Thank you! I made the markers myself from slate plant markers on Amazon and got labels made on Etsy. The first batch was made in 2020. They have held up really well. No stickers have peeled.

Gives me something colorful to look at in the winter when the garden is all dead.

I am really impressed with your roses. Robusta and Winnipeg Parks are so vigorous and have stunning reds!

Candy Land is looking good this year. Tough one to get a good photo of. Have to figure out what mode I used on my camera for this.

Candy Land is getting a little is crowded by Winnipeg Parks on the left. I'll trim one of them back after these blooms exhaust. This is her south side.

This is the east side of Candy Land. Love her pink striped blooms.

And the north side.

Mmmm how are your Fred Loads and Calico Gal?

My Calico Gal broke out of the gate with powdery mildew this Spring. Came as quite a surprise.

Fred Loads is just starting to bloom but will be spectacular. It did not die back over the winter so is very tall, 6'8", and loaded with blooms. It is partially held up by the fence surround and partially clipped to the trellis. I've done a much better job training it this year by grabbing the canes and bending them inward. As a result no stray octopus arms to cut off.

Calico Gal is healthy but only has about 14 blooms. We did something new this year. We put on regular miracle grow mid May when we got a newsletter from the Denver Rose society saying the 1st round of fertilizer was due. Subsequently I learned the regular miracle grow had more nitrogen then recommended for promoting alot of blooms so maybe that is affecting it.

I'll post pictures again when they are in full bloom.

Neil Diamond is a pleasant surprise at 5'3" tall. I was going to pull it but it is tall enough that the top flowers are right under my nose without bending over. It did not die back during our mild winter. It is just starting to bloom. I'll post a better pic when it is in full bloom.

Amiga Mia is going to be spectacular and is 6'3" tall.

Love Song is loaded with buds for the first time ever so I don't know why Calico Gal is being stingy this year and can only think it was the timing of applying Miracle Grow regular strength prior to the spring flush.

mmmm - thanks for showcasing your Candy Land rose bush. Those blooms are entrancing!! What a beauty!!! Looks super healthy with a gazillion blooms!! Amazing!! I'm in love with your Candy Land. Amiga Mia is another eye-catching beauty!! And your Neil Diamond looks amazing too. You really are doing a fabulous job with your roses!!!!!!!

Thank you rosecanadian. I started the rose bed with trepidation, not thinking that it would do well but deciding to give it a go. However, it has been a very rewarding experience. I especially like all the different bloom forms I have experienced that I did not know existed. Whenever I have visitors they always comment on types of roses they had never seen before.

For other reasons we are taking out the low growing juniper adjacent to the bed and almost all the bushes that ring the bed. Don't yet know if we will add more roses or do something else with the newly cleared space. Am considering trying again to find roses that will become monsters here that aren't too thorny.

More roses!!! lol :) :)

Definitely a consideration. If so I will hopefully finally get my yellow rose. The one color I've been lacking.

Smoothie, which was new to us last year, has been a real star this spring. We added some Avalanche White Sun Daisies on either side to accent it. I'm very interested to see how big it will get.

We've done a reset of our courtyard so there are alot of young plants that should look gorgeous as they mature. We tried to pick things that will come back year after year. But one never knows until the next year how hardy they are.

The two other roses I added last year, Belinda's Blush and Renny aren't showing up yet in this wider picture. Belinda's Blush doesn't even have any buds while most every thing else is in bloom. Renny at least has buds with color on them.

The rose bed, is like a dream this year. After the sun gets higher I'll go out and get some better pictures of the wider bed. Here is one I took this morning that is still in partial shade. I just love walking between the very high bushes.

Your roses are inspirational! Thanks for the joy of seeing them. It does my heart good!

Moses.

Thanks Moses! I'm really enjoying them also. Most aren't at peak yet but we could get hail any day so I want to take what pics I can while they are coming into their full glory.

Wider view of rose bed June 2, 2025.

South side of bed.

