This is all very interesting along with heartbreaking, Melissa. Climate change is causing havoc.

Your observations sound familiar, Melissa.

With a similar climate where Mediterranean plant species generally thrive, and soil that is a gravelly clay, we had a similar experience two years ago when we had an extremely wet winter, getting over 150% of our normal average rainfall during the course of it. The ground was totally saturated most of the winter and well into spring; it took nearly a month after the rains stopped for water to stop draining in a constant stream off the little hill at the back of our lot. This was highly unusual.

The plants that suffered most from this were the drought-adapted species (the roses, with one exception, seemed to love it). I lost California natives like Ceanothus 'Ray Hartman' and Holodiscus discolor, especially in the saturated area that suffered prolonged drainage from the hill, and, everywhere around the garden, those tough, shrubby little Teucriums, Oreganos, Saturejas, thymes, etc. that normally seem able to survive nearly anything, died, all obviously because they had stayed too wet for too long. Even nearly lost my little tea, "Oneto Home Saffron", which was in that drainage area. It had dieback and looked terrible last year but looks to be recovering this year, after two winters of more normal rainfall.

I think the surfeit of soil moisture that year was just more than some of these plant species were equipped/adapted to deal with and that this will be the future with the extremes that climate change will bring.

Sheila, I'd like to hear more about your personal experience with climate change, if any; I get the impression that prolonged heavy rain is not often a problem in your area. Historically our area has gotten good average annual rainfall, with most of it falling in the cool months.

Bart, a question that occurs to me is whether you have many of these dry-summer-loving Mediterranean plants in your garden: I don't remember you talking much about them in your posts. I'm inclined to disagree with your diagnosis. The year 2017 was dreadful here, with a drought that began in fall 2016 and continued until fall 2017. Our entire province ran out of water, which had to be trucked in: the only time this has happened since we bought our property in 2000. It was also extremely hot, and for a longer period than usual. In spite of this, the dry-climate subshrubs I talk about in my first post never suffered, neither in 2017 nor in the following years, until 2024 when the phlomis showed dieback after heavy prolonged rains. If the drought of 2016-2017 had done serious damage, I think it would have appeared before then. Rather surprisingly, in fact, as far as I can remember all the garden came through that bad year quite well: I don't recall any losses. By the way, I don't know whether I've mentioned it on the forum, but this spring we had major landslides here as well: the provincial highway we take to town is closed for the foreseeable future--fortunately we have a back road that works as an alternative--and the valley road that runs past the reservoir, also an important local through road, was blocked as well. My friend lives on the other side of that slide, and she didn't have a reasonable alternative route. Fortunately they've managed to open one lane.

Catspa, yes, it does sound familiar, doesn't it? Thanks for your post: I want to answer at some length, but it will have to be later.

I appreciate everybody's responses, by the way. Anyone who has thoughts, I'd like to hear them.

(Later.)

I'm back from a pleasant excursion with DH to celebrate Father's Day. He's a good dad, and he deserves a treat now and then in our quiet lives. We both enjoyed ourselves.

So, water. I've seen water welling out of the ground, too, just like Catspa, after heavy rain. In the big garden the land uphill of the garden is meadow that gets cut for hay, and I don't think the roots of the meadow plants--grasses, alfalfa, weeds--go deep enough to absorb all the water that falls on and feeds into the ground. I also don't think the roots go deep enough to hold the ground and prevent slides and slumps. This is one reason I've diligently planted trees and shrubs all along the uphill border of the garden: to absorb rain and anchor the ground. I tend to think it's working: since we got well started, we haven't had a slide or slump, while our neighbors have.

I don't think it's only too much rain, but rather, too much rain extending into the period when the plants are coming out of their winter sleep. They seem capable of tolerating a lot of wet during the winter, but not if it extends well into the spring. We don't have a lot of the small dry-summer Mediterranean plants Catspa has, thyme and oregano for example, as they get run over by the spring-summer meadow grasses that fill our garden. The phlomis and shrub germander tolerate, or tolerated, our heavy soil very well; the rosemary less so. I think a good deal about drainage, and give thanks that our ground is all sloping, much of it steep, as that helps. When I planted a ceanothus last fall, I put it in a spot where years ago we dumped dirt over a rock pile, thinking the drainage would be good there. Our handful of Teas are all growing in much-amended soil, most of it over masonry debris. They love that, but they can't handle the soil in the big garden, which I've never been able to amend to a point that warm climate roses were happy with. I think it can be done, but it requires focus, and a lot of sand and organic matter for amendment.

