“Gardening is very rewarding, and I thrive off of the successes I manage, but I realize now that it's not just that. It's also a hard lesson in being humbled by the forces around you that you cannot control. It's not just some idyllic place of perpetual beauty. It's frustration and tears and hope and joy and disappointment and excitement and surrender. A physical manifestation of the emotions that we plant along with our seeds and cuttings.”

That’s it exactly, Magpie! Gardening is the joys and trials of life in a nutshell of soil and plants.

How nice to have a precious sibling nearby. I hope she enjoys all the plants! Does she garden or is it going to be a new thing? Ugh I'm jealous of your weather right now, I want it to be like that here. Just for a day or two lol. It hit 101°F today, not a temperature that I expect to deal with until later in summer. The edges of some of my rose and clematis petals are burnt and curled, but it looks like maybe the inside petals are going to be okay? Not sure yet. But on a few of my roses, the blooms that were fully open were 100% crisped. So I'll probably be cutting as many semi-open blooms as I can from those varieties because the temps are going to keep going up to the high 90's all week. Much to my surprise, Sidonie, Reine Victoria and Sally Holmes both did very well in full sun today, and they still look great. Just another reason for me to love Sidonie lol.

I had my son's family visiting and did not check on the roses for a few days and found a zone not watering and droopy. I really hate when that happens. We use well water to irrigate and probably need a sand separator filter to keep things going well.

@Mischievous Magpie (CO 5b) Sidonie is a rose goddess! The reasons to love and worship her are infinite and eternal.

@Sheila z8a Rogue Valley OR Ugh. Why does stuff like that always happen when we step away for a couple of days?! If we blink, suddenly a plague invades the garden, our watering systems break and everything blooms and fades before we catch a glimpse. I hope your roses bounce back quickly! 🤞 Good luck with the equipment alterations. It’s lovely that you had a visit with your son and family!

This was not a good year for roses here in Tuscany, either. Mine looked splendid on May 21st-just about to hit their full stride-and then, BAM! high heat along with dreadful humidity. So the whole spring flush was kind of spoiled: flowers opening too fast, blowing immediately,scorching...In any case, I had a couple of appointments that kept me away from my land during the brief flowering.I can only hope and pray for a better future.

Magpie, you are SO right. I want gardening for me to be about life, about learning how to live, how to nuture plants ,about learning humility and courage. My gorge rises when I hear people speak of a certain rose as "being a good performer", for example-as if Nature existed in order to put on a show and please and entertain us puny humans!

Maybe I can turn this into an opportunity to reflect on why I am doing this crazy project; often I think it will either save me or kill me , lol! But I do have one thing on which I can count: working out at my land gives me a chance to be in the arms of Nature,a thing that doesn't happen when I work in my studio,or potter around on the terrace, etc.

Now another terrible heat wave is starting up again. I have to renounce going out there, except when I have to water; this kind of weather is just plain DANGEROUS. So I dream of autumn...At any rate, the summer solstice is just around the corner,which signifies that afterward, gradually, the days will become shorter,the sun less intense,and hopefully by mid-September I'll be able to get back to gardening.

@MetteBee_Copenhagen8b Ooh I wanted to buy Gipsy Boy this year but things got confusing and crazy with the Palatine ordering so it didn't happen. Beautiful color! Lucky you :)

@MetteBee_Copenhagen8b Your MIP and GB are spectacular! Those colors! Those full Bourbon blooms! They are obviously loving the rain. MIP looks fantastic on the wall. I grew MIP for a few years, too, and I ignored her blackspot. Unfortunately, here in the PNW and in a zero spray garden, she just couldn’t really grow fresh leaves. I kept her tucked away by the compost and cut her blooms for the house. Those richly fragrant blooms could perfume a room! I am so glad you have negotiated a way for her to work in your garden. You tolerate a bit of blackspot. In exchange, she offers loads of blooms and fresh foliage. I have always fantasized about growing deeply violet crimson GB in my garden even though I know he’d be unhappy. I have also fantasized about changing his name. 🙄 Thank you for the lovely photos! You and @Mischievous Magpie (CO 5b) are giving me a much needed Bourbon fix as my poor Zephirine is just sad this spring. Carol

@portlandmysteryrose Yes the name can go.

Funny thing. Once upon a time I thought I could grow bourbon roses here because I could grow Maggie and Souvenir de la Malmaison et. al. However, I discovered that Maggie is a found rose with a mysterious international background and that the SdlM family is also half tea. So my success with those didn't necessarily track to other bourbons.

These are so lovely. Thank you for sharing your photos.

Did someone mention Maggie?

Not the happiest rose here, but she just keeps blooming. I love the meaning of her Chinese name: purple swallows flying.

@Feiy (PNWZ8b/9a) I really had to will myself not to buy Maggie during the recent sale at... I forget now, RVR? I've been eyeing it since last year. Yours is so beautiful. And yes, that's a beautiful name. I find a lot of the rose names in English to be so uncreative. I don't have opinions on the names in other languages really because I don't know what they mean, but I sure find ours to be generally pretty boring.

Purple Swallows Flying: That’s perfect! Now I want her.