Sally Holmes with more color than usual due to the cooler weather.

6 yr old Lady in Red and 1 yr old Victorian Memory.

Fred Loads, up and coming. Winnipeg Parks ready to be dead headed.

Another view of south side of bed.

I love it when they are blooming right around their sign. :-)

I always love your Fred Loads!

Mmmm - everything looks wonderful!! You've done a great job in creating your rose haven. Is the rose behind your Living Easy, Easy on the Eyes? It's gorgeous!!! My favorite is your Sally Holmes. Walking amongst your roses would be a treat!

Thanks Susan, Fred Loads is a favorite of mine also. I'll also post a picture when he is in his full glory.

Rosecanadian,

Yes it is Easy on the Eyes. Usually they go to a fairly bright white right away but we've had cool wet weather so are getting to enjoy all the pinks and purples for longer time.

Sally Holmes was posing with it's sign yesterday so I got this picture.

It is so fun when everything is starting to come in.

I love your roses and rocks, mmmm. They look wonderful.

mmmm - I hope my new (last year) Easy on the Eyes looks as good as yours does!! Mine has buds, but they haven't opened yet. Yours is GORGEOUS!!! What do you think about the fragrance? What's the tall pink rose close to the house? That's a beauty!!

Your rose bed with so many varieties, and set off by the rocks and pine tree backdrop is awesome mmmm!

Rosecanadian,

The tall pink rose close to the house is Amiga Mia. She is one of my favorites and I love the scent. She is 6'3" this year.

A close up showing all the flower stages.

I don't know if Easy on the Eyes has a scent. It is too low for me to smell. It is a favorite of recent visitors who were admiring all the different colors on the bush. Usually when it is hot and sunny it goes white within the same day as opening. But this year has been rainy and overcast so it has stayed pink and purple.

For my yellow rose I'm strongly considering Fiesta Veranda. Does anyone have any full bush pictures and does it attract Japanese Beetles?

mmmm - oh, yes, that one!!! What a superlative rose bush!!! The middle picture is amazing...would make a great framed picture. About Easy on the Eyes...one flower of mine bloomed today, and the fragrance was intense!!! I was floored!! We don't have very hot summers and mine is in part shade, so the colors will probably stay darker. There are so many buds on mine!!! Happy, Happy!!

rosecanadian,

Please post pics of your Easy on the Eyes when it is in bloom. Some years mine was a solid wall of color and it sounds like with all your buds yours might be that way also this year.

Finally some sun! Fred Loads looks best in the sun.

Two pics since I couldn't decide which one I liked better.

Probably not at peak yet but still stunning.

Sally Holmes is looking fantastic this year. To think, last year I wanted to remove it. It usually dies back every year so has become a frustrating rose. However, this year we had such a mild winter and it did not die back. I can see why people in milder areas of the country love it. So stunning when it has some growth on it!

Most in this view are just starting to come in but I liked the picture.

mmmm - yes, I'll post a pic of Easy on the Eyes here soon.

Your roses are dreamy. You've really done a marvelous job with growing your roses. Happy sigh. :) :) Your Fred Loads is like a burning bush, aflame with orange. Love it!!! Your Sally Holmes looks on the other side of the spectrum...angelic and peaceful. Another amazing rose!!! Your posts are wonderful.

It's amazing how well your garden has grown over the years through your research and experimentation. I'm definite voting for more roses in your new space. Maybe some larger ones?

Thanks Vaporvac,

The only reason I don't have bigger ones is that generally things don't seem to grow bigger here. They mostly die back. This year is an exception and I don't want to be fooled into thinking I'm going to get this lushness every year.

I added Victorian Memory last year and that is a Canadian. Hopefully it will gain some size. Winnipeg Parks has certainly done well for me. I just don't want to add any more roses that will completely die back every year.

The only reason Sally Holmes, Neil Diamond and Dainty Bess are still with us is that my husband doesn't want to dig out living roses. Too much work. He did agree to take out Above All last year in order to make room for Victorian Memory. With this new space SH, ND and DB can stay while I experiment with roses with more desirable characteristics for me.