Climate change may well exceed my capacity to adapt my garden to keep up with it, but I do the best I can. I think trees (the garden is growing on originally treeless land, so we've had to plant them) and shrubs are important, for the reasons I've mentioned; and to cool the air, supply organic debris, discourage the growth of weeds and brush. I grow plants that are adapted to our conditions, some of them native. They do pretty well. I'll keep the garden going as long as I can.

My sense here, Melissa, is that the heat has gotten more intense over time. This has increased fire risk and cooked plants that are not irrigated. We do have oaks and neomexicana forestiera shrubs carrying on here without irrigation. Our California lilac does well without water. Wildflowers abound too. All in all I would describe our property as having a very hot Mediterranean climate. Our rainfall averages 18.5 inches a year and we are at about 1,500 feet of elevation.

Too much rain has not really been a problem here. We have decomposed granite and some clay soil here, but not to the extent you do on the clay.

“We had a wet--very wet--winter and first half of spring, followed abruptly by dry hot conditions”..

Melissa, that mirrors my experience almost exactly.

Clay soil here too, but because it is very shallow atop of rock, practically everything in my garden is planted in raised beds with a tonne of gravel and organic matter mixed in to provide sufficient soil depth and drainage. The huge volume of rain we experienced early season therefore didn’t present a problem for drought tolerant shrubs such as shrubby germander and rosemary, nor for perennials like echinacea that hate wet feet.

The problems began with the far earlier and very sudden onset of extremely hot and dry weather, including desiccating hot winds. This rapid (virtually overnight) change meant all that lush new growth had not had time to harden off nor acclimatise to gradually increasing temperatures because there was nothing gradual about it!

I had a lot of wilting plants with burnt foliage and it was a mammoth struggle to get them rehydrated.

The roses got off to a great start because the rain really penetrated the ground for once and the deep roots lapped it all up. However, many in south-facing beds subsequently suffered from severe cane scorch and early flowering laterals crisped. A few soft, new basals that had enthusiastically shot up just withered and died. I still managed a reasonable first flush, but it was not as good as last year and repeat blooming has been poorer and far more sporadic than usual.

When I first arrived in Italy back in 1983, the climate was TOTALLY different. It was normal for it to rain and rain and rain in the autumn-a month of rain just about every day wasn't strange. Precipatatation in winter was abundant, too; there was real snow-inches of it-once even in Florence, where I lived before we moved here to the country. You could rely on there being regular rain in the spring, too-even in June. June used to be a downright PLEASANT month here . I remember back then how my roses only really started blooming in June-only really May Queen began earlier, very appropriately, in May. I remember doing a painting of my garden in flower, but having to stand still in order to work got to be actually CHILLY, and I had to hop about to warm myself up! And this was JUNE. Only in July did it really start to be hot. Back then, 30 degrees Celsius counted as VERY hot (that's 86 F),and only in the month of July was it normal to have no rain at all here in Tuscany. In the evening you often needed a light sweater. By August 15th, you could rely on the rains returning faithfully,bringing summer to a gentle end.

Since around the year 2000, things have become uglier and uglier. It can get hot at almost any time of year, it seems; I count myself as blessed if we get a spring. And as Nollie mentions, the extreme heat and drought hits so suddenly, and way too early in the year. Luckily, this year it only started about the 25th of May,though to me it seems like it's beeen going on much longer. There are no real "heat waves" at all-it just goes up to 33 or more Celsius and stays there or goes up; 36, 37,or more degrees Celsius...even up in the hills here. No change whatever is foreseen. It's probable that we will be stuck with this same monotonous, tedious weather until the first half of September at least. What's more, the quality of the heat is completely different; now, instead of the dry heat of old, it's that muggy, humid stuff , and it remains hot at night, too.

This is a very unhealthy situation, for both people and plants. In August of 2023 and then again in August 2024, I got very sick, when suddenly the temperatures "dipped down " to what used to be considered as "normal"! my body percieved the pleasant temperatures as being cold, "catching a chill", etc! Many of my newly implanted roses got sick, too-that "creeping black finger of death" that I've mentioned before in other threads.

This is not what the Meditteranean climate should be.

I’ve seen similar changes bart, since 2005 in my case. A notable increase in intensity and frequency of extreme heat events, drought, flooding etc., commenced in June 2019 and has steadily crept ever upwards here in Northeastern Spain. Winter temperatures can still be low where I am, up in the mountains, in fact we recorded our coldest overnight temperature this year of minus 8.7c. The pattern overall, however, is for shorter, milder winters with heavy morning frost becoming rarer. The last time we had snow on the ground was February 2018.

