Ekrixis (looks great). You do a great job growing them in such a tough environment of sandy & salty wind in Malta.

I treasure your pic. of Iceberg against an ocean sunset. WOW !!

Wow! Your roses are incredible and in such challenging conditions. Well done! I had no idea that you had so many beautiful roses on your rooftop garden. It .must be magnificent!

Total rose paradise with a view to match! I think you're inspiring us all to try our luck growing some roses in large pots. Magnificent.

I'm amazed at how well most of them are doing, given the challenges they've had. Huddersfield Choral Society really appeals to me, and Wild Edric. And fancy Teasing Georgia growing and flowering so well against a north facing wall. What a treat it must be to be up there, especially with that view.

Gorgeous... thanks for sharing the pictures. As a fellow (mostly) container rose grower, I can say you're doing a great job! Your foliage looks wonderful :-D

I agree with you seasiderooftop, Autumn Damask has a heavenly fragrance, one i really look forward to each year. My Autumn Damask is about 8 years old, it is a treasure. Someone said they believe it was prevalent in the Middle East at the time of Christ Jesus.

Seaside, your post was so cheery with your beautiful scenery and lovely roses!! I really love your more single/semi-double roses for some reason. I usually love the fuller blooms...but your Roseraie de l'Hay, Darlow's Engima and Pink Ekrixis really stand out to me!! I love them all and especially your Comte de Chambord and Malta's national flower!! :) :)

As somebody with mostly rooftop roses in another Mediterranean climate close to the ocean I’m super impressed by how good everything looks! I have something to look forward to as mine grow up.

Btw I also put it together that my Charles de Gaulle foliage was curling due to wind, but not until after I nearly killed the thing thinking the leaf curl was from acidic soil. I dumped a lot of lime on him hoping to fix things then realized it was the wind. Sadly when I repotted him to get rid of the like I saw crown gall…but your pics of him look pretty so I’ll have to try again someday.

Ryan - having killed a lot of roses from over-liming...I get it. We live and learn.

All were lovely but Huddersfield Choral Society is really pulling at me. I keep going back to its pictures. I’m going to have to research and see if I can find that one. WOW!

I love your roses..... I feel your pain with your challenges that you have with the salted winds..... gales and hurricanes....

I have only a few in the pots but they are more of challenge for me than the ones I put in the ground. I can never keep them wet enough, or dry enough.... it is like every rose wants something different.... ugh. I just want to water and be done....

The first thing I did was go to helpmefind.com and look up to see where I could order Huddersfield Choral Society, but it does not appear to be available here in the USA.... it is gorgeous and I have a thing for lemon scented roses..... oh well.... sniff it and think of me so I can enjoy it vicariously......

Thanks for sharing your roses and other flowers..... I liked your carnation and your countries' flower.

Ryan Coastal LA Zone 10b Many thanks for sharing the truth that wind can make leaves curl up. Few days ago we had high wind at 30 mph and the leaves curl up on my thornless Clothilde Soupert. It has pale leaves so I know that such roses hate lime. Now the leaves are 100% OK after day-long rain, and no more wind.

Blue & low-thorn roses like Charles de Gaulle prefer fluffy soil & acidic rain as own-root. I have low thorn & blue Lagerfeld and it hated my dense clay. Leaves were pale in my alkaline clay, and it bloomed best with tons of acidic rain in late fall.

I once bought a low-thorn Blue Girl rose. I pulled it out from the pot, and the pot was mostly acidic pine bark plus peat moss. Pine park pH is 4, but it releases its acid slowly to make soil fluffy. Same with my low thorn & purplish own-root Twilight Zone, it does best with tons of acidic rain.

Thank you all for your very kind and encouraging comments! As a rose newbie I have learned so much from the posts on this forum, about roses and about container gardening in general.

My roses have to face the challenge of Summer temps now, today was 35°c (95F) and it's only June 1st, so we'll see how they handle the heat in the upcoming season. I don't shade them, partly because pretty much any shade system would be defeated by the wind, and partly because that's just the environment up here and if they can't tolerate it they don't belong on the roof (the ones that fail up here will be relocated to my boyfriend's garden, which is much more sheltered).

@titian1 10b Sydney @oursteelers 8B PNW @sharon2079

Huddersfield Choral Society is an amazing rose and I'm glad you enjoyed it!

Here are some pics of her from today, she is looking more wine colored these days in the heat:

Originally I found her when I was looking for a European equivalent to Lavender Crush after falling in love with BenT's pictures. Lavender Crush isn't available in Europe, and it's a climber, so HCS being a shrub turned out to be a more suitable rose for containers anyway. If you can get LC in the US I believe she is a fantastic rose!

@User I completely believe the part about it being around back in those days. There are some accounts of her in Southern Italy in the ancient Roman texts, and she has ancestry from central asia (fedchenkoana), so it seems plausible that she would have been grown in the middle east in the lifetime of Jesus Christ. The history of this rose is so special. How is the rebloom for you? I heard it can rebloom but needs lots of water and pruning twice a year for that to happen. Curious about your experience.