I gave my Honorine de Brabant to PDXJohn, but I thought I’d post a couple of photos from when I grew her. Just for candy striped fun. :-)

Mme. Ernest Calvat having some balling issues :/ I wonder if she's extra sensitive to it, because we're quite dry here! Yeah it gets hit with overhead sprinklers but so do every single one of my in roses and this is the first time I've had this issue. A shame because she smells SO GOOD. I hope it gets better later.

I'll have to post a pic or two of my two year old Madame Isaac Pereire from RVR.

The colour is surprisingly bright and modern- a hot pink overlaid with purplish magenta. Of course, the scent is outstanding. I completely agree with her being one of the most fragrant roses in existence.

She even bloomed despite being nipped back significantly by rabbits and the cold winter- blooming under 8" tall!

Interestingly, she has not balled in conditions that are causing roses such as Albertine and Spirit of Freedom to ball here (something between rain, humidity, and the thrips).

My Honorine de Brabant is one year old now, a baby from HCR. I don't understand her- references and other gardeners report good fragrance, but I don't notice much of anything yet. I had previously tried her back in the early 2000's as a grafted plant from Arena Roses. She grew great, but yet- I noticed no scent then either.

Steven

Madame Isaac Pereire...

Steven, it may be a nose difference or climate difference. I defintely visited HdB just to smell her blooms. HdB was sweetly fragrant, and what I would call “very fragrant”, to my nose but not as fragrant as MIP. MIP is what I would call top tier “strongly fragrant”!

@portlandlysteryrose it must be a nose issue! Interesting I couldn't smell it as a teen when I know my nose was better! I love the "hand creme" scent of Winchester Cathedral, for example, but a friend of mine says he can barely detect anything! It's so fascinating, the individual and their own sensitivity and genetic programming! Crazier yet; I've had blooms from my Chicago Peace that I'd consider more notably scented than either HdB I've encountered so far!

Steven

What types of smells do you detect the best? I think my nose is the best at detecting (and also favors the most) those herby, medicinal and almost musky and skunky smells the most. Myhrr, anise, lavender, jasmine, catnip, etc. My nose loves them all. Meanwhile the "traditional" rose scent always smells quite faint to me no matter which supposedly strongly scented rose it's coming from. I actually, genuinely love the smell of skunk spray, too. My nose is weird for sure LOL. @MiGreenThumb (Z5b S.Michigan/Sunset 41) Elevation: 1091 feet

@Mischievous Magpie you know; that's a great question. I can pick up the following: musk, old rose, citrus, anise (black licorice), mints, skunk (whether from animal, catnip, or cannabis), coniferous scents, woody scents, spoil/decay, mold/fungi, rodent leavings and the like very well. I wonder if it's possible that different chemical compounds elude me or if I identify them differently. I've long considered myself a "smells" person, and let me tell you- while looking at houses for sale, my poor olfactory has been greatly assaulted by some of these homes from time to time. 

More Me Isaac Pereire... 

Steven

Roses: I can smell lemon/citrus, old rose (Damask), Tea rose (though not as well as my husband can), musk, anise, dusting powder (like Jacques Cartier), sweet scents in Albas and both sweet and lemon scents in Gallicas. I can also smell a natural gas leak that barely registers with a professional detection service!

@Mischievous Magpie (CO 5b) Mmmm. Skunk! 😂

It sounds like we have a very similar range of most available-to-our-noses scents, and I also lean heavily on my sense of smell (for better or for worse) to gather information about my surroundings. I can't seem to stop myself from going nose-first into a lot of things even if I know I'm not going to like what I find. Interesting though that you can smell old rose well and I hardly can!

Oh yes, I forgot, I can smell Tea rose very well, too. I consider it "dry" in the sinuses. Can't describe why I call it a "dry" scent. Maybe it seems almost... Dusty to me, perhaps.

A couple shots from today of the lovely Madame...

Steven

I must admit I never touched the Bourbon class, not just because they tend to be too big for pots, but because I love healthy foliage almost as much as I love fragrant blooms. Their reputation for sickness makes me very wary, especially because I don't spray with anything but neem.

However, I recently made an exception and picked up Honorine de Brabant to add to my boyfriend's garden. Her fragrance and stripes won me over, and it will be a test to see if Bourbon health is really as awful as I fear it is.

If she does well, I'm considering adding one of the smaller Bourbons to my roof in the fall. Not SdlM, but possibly Madame Nobecourt or Madame Denfert. Anyone have any experience with these? Are they healthy?

@seasiderooftop

Our climates are different, but if it helps to know my experience, I had good luck with Honorine’s health here in Fungus Central! Once in a while, she’d lose a chunk of leaves and regrow them. I gave her good air circulation, and always stripped her old leaves and cleaned up around her in winter. Pruning for good air circulation helps a lot, too. I tend not to site her right against walls. My garden has always been no spray. Honorine rebloomed well for me (in a Bourbon way, not a continuous way) with maturity. Carol

in dry So. CA bourbons will tolerate some shade. I dont get any blackspot here and if I water consistenlty, no rust. The afternoon shade protects them from burning and the flowers last longer. Some of the taller ones you can let them grow into trees or large shrubs and its very pretty

i've had my 2 bourbons for 2 seasons each now and not had much luck with either of them. Hardly any blooms and hardly any vigour, no repeat, poor hardiness. They're young still, but so are all of my roses and these 2 are disappointing so far in comparison. Not sure yet what to do about it.