The climate here is not Mediterranean, we are too far inland for that and are actually classed as ’subtropical humid’. The regular thunderstorms and heavy summer downpours associated with that classification however, are no longer reliable. Some years it’s very hot and dry. Less rose black spot, but more crisping and a reliance on very alkaline well water for irrigation presents different problems.

I appreciate its worse in the South and worse still in Eastern Europe of late, but the personal and environmental impacts have nevertheless been uncomfortable to say the least. I find myself spending far too much of Summer, even late Spring, indoors with the windows and shutters closed to keep out the heat. Closeted inside in the dark for much of the day was not the life I originally envisaged either. Nor did I expect to be chained to crack of dawn or late evening watering. I now feel I have created a rod for my own back with my garden, which reduces the pleasure of it considerably.

According to the WMO (World Meteorological Organisation) Europe is warming faster than any other continent. That does not, of course, diminish the climate problems and extreme weather events worldwide..

https://library.wmo.int/viewer/69475/download?file=ESOTC_2024_full_report_en.pdf&type=pdf&navigator=1

Nollie, that is TOTALLY how it is for me, too, except we don't get down that low in winter; any more, even 0 celsius is considered "cold". Here in our small town, we're only at 257 meters above sea level, but out at my land,it's more like 600 msl. It's dificult to generalize about the differences in temperature between the two places, however, because of the fact that down in this valley there's a lot less sun in (winter especially) than there is up there.

"I find myself spending far too much of Summer, even late Spring, indoors with the windows and shutters closed to keep out the heat. Closeted inside in the dark for much of the day was not the life I originally envisaged either. Nor did I expect to be chained to crack of dawn or late evening watering. I now feel I have created a rod for my own back with my garden, which reduces the pleasure of it considerably." . Same for me; it's just that since my land is a good 20 minutes away from my home, I don't go out there in the mornings; it's already too hot to work by 10AM. I'd have to get up at something like 4AM to make it worthwhile to bother going out there, and I'm NOT doing that-when would I ever see my husband and my son? they don't live traditional-farmer-type-lives! Perhaps most of all, I feel very strongly that in this sort of climate it is much, MUCH better to water in the evening, so the plants have all night to soak up the water. In the morning, I'd be afraid that I'd lose at least half of the water to evaporation.

I agree it’s better to water in the evenings bart and I try to, but I’m an early morning person. By the time the heat recedes sufficiently in the evening there is just too much of it to do. We are at around 350m in the pre foothills of the Pyrenees - hence the colder winter temps.

Glad to read all this talk. When DD came back from a long weekend on the Adriatic, the temperature in Modena was 42C. In June. People have difficulty living in those temperatures; some die.

We're at 450m here on a south-facing slope; possibly thanks to years of planting vines for pergolas, shrubs, and trees around us, the house at the moment is comfortable. It will warm up as rainless hot weather continues, though, experience tells me, and probably eventually turn into the oven turned on low that it becomes every summer.

I haven't experienced the grief that bart feels at how the Italian climate has changed, as I arrived later than she did, in 2000, and didn't enjoy those years of enjoyable climate that she talks of. I know the climate has changed, and certainly not for the better (though I'm not entirely hostile to sunnier winters). Mitigate, mitigate, mitigate, is all I can suggest. Plant. I see no reason to think national governments all over the world will finally take seriously cutting emissions, and do believe that we face disaster--but look how calmly I talk about it. I simply can't imagine it, and I think many and perhaps most people are the same. We could stop catastrophic climate change, but we won't. It's somewhat comforting, if perhaps deceptively so, that many governments below the national level are taking steps to mitigate the effects of climate change, by planting trees, designing 'sponge cities', and so on. Mayors can see in an immediate way what heat waves and floods are doing to the cities they lead.

I've talked about my climate change problems ad nauseam, and they became suddenly very noticeable in 2019-20 when continued drought did not furnish enough food for the ground squirrels and rabbits and they ate all my roses during that time. I live on a hot hillside at 1700+ feet with large granite boulders so it was a sun and heat trap which made things worse. When I first moved here there were freezing temperatures and copious rainfall in the winter, late fall and early spring and that also has changed completely. Now it hasn't even been down to 45F on the coldest nights, and drought will be an ever-increasing menace with the constant fear of wildfires. Of course that danger is now practically world-wide. My heart breaks for the animals condemned to suffer everywhere because we humans were/are too stupid and too greedy to do what is in everyone's best interest. As conditions become ever more dire I have some hope that younger generations will do what we did not. That is probably our only hope.