On the other end of the size spectrum, my minis and polyanthas do not attract Japanese Beetles so I may just go with all minis and polyanthas so I can enjoy the flowers through the summer. The JP have gotten so bad that we just ignore the roses during the summer and revisit them in the fall after the JP have gone.

What about the older Canadian explorers? i''m sure whatever you decide will work out! I will say I wish you luck with VM. I know Sheila's is beautiful, but I fear mine is caput!!! I never really flourished being a martyr to BS and grew backward with a lot of surprising winter die-back. I'm going to dig it up and pot it to see if she'lll recover. Malvern Hill will go in her spot. It's always musical roses around here, but it's worth it to see them thrive.

My VM also blackspots here, Vapor. I think it was healthier in z3 Alaska for me.

mmmm - rotten JBs. What a shame. If you do get some rosebuds that start to open, you could try cutting them and bringing them inside. But you probably do that. :)

Rosecanadian, That is exactly what I do! Go out in the morning and cut roses that are just opening up.

Sheila and Vaporvac, Interesting that Victorian Memory does poorly in both your locations. It just goes to show you that what does well one place doesn't do well another. It is on the list of Matt of High Country Roses as a family favorite so hopefully it will do well here.

Here is a picture this morning as the sun is just coming up.

It has lots of flowers. The nodding flower form isn't my favorite but one of the things I like best about my rose garden is all the very different flower forms. I should probably do a post with close ups of all the different flowers to show the variety.

The petals of the spent roses have not been falling cleanly. They turn brown and hang on until dead headed. I think it is my only rose that gets the ugly brown roses. Usually I try and pick roses where I can see what the aged flowers look like and avoid ones that don't fall cleanly. However we have had a very wet couple of weeks so maybe in drier weather it won't do that. The canes are very flexible and low thorns so easily trained.

It is very bushy around the base so getting rather crowded down there. Not sure if we should be trimming some off to encourage more upward growth. Probably in these early stages we will just leave it to see what develops naturally.

Your VM looks great, mmmm. I'll try to get a photo of mine. I would let it grow naturally so you see what it can do.

mmmm - Good, at least that way you still get to enjoy the blooms. :) :) Your Victorian Memory is doing well. I have no idea how to properly grow a climber. I hope it does really well for you. What's the red rose on the left?

Rosecanadian,

That luscious red rose is Lady in Red.

Her blooms are fantastic. She is advertised as a zone 4 climber but she dies back every year in my yard and refuses to grow beyond a small bush. But she is also not attractive to Japanese Beetles and handles 100+ degree heat days well so is my only large rose that has big beautiful non-eaten blooms in August.

Calico Gal at peak. A little more color than usual due to cooler wet weather. But the usual ginormous flouncy blooms.

Every year I like to take this overhead view of the rose bed. There are 18 roses in this bed.

I think Neil Diamond is at peak.

Alot of the blooms are on the back side.

Some other views of the rose bed.

It stays really small for me which is perfect for the spot it is in. Planted 7/18 so 7 yrs old.

What is the pink one in the bottom photo, mmmm?

Hi Sheila,

That is Love Song with the beautiful lilac blooms. When the buds on top bloom I'll try and get a 'peak' picture.

Wow, mmmm! Thank you.

mmmm - do you end up singing Chris deBurgh's song, "Lady in Red" whenever you pass your red rose? :) :) Now that is a RED flowered rose!! Divine!! Yes, I thought she's a climber, and thought maybe she was new to you, being so small. My goodness, she has some fine attributes...great rose! I adore your roses!!!! I have a Neil Diamond (new last year) and it's really put on a lot of growth...I would SWOON and pass out if mine ends up looking anything as good as yours!!!! Incredible!!

Sheila - yeah, I agree! Her Love Song is WOW!!

Today's the day that the tree service comes to remove the bushes around the rose bed. I'll post pics of the new space when it is done.