This is (or rather was) Madame Cornelissen, a sport of Souvenir de la Malmaison. It's quite lovely, but yet another rose I didn't keep long enough. If i had endless space and water I would love to have her in my garden again.

Madame Dore, another lovely and rather small Bourbon. It would be nice to find a space to tuck in this pretty rose.

Sophie’s Perpetual (found China/Bourbon) thrives in my hot, dry, windy Mediterranean climate. I have four in pots; the original grafted mother and three grown from cuttings. No disease, lovely lush twiggy growth, no thorns, minimal hips, great re-bloom, self cleaning and an outstanding perfume. The only problem I have is katydids in summer, but they are easily remedied 🩴

I ordered quite a few Bourbons the past few months:

• Madame Dore
• Reine Victoria
• Honorine de Brabant
• Madame Cornelissen
• Romaggi Plot

They're all very new, and Madame Dore is the only one to have bloomed so far. My pictures of MD aren't as nice as Ingrid's, but here they are. (I think MD has such pretty buds, even when they are small.)

I don’t understand why Sophie’s Perpetual isn’t grown more often. She is a fabulous rose that doesn’t get too big!

Here's another of the small Bourbons, Romaggi Plot Bourbon. They all have such presence.

Ingrid that second photo is fantastic. I might move my 2 bourbons this spring, maybe they just need different sun.

You like skunk smell? Somehow I think you must see the silver lining in things.

Here are some of my Bourbons. This is my Zepherine in a tree but the color was off in my camera and it is bluer than it really is. This plant is no more. It was a grafted body bag plant. For awhile in spring it looked like this crabapple tree was a rose tree.

Souvenir de la Malmaison, a good repeater

Variegata di Bologna

Maggie a great repeater, can take the heat by the street

Wow...I love the color of Gypsy Boy.

Wow, what beauties here!!!

@erasmus_gw Your photos are always such a treat, such a rose paradise you live in. Yes I do like the smell of skunk, though one time I found my then-puppy barking up a storm at a baby skunk in the garden (so cute!) and quickly brought her inside. I might like the smell on the air outside, but I'm sure not interested in having that smell inside my house! Nice to see Maggie taking the heat from the road, I always thought bourbons might be sensitive to heat and full sun so I put mine in shadier spots, but they're just not doing well. Maybe they need true full sun after all? Mme. Ernest Calvat looks like it could be a good rose in a better spot, but Reine Victoria is so pathetic it's hard to imagine it doing well.

Madame Isaac Pereire is really a beauty! I have added it to my list. I like Maggie （紫燕飞）too.

the only Bourbon rose I have now is ZD which I got as a band last year. Erasmus your picture is unbelievable! I hope mine will grow like that one day🌹🌹🌹

Thank you! The Zepherine that climbed the tree was grafted. My own root one is not 1/4 the size of the grafted one. But it could be location. Sun does seem to make a big difference . I had a lot of roses decline in too much shade but after cutting down a tree they are reviving. Still, I grow a number in part shade because that's the space I have.

erasmus, your roses are incredible. My SdlM was like a weed, it just kept growing and blooming and was one of the largest roses in my garden. It had all-day sun except for the very, very late afternoon, with no health issues. Like any other class they either like your garden or don't, and I never bothered growing varieties that I learned from this forum, HMF and other sources were not ideal for my location.

I know you’re all probably sick of the sight of her, but the scent this morning was incredible.

@Ingrid_vc zone 9b, San Diego Co. inland Although I really appreciate HMF, it also is really lacking for me in some ways. Not everyone puts their location of course, which is annoying. As far as I can tell from the people who do list locations, hardly anyone from my general area is growing the roses I'm searching (and I've searched a lot). Here in NE Colorado it is very cold in winter, very hot in summer, high elevation (1 mile+ high) and dry dry dry with prairie winds almost all year. Roses have to be quite tough to gain any sort of size here but HMF rarely enlightens me as to which will actually thrive HERE. I'm doing lots of guesswork. When I get a better idea of how my own roses do over a few years, I'll be updating that info along with my area to HMF.

Thank you, Ingrid.

Just some pics of a couple Bourbons

KPV

Great Western

Boule d Neige

@oursteelers 8B PNW You make Great Western seem so much prettier than the HCR photo does.

@Mischievous Magpie (CO 5b) i got mine from ARE and their picture was also not that great. I think that’s why you don’t hear about it more often. Mine is really pretty growing through an obelisk.

My hope is to keep the deer and elk away from it this year so i can really entice people i to growing this one. And I think I saw a little baby growing about a foot away so I’m interested to see what happens

I have Madame Issac Pereire and Honorine de Brabant.

Both are young, HdB even more so.

MIP has outstanding fragrance. All weather, all temperature. She repeats better than my six year old Gertrude Jekyll too!