Ingrid, you're in the place I dread to arrive at. I say, mitigate: plant trees and shrubs; enrich the ground with organic matter; encourage water to stay rather than run off (not stay at the roots of the phlomis and germander, obviously). The thought I try to keep firmly tethered to the back of my mind so that it can't escape is, what if climate change where I am becomes so severe that these measures no longer function? What if plants die all the same? What if a forest fire arrives, destroying in a day what has taken decades to create? There's not much I can do about all of this if it comes, which is why I try not to think about it.

I've tried very hard to live in the present, which is all we ever have anyway, so that fear doesn't take over. Over the years I've seen you make such huge efforts to improve your conditions, Melissa, and that is much more than most of us have done.

Thanks, Ingrid. Those are wise words on your part.

On a cheery note, considering that we're in the middle of a heat wave, this morning I got up at 5:30 and by six was down in the Serbian Bed cutting and pulling grass and weeds. I held out until nine, then came back, showered, and had breakfast. Temperatures are forecast to climb today up into the high nineties, and the un-air-conditioned house, exposed to the sun, is tepid. I can't get enough water in me.

Oh, yes, I did say cheery, didn't I? The roses look great. By now most of the poorly adapted ones are gone, while the remaining old roses, mainly once-bloomers, are full of vigorous new growth, started during the wet spring and now ripening. They are a joy to see. Even 'Sidonie', which just sat and aged for the three dry years, once it started to rain last year put out a couple of new canes, and one of them had a few blooms on it for me to admire as I worked. I was crawling around under Moss 'James Mitchell' and finally realized that the scent I half-noticed as I cut and pulled was that of the moss on the rose. That was pleasant.

'Rose Krimrose' at the end is rather standing over its neighbor. This rose has been rising in my esteem. It's a highly hybridized creature, tall and lanky, with clusters of flowers that pale as they age for a pleasing multicolor effect. I noticed that year that it had a long flowering period, possibly owing in part to its being in shade. I ought to take cuttings, now that I'm liking it, since it shows no disposition to sucker. There's a good photo of it on HMF accompanied by an interesting comment.

Most of the roses at the end of the bed where I was working this morning are suckering; I hope that, once I get the worst of the grass and weeds out of the way, I may be able to get a better idea of what's what, and possibly prune back suckers where they threaten weaker kinds. The roses look very healthy: any bugs or disease are at quite tolerable levels.

Gardens are of course never finished, but it sounds as if you have reached a good balance, Melissa, with sensible strategies for working in the heat and hedges, shrubs and roses that are mostly happy and healthy. Now if only it didn’t get any worse! Probably a forlorn hope, but you should take pride in what you have achieved and we need to celebrate the wins when they come.

I really must start working outside earlier, before showering and breakfast too. It’s impossible to do anything even mildly strenuous between 9am and 9pm. The thermometer is currently 38.7c and rising. There is also dog walking to fit in there somewhere, before the heat hits..

Things are not so happy here at present, with parched grass, dying inherited hedges and the ongoing struggle to keep everything hydrated. With the exception of a few favourites that do largely shrug off the heat, I am beginning to think many of my repeat blooming roses are no longer worth the effort. They are wasting a lot of energy (and my energy watering them) trying to rebloom, only for the majority to crisp and wither by the day’s end. I had got rid of the poorly adapted ones, I thought, but more and more are now falling into that category.

I do love my repeat bloomers, but it seems a very sensible mitigation strategy to grow mostly once-bloomers that are done and dusted by the time the real heat kicks in.

Out of interest, which of your roses would you say are sufficiently adapted to your climate to earn their place in your garden? Are they all once bloomers?

Nollie, what's your average annual rainfall? Did you say your soil was heavy (clay, poor in organic matter, with sedimentary rock below)? Do you get enough winter chill for lilacs, peonies, daffodils?

I have, and love, a handful of Teas and Noisettes growing around the house, most of them in good (sort of) soil above rock debris, on a slope, and with other plants growing around them. My grafted 'Crépuscule' somehow manages to grow in bad heavy soil, and has done so for eighteen or so years; I don't know how much the rootstock helps. Out in the big garden, no, at least not yet, says the voice of hope. The Teas I find very well worth growing, for their wonderful spring flowering and, if they get some rain early enough, August or September, for a particularly lovely fall repeat. Right now any blooms they put out are frying, but I don't hold that against them. I love the elegance and toughness and frugality of the Teas, their good health, and how easy they are to maintain if they like their conditions. My 'Archduke Joseph' I'll back against anybody's. Most Teas in my experience get big; some get enormous and make fine climbers. My 'Gloire de Lyon' would be the finest rose in the world, if the rose chafers didn't love its blooms as they do. 'Clementina Carbonieri' fries easily. They have their shortcomings, but, oh, what splendid roses.