@rosecanadian I agree about the charm of the simpler blooms on those roses, especially on the Hulthemias, low petal count actually works in favor of showing off their "eye". I'm a little frightened of Darlow's Enigma, apparently he can grow into a beast and I hope I can keep him tamed!

@Ryan Coastal LA Zone 10b the wind is a constant challenge, and unfortunately wind resistance is never mentioned in the description of roses on seller's sites, so we're left to find out for ourselves! I find that roses with glossy foliage tend to hold up a little better, as well as many of those in the Leander group of Austins.

@strawchicago z5 thank YOU! Your posts in the organic rose growing forum are my prime source of information on rose growing and fertilizing. Your posts have helped me so much with the various issues I had with my roses, and I love your description of the fragrances of different roses, it has helped me a lot with selecting some of these!

seasiderooftop, I just looked at Autumn Damask and can see some buds forming- very much later than usual , same for Madame Hardy. It has been a very cold rainy Spring in North Idaho, Zone 6b but more like 5 , everything is late.

My AD gets mostly afternoon sun and still does very well. My neighbor agreed to let me put AD in her flower bed; there are in ground sprinklers but not much water reaches the roses. It get deep watering a few times a month but moistly fends for itself and relies on rain. I trim her back after Winter, dead heading a few times throughout the summer until Fall . Then I try to get her bad canes trimmed out after the flowers are gone. I don't really do anything the way the experts advise.

I'm having a hard time remembering if she blooms in flushes or always has a few constantly until late fall. I absolutely love the flowers, exquisite fragrance, and hate the thorns. She is kept short, three feet or less for safety reasons. Photo is from a previous year.

Seaside, your Huddersfield is much more beautiful than Lavender Crush, in my opinion.

Magpie, I agree. I have LC but the pics of Huddersfield have more…more.

@seasiderooftop

My I love your unique gardens!!! Thank you for sharing! It us such a rare privilege to see your Malta gardens… figs… grapes…. and specialty roses!!! Some of my favorites are your Autumn Damask, H Choral Society, C de Chambord, Olivia, P Anne, Dianthus Recht & few more…. What a lovely seaside garden!!!,

Seaside - oh my goodness...that first bloom is incredibly beautiful!! What a great picture!!

Berrypie - such soft beauty on your AD!

Seasiderooftop you are so fortunate ! I was going through your beautiful photos again , imagining the taste of home grown grapes , remembering the way living by the water smells - it's been decades ago.

I've read about the apostle Paul's shipwreck in Malta but never seen actual pictures of the location, it brings home the realism of the Bible text.

Carol, it's such hearty camaraderie to face the thorns of rose love together with someone that has eyes to see. You appreciate rose photos and speak of them as if they were your own cherished roses . It's such an encouraging group here I don't feel so alone in my labor.

My old neighbor Bud ( great name huh ) laughed when I told him I wanted to make a rose garden here at the apartments. I remember his stinging words " No one will appreciate them ".

It felt a little silly but I used to pick flowers and take them to him. The old guy died last year but the flowers did change his mind.

My Evelyn stands in a deep weed patch at another neighbor's flower bed . She orders food by mail and rarely comes out her door. Evelyn's glorious petals fall never being seen by anyone but me, the delivery people and occasional passer by.

@User thank you for sharing your pictures of your beautiful Autumn Damask blooms! I'm glad to hear she has a long bloom season even without following all the experts' advice to a t.

And thank you for sharing the story of your neighbor Bud! It made me smile to think that he finally came around and appreciated your roses in the end. Well done for persevering!

St Paul's shipwreck is definitely considered as a historical fact here in Malta, and he is very much celebrated here. The exact location of the shipwreck is subject to some debate but the traditionally accepted location is in the area that is known today as St Paul's Bay. More specifically, there is a tiny island right at the entrance of the bay where the ship is supposed to have crashed onto the rocks, and a statue of St Paul and small pilgrimage site have been set up on that island. Pic of the island seen from the shore, from Wikipedia:

@Kittysrosegarden Thank you for your kind comment! I really enjoy looking at your roses on the seasonal thread, you have such gorgeous varieties!

@Mischievous Magpie (CO 5b) Thank you! I love HCS, it turned out to be a much better option for me in containers. But I will admit that if I ever found a Lavender Crush I would get it in a heartbeat!

@oursteelers 8B PNW I didn't remember that you already have LC, lucky you! I hope she will give you beautiful blooms this year!

Wow, thanks for the background. I would love to walk in that place - need to watch out for snakes !

berrypie - oh, what a sweet thing to say!!! And I'm so glad that we all have this great group to belong to. It's been a delight to "garden" with everyone here. :) :) You are such a kind person to bring him flowers after his discouraging words. I'm glad you won him over. :) :) Evelyn's beauty is seen by you and that's enough...because you're enough. :) :)

Seaside and berrypie - I'm really trying to wrap my head around the fact that Saint Paul was in Malta!! That is so interesting!!

@seasiderooftop your garden is just stunning!! Thank you for sharing all your lovely pictures. Your Poulson mini is really striking, I wish I could find minis like that here!