Surely you must be making good observations and realizing what works or doesn't in your garden. You can't make decisions based on what is good for someone else's garden. That's too bad, though, that they don't like your climate. Have had very little powdery mildew here but what we had was so ugly. It does sound like you can keep some of your teas. I bet you don't have bad bs problems. ?

I am surprised you have so much powdery mildew, I thought your air would be super dry like Sacramento. Do you get mildew on your other roses besides Teas?

No black spot problems here and I’m happy about that… but yes, powdery mildew is exceedingly ugly to look at. My Madame Isaac Perierre also gets pm, but it powers through and gives me an abundance of huge fragrant blossoms in spite of it all, so I can overlook the pm a bit. But not my Tea roses.

Yes, Ben, my air is dry here. Even dryer than Sacramento by a good bit. Why the powdery mildew, I can’t say, but I certainly have a dreadful case here.

At the end of the day, a garden is your creative expression that is meant to meet your wants and needs, whatever those may be. I hope your wants and needs are met better by whatever new plants you may try. Maybe someone else will want to come adopt your roses that didn't work for you, since different sites may yield different results.

We get bad powdery mildew on lilacs here, the dryer it is, the worse the PM.

I have heard more water can make mildew go away on Tea roses in California. Every area is different for sure.

I am feeling for you, judi. DA roses will have to tide you over.

Judi I’m sorry to hear that these wonderful old roses don’t suit your climate. But thank you for posting this, because I have reluctantly come to the same conclusion. Based on my (admittedly limited) experience of them and indeed of antique roses in general, Teas really dislike my climate too!

It does seem like sacrilege to me to consider SPing the teas, especially since they are no more than three year’s old. My problem is not mildew but bad blackspot and rapid defoliation, combined with similarly shrivelling crispy wads in my hot summers. Both teas and noisettes also turn into mushy clumps in my heavy Spring rains. The chinas, noisettes and tea noisettes are not always perfect but are at least more resilient. Better still are other classes such as the bourbon Mme. de Sévigne and portland damasks like Rose de Rescht, both are very healthy and can take high heat or heavy rain in their stride.

The first two years of the teas happened to coincide with dry, drought years, so I was initially delighted with them. Now I’m back to a more typical hot, wet and humid pattern its disasterous. Who wants brown fried and/or mushy brown balls of dispair atop of naked legs? So, I think the worst offenders - Mme. Antoine Mari and Lady Hillingdon - have to go, probably Marie Nabonnand too. The noisettes and Cramoisi Superieur (mostly healthy and resilient) stay.

I was interested to hear you are holding onto Marie Ducher, Judi, because I have wanted that rose for many years. Is it less bad than the others? How does it do in summer heat and could it take heavy rain?

Well seeing as I live in the same zone, this makes me a little sad because I had some of these roses on my wish list :(. I may still try one, but thankful for reading this to help me make future choices regarding the types of roses I place in my garden. It’s hard to spend so much time watching something grow for it to fail.

Moses, you are right: all spring, until June, the nights are quite chilly, dropping into the low 50’s and sometimes the 40’s. And the days are warm and dry, so it’s just what PM likes. Sheila, I have heard the same, that watering them more can help, so I watered them extra this spring. Nope. I tried Neem Oil, and even used Immunox. Nothing would bust it this year.Between the PM and thrips, seventy five percent of my spring flush was ruined, but since the worst of those problems are past, most of the roses look so much better, even with the extreme heat.

cgurt1107, if you want to try some teas in your garden, you are more than welcome to several of my plants. I don’t know where you live, but maybe we could coordinate something? Two of my teas are still quite small yet because this is the first year in the ground. Maybe I should give them more time to prove themselves, but they are following the same pattern as my other Teas, so I don’t have much hope they will behave differently. If you’re interested, please let me know. The two that are small yet are Madame Lombard and Henrietta de Snoy. Even though we live in similar climates, they might behave very differently in your garden.

Nollie, you asked about Marie Ducher: this one seems to me to not be pure Tea. The leaves look to me to have some Bourbon in them, almost like Souvenir de la Malmaison and it hasn’t mildewed nearly to the same extent as most of my other teas. The blooms are fuller with thicker petals and don’t fry as quickly. Again, the blooms remind me of the Bourbon roses, but without fragrance, unfortunately. The petals do darken around the edges in the heat and eventually fry, but not nearly as quickly. I’m glad to keep this one in my garden at this point.

Thanks Judi, thats very helpful and informative. It is described by Ducher and HMF as having a strong fragrance, so the lack would be somewhat disappointing. I was interested it it because of the fragrance and because Ducher say it loves heat, although they can be prone to exaggeration. The origins of this rose in commerce seem obscure, given it was deemed extinct in Europe until Ducher reimported it (or something else) from NZ. The thicker petals you describe sound promising re heat and rain tolerance, so it might still be worth me trying it. Whatever ‘it‘ is!

