I think you are a lovely daughter and your selections sound beautiful for your Mom.

If you could help her plant them, that would be great but your advice sounds right to me. Many overcomplicate their advice and that can be a turnoff to the inexperienced with roses.

She can amend if she wants but there's people here growing in high clay content. My own yard is fairly high clay.

I am occasionally intimidated by the hybrid tea roses that came with the house (we moved in July 2021). They're older than I am, and from my paranoia regarding them you would think I'd never had a plant before in my life. I have worked in their flowerbed a lot recently and have mostly calmed down about them.

Thank you! @intwilight z6a KS this is super helpful cause I'm always like "people think roses are fussy cause they grow hybrid teas; I grow old brambles and they're easy peasy" but I forget the part about how I live two blocks from the Mississippi river so my dirt looks like store-bought potting mix. @Sheila z8a Rogue Valley OR I am SO HAPPY to see you still here. :)

I grow all of the roses you mentioned except Clothilde Soupert. They are all bullet proof (I never spray them, I never prune them unless they block a path or the driveway, and I only feed them once a year) in my garden, but our climate is a lot dryer than where your mother lives. So, I don't know about fungal diseases - in my garden Duchesse de Brabant gets a little powdery mildew in the Spring, but I ignore it and it goes away. One comment about MAC - here I let it do what it wants, and it is (both of mine) a very very tall climber. Climbs up and over the top of a garage, over a fence, and 20 ft up the neighbor's pine tree. The other one grows up an old "volunteer" plum tree to the top (about 25 ft up), and then jumps over to the tops of several other trees to see what they are like.

They all like full sun, of course. If I were you, I would definitely help your mother site and plant them - that will get her started. Tell her the truth - warm weather loving old old roses are MUCH easier to grow, and healthier, than most HTs. You made great choices!

Jackie

You say she is overwhelmed and intimidated: boost her self-confidence by having her study some of straw’s soil chemistry dissertations.

The proverb ”Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day, …” inspired my suggestion, but Sheila is the doctor.

Daughter, mom, and yards all sound lovely. If the clay is crumbly it has a lot of stuff in it besides clay: MY clay soil takes fingerprints. So, if the soil is workable, as it sounds like it is, and fertile, which it sounds like it is, I'd just plant the roses, mulch them, and sit back and wait for the glory. I don't know about diseases in humid climates, either. I agree with Jackie about the hugeness of 'Mme. Alfred Carrière', but have reservations about her claim that roses like full sun, though I have difficulty imagining full sun is even a possibility in the yard you describe. Most of my roses appreciate some shade, especially in the afternoon, but then we have blazing dry summers and much of my garden is in a big open field, the roses exposed to all the elements. They don't like that. A bit of shade is friendly and good.

My best wishes to your mom, and to you! Your yards sound wonderful.

@rifis (zone 6b-7a NJ) @Sheila z8a Rogue Valley OR Oh she has to listen to me talk about dirt all the time, I'll summarize for her. The only reason she doesn't have an elaborate breakdown of her soil composition (from LSU Ag Center) is because I can never remember to get the samples when I'm out there. Although it occurs to me that we've been here ten years now, so it's time to do mine again too, yay!

@Melissa Northern Italy zone 8 that is great to hear because I've seen your roses! It's a huge yard so there actually are plenty of stretches of full sun, but I've never grown any that way, mine have always had too much shade and done just fine. They get blackspot but that's pretty much inevitable and I just ignore it. It's humid here but we do get long stretches of just HOT hot hot and it hasn't rained in weeks; usually once things are in the ground they can reach down and find the moisture (as in, I really only have to water pots even now), but I'm curious if that will happen in full sun (especially for baby/toddler roses)

@jacqueline9CA That's why I picked those; I leave them pretty much alone and they are nigh unstoppable. The Duchesse is my superstar, not nearly enough sun and way too close to a fence (covered in my sworn enemy Asiatic jasmine) but she never ever stops blooming. And Mom has MAC for the exact reason I don't: so much space! Plus trellises and fences and other random structures all over the place for MAC to eat. I am growing it vicariously through her.

Thanks so much, this is all great stuff!