Rosecanadian, I've been working on changing the tape in my head when I see Lady in Red. I always grumble to myself that it isn't a climber like it is supposed to be. When I have my next climber I will probably take the trellis from Lady in Red since she doesn't use it. However, it is a beautiful rose in it's own right with the unique (to me) positive that it doesn't attract Japanese Beetles like my other big roses. Also it handles the hot weather better than anything else I have. I was suckered in by the video shown of Lady in Red growing in the (sellers) garden as a big beautiful climber. And since it said zone 4 I was more enamored. In reality it is a small bush in zone 5 and dies back every year (including this very mild winter we just had).

Lady in Red planted 4/19 vs Victorian Memory planted 5/24. Victorian Memory has buds at least a ft taller than Lady in Red. I do like the flower form on Lady in Red better. It is simply gorgeous and ages very gracefully.

I must say, that went really well. The company left it like this which is what we expected. My husband will have to clean off the rocks to clean it up. But we couldn't be happier with the job they did.

Before picture for reference. We had the big low growing juniper in the foreground taken out, along with most of the bushes backing the roses. I had them leave a black chokeberry bush and some raspberries.

There are rocks under the 30 yrs of debris but we have removed these types of bushes before and find it isn't too hard to recover the rock look after using a leaf vac to get the debris up.

oLLooks good. Why did you remove them?

Sometimes things need to change. Now we get the fun of deciding what, if anything, to do with them. That is, after my husband gets the rocks all cleaned up. We've done this before. The rose bed was originally all bushes like those we removed and we have also taken out just as large of a juniper in the front and cleaned up the rock so you would never know it had been there before. We may not plant anything until next year.

New overhead picture.

mmmm - Perspective is everything, right? If I looked at my roses and compared them to everyone's on this forum, I wouldn't be happy. I don't do that. I just enjoy them. To me, your Lady in Red has sumptuous blooms and is a phenomenal bloomer!!! What a rose!! And it's healthy and doesn't attract JBs. I wonder why not? So interesting. I'm glad you're changing the tape in your head. :) :) Looks like you've created lots more room for roses!!! YAY!!

Rosecanadian,

Everything you say is absolutely true. As a small bush Lady in Red is a stunner. The problem is when they market it as a zone 4 climber and I put it in a place I wanted a good sized climber and then it fails to perform. So it isn't so much comparing it with someone else's but more it not meeting expectations. I kept thinking, maybe it is getting established and next year it will really go. But then this year when almost nothing died back except Lady in Red (planted 4/19) I had to give up hope. I also planted Fourth of July 4/19 and it is small also. Actually, looking at my list of roses, all my climbers are not large. So it may be that the need alot more time or they simply won't climb here.

Candy Land on right is also supposed to be a climber.

Fourth of July supposed to be a climber.

We put 4 roses in last year so I wanted to give an update on how the newbies are doing.

Our rock star of the group is Smoothie! This rose is very ornamental, always in bloom, has grown nicely and is very low thorn.

Victorian Memory has good growth, lots of blooms, but blooms are kinda raggedy looking. May grow on me as it gets bigger.

Renny is a super cute miniature which really hasn't grown much yet.

Belinda's Blush hasn't bloomed yet and hasn't grown much. I'm not holding out much hope that this rose is going to be a stunner. So far it is an under performer.

Dick Koster is at peak.

I love the cupped bloom shape.

Pretty Lady Rose looks to be at peak. Her blooms are huge and I love the fragrance.

Livin Easy is at peak.

Fred Loads is at peak.

Dainty Bess is likely at peak.

Love Song might be. Sort of hard to tell if the top blooms will all open at once. But this one shows the lavender color better.

I thought this was a nice picture.

Mmmm- maybe you need to try a zone 3 or zone 4 climber? Living Easy glows in your garden as does Fred Loads. I really love your Easy on the Eyes!! Pretty Lady is a really good rose for you. :) :) Beautiful!