Judy, I have always been rather heavy handed with my shovel. I have limited space and years left to grow so if it is more pain than pleasure, its out of here. Unsolvable mildew and black spot are way too frustrating when I have so many healthy roses that dont annoy me lol

Nollie, I am probably not the best one to say whether or not Marie Ducher is fragrant. I have a decently good nose for many things, but “ tea fragrance” in roses in one that hardly registers with my nose. I did pick up just a bit of a fragrance several times, but it was so slight that I would say it’s not fragrant. The nursery I got it from lists it as not fragrant, if I remember correctly.

judijunebugarizonazn8

Having a joyful happy garden is a beautiful peaceful thing... :-) So I say follow your heart and do what makes you happy!

Judy, I found your experience interesting. I have the opposite experience although my results may not be a lot different. I can't remember ever having roses that rust and while I've received roses with PM, I've never had a problem with it here. Teas grow very well for me. They are usually healthy meaning they don't get blackspot. I can't say that hybrid perpetuals are blackspot resistant or thriving in general so it's not surprising that Austins are also problematic, having HPs close up in their pedigrees. I joke that they start dying as soon as they cross the property line.

That is not to say that teas are all long-lived here. They do great during the summer. They are healthy and flourish when most of the others shut down. Unfortunately, during our season changes, where we have weeks of mild weather followed by a sudden hard freeze for a few days, I lose a lot of teas. If the onset of cold temps is reasonable or if there are a few inches of snow, most seem to be OK. We don't have many days of single digit temps here, after all. But after living here for over 30 yrs., I've found that orderly straightforward season changes aren't something you can bet on and win.

My takeaway- You can't grow what you can't grow. Pictures can't grow in gardens. It took me awhile to find that out because I wanted so much for it to be true. I can't fault you for figuring out what works for your own garden.

BTW Chinas are another story for another time.

Where are you located, Karen? This will help people incorporate your input.

Thanks, all of you, for your input. I find it very hard to SP any rose, but especially one that I’ve put several years into and had high hopes for… but I also hate looking at roses that make me feel frustrated rather than happy. I know it’s not all wasted experience. I’m just learning what works and doesn’t work here. I have been enamored with Catspa’s garden for so long- her teas are phenomenal! But my garden is not her garden and I will appreciate pictures of hers and make my own beautiful with other roses in my own style. Overall, I’m quite happy with what is happening in my gardens, especially now that I’ve decided to let go of my dreams of the Old Teas living happily in my garden.

That would be wonderful, thank you! You are so kind. I definitely am interested and would love to come talk garden with you. I have not seen these old rose varieties in person - that I know of anyways. Ive just been pining over them via pictures online. I will reach out to you :)

Hi Sheila, I'm sorry. I am z7, recently "upgraded" from 7a to 7b. I live in eastern TN. I used to have it attached to my name but after houz had me rejoin the forum awhile ago, it wasn't.

I really appreciate that location being noted, Karen. It really helps understanding of what Teas need.

I really hate when houzz causes these goof ups. It has taken some people's monikers and turned them into zombies.

Interesting thread! Weather patterns have changed SO much SO quickly here in Italy. PM used to be the main disease issue in my garden; now, the weather has become very muggy and it's plagued by bspot. I have not figured out whether it's any particular type of rose that is mostly subject to this ; I guess in general I'd say it's the "juveniles" that are the real victims (that is, recent implants),but this year is so bad I'm wondering if I'm going to have to start some preventative measures. I have WAY too many roses ,so picking up diseased leaves just isn't an option. But recently I've seen some new natural products at the garden centers; I figure it's too late this year, but next year it would be nice if I could try them on the younger plants. I hope that they will out-grow this tendency. But I am also wondering if I may have to renounce my desire to grow floribundas as a group; I fear that they might prove too picky for my garden's rough conditions.

Judi it sounds like you are making the best decision for your garden and microclimate.

If you want to try one last thing, you could do a milk water spray. I never liked Neem for PM. Milk won't burn leaves or kill beneficial insects. Our high PM pressure is in the fall and I've had good luck getting rid of it so that it took more than a couple of years to come back strong.

I'm sorry DdB isn't a winner for you, she's my easiest of the few teas I grow. MT and Delizzy are the other two that do well for me. But my version of sunny hot garden spots is nothing like Az high desert and we don't get the huge temp swings that you can. I used to live in AZ, so I remember the nights in the 30s with afternoon highs in the 80s. Nothing quite compares!

Thank you for reminding me about the milk spray, Librarian! I have used it some in my vegetable garden, often adding a bit of peroxide to the mix. It’s pretty effective on my cakes and melons, so maybe it would work on my roses too! I think I tried it once a few years back… not sure why I didn’t continue.

Cakes and melons? Ok, that was supposed to say cukes and melons. :)

Lets stick with cake, yummy

I think realizing what does great in your garden and getting rid of those that don’t is a very smart idea. My parents have struggled for years trying to grow Austin’s with little success. Last year I took my mom to a garden center and we bought some Mrs. B.R Can’t and planted them in the middle of August. Today this is the result.

random Austins (we have bought too many to count and they arent labeled). They are in zone 10b but they never have cool nights and PM isnt a problem.

Random austins 3 or 4 years old, no spray

Mrs. B. R Cant (planted summer 2023 on fort)so we are removing Austins and planting teas.