Y'know what? I think you need to meet Maureen Detweiler. NO ONE knows more about Old Roses in Southern Louisiana than she does. Message me, and I'll see about putting you in touch.

@jerijen this thread is full of superstars! Thank y'all so much. I was thinking I might be stumbling into a forum full of strangers, so it's really nice to see you all.

I'm scared because there's no way the OGR queen of Louisiana is as lazy a gardener as I am, but always happy to hear from people who know what they're talking about, hence bringing my question here. And lord knows the whole neighborhood (including my husband and anyone who's ever sat next to me at a bar) has had quite enough rose talk for their lifetimes. Thank you for the offer, I'll be in touch!

Happy Friday everybody!

Jeri's suggestion is perfect! LOCAL KNOWLEDGE is always the best, by a mile. Local knowledge of a person who knows about old roses in your area is the best - you don't need any other.

Jackie

I don't understand how your mom's soil is hard and crumbly at the same time. Sounds to me like lots of things grow in it. From what I've seen roses like some clay in the soil. You've been growing roses for awhile in the south so I don't see that it's lack of expertise. Seems like you should be confident these plants will make it and your mom may catch the confidence. Anyway once they do well she will. Why wouldn't they do well? You picked some good ones.

@erasmus_gw Houzz ate my last comment, but this is what i mean by hard and crumbly. This glorious monstosity is what happens when we go a few weeks without rain at what i assume is a critical elevation point? I meant to bother the soil people sbout that actually. Point is, the full-sun spaces we’re looking to fill have been lawn and wildfowers for my lifeime and maybe even hers, so its just compacted pretty far down. The azaleas et al have been around long enough to tap into the good stuff underneath, most things are 30+ years old, its a beautiful time capsule and a truly joyous place to be. Hopefully these roses, all of which are superstars for me even though theyre crowded in poor sunlight, will be part of that!

Some non-faultline photos for context/balance

Marvelous!

My soil is heavy clay with a little loam in most places on top, and the roses did great till they got a disease from a rose I planted at a later date. I know what you're talking about with fault lines when it's dry. I have to stab the ground to plant anything in a drought, and of course when it's wet walking on it you end up with inches of dirt on your soles!

What Melissa said - particularly that picture of the huge old tree & what surrounds it. I immediately wanted to walk into your pic and sit on that swing.

Jackie

Yes, that's a pretty yard. I think your guess is right...that if the soil is hard, mix in some peat or manure. Mulch well. If you think the soil is deficient get a soil test. I don't usually add anything to a planting hole except sometimes some compost, and I have in the past added truckloads of compost to my soil. But to me it's not fun to endlessly analyze what chemicals each different rose needs...it's just not fun to me and keeping it simple is the approach that makes it enjoyable to me. If your mom stresses out about how finicky she thinks roses are I'd just encourage her to give these gifts a try and do it her way.

Hearing about tough and enduring roses is what got me in to roses, especially old roses, and it never would have happened if I thought they were demanding and unlikely to make it.

@jacqueline9CA half of my childhood took place in that tree! the funniest part is that photo was taken from around where she’ll be putting CS and DdB, on what we call, without irony, ”the hill.” It’s like 8 feet of elevated backfill from a canal but its probably the highest point in town 🙃

Yes, that looks like a great tree for climbing. We had a huge old oak tree in our front yard when I was 11, and my brother (who was 10) and I spent hours and hours up there. Ours did not have that wonderful horizontal branch yours does, but the branches were as big. I use to read books up there for long times, being comfortably "deaf" if I was being called into the house for something.

Jackie

@jacqueline9CA are you me? Even down to the little-but-not-by-much brother. That one branch that grazes "the hill" has always been low enough to jump onto, and there's a perfect spot where you can sit with your book on a branch in front of you like you're at a school desk (or operate the control panel for a spacecraft, depending).

My mom is having a ball reading these, thank you all very much and I will provide followup photos in due time!

Would love to see pictures after you and/or your Mom plant the new roses.

Jackie

2 things. 1) How to make a hole for the rose -- dept/width etc2) plant each rose for a friend or family member that is living or passed away.