Out in the big garden, heavy poor soil, lots of sun, slope (in a few low spots not enough, and I've had to ditch at times), the once-blooming old roses of European origin are queen. The Gallicas are possibly the best of all, though keep in mind that they sucker and form thickets: this is their natural habit, and I suspect that if they're allowed to run a bit, and no disaster strikes, they're immortal. The Mosses in their origins are a mixed bag, and their performance correspondingly so, but generally they're fine for me. Note I'm not particularly bothered by some crud in the summer. Centifolias are more iffy, though 'Centifolia', the mother of the class, is the commonest old rose you see around here; Damasks and hybrid Damasks I adore: I'm not sure how consistently tough they are, but some are very good, like 'Ispahan'. I nearly forgot the Albas. They do fine, though I don't have quite the passion for them that I do for the others. Possibly it irritates me that I can't tell when they get rootstock suckers; but I don't don't think their growth is as pretty as that of the others.

Rosa foetida and 'Persian Yellow' are pretty good, open habit and for me lots of charm, suckering about some, and not noticeably disease prone. I don't know how the Lady Banks roses would do out in the full sun and wind in the big garden, but two plants of the double yellow are growing in hostile conditions at the top of the woods and doing wonderfully. They get huge. When we had the hard freeze in early 2018, temperatures dropping below 10F, the three Lady Banks roses lived up to their classification as Zone 9 roses and froze back 80%-100%. But all three recovered in a few years as they're on their own roots.

Among ramblers, the Wichurianas do pretty well, as do some of those roses I would place in the huge clan of species Musk roses. Also the Ayrshires, bred from the native Rosa arvensis, do well, though if you can't just let them run, and who can, they take a good deal of maintenance as their canes age quickly, and they're thorny beasts. They're great for growing through trees, or hedges if you can allow that.

What don't in general grow for me: Hybrid Musks (if you can supply the same conditions that Teas like, they do very well, though), most roses with much Multiflora in their ancestry, Hybrid Perpetuals, Hybrid Teas, English roses; the Cécile Bruenner clan (sob), anything that requires fat conditions: good soil and plenty of water. There are exceptions to most of these.

I think you're exactly right about the advantages of roses whose growth cycle agrees with the climate, and it's a good principle to work on. You'll have a different garden, though. Roses like Hybrid Teas, Floribundas, English Roses, are more formal looking, while the once-bloomers I've mentioned are closer to their wild ancestors, and look it. Teas might do well in more formal surroundings, but you have to allow for their generous size, generally 2m x 2m on up.

What are you inherited hedges that are dying? I lost all my box to box moth a while back, but otherwise have a pretty good collection of kinds that do well in mixed hedges with no watering after the first year and poor soil. I want to experiment with myrtle and with lentisk in addition to plants I'm already growing.

P.S. I can recommend specific varieties if you give me an idea of dimensions and character of roses you're interested in. I might have a hundred or more varieties in my garden, and most of them I think are well worth growing, which is why I haven't mentioned many individual varieties.

Carol in Oregon hasn't been posting for a while, I think, which is a shame, for your sake and in general. She loves once-bloomers, of which she grows many, in a normal-sized garden in which she pays attention to year-round interest and managing plant competition. I think she deals with many of the considerations you'd be paying attention to, and her climate, in western Oregon, might not be far off yours.

Goodness, thanks so much for that detailed and wonderfully evocative reply, Melissa! I shall have to reread it several times. I shall try and answer in kind..

My soil is heavy clay, but a thin layer on bedrock. Mostly limestone with it’s asociated high alkalinity of soil and water. Most things I grow in raised beds to gain a tolerable planting depth with tonnes of ericaceous organic matter mixed in, but they are increasingly hard to keep watered. The area is classed as subtropical because of heavy summer downpours (Pyrenean mountain influence) although they are getting less reliable. Some years we can be hot and humid, others hot and dry. Disease pressures are high in humid seasons. We can literally get four seasons in one day and it’s getting ever more unpredictable. Winters are short and dry, but can get sufficiently cold to kill off tender plants, but does not provide the consistent winter chill necessary to grow daffodils or anything but hardy species tulips.

Sadly, the teas, noisettes, hybrid musks and multifloras I tried couldn’t cope with heavy rainfall (they ball and brown, then fry when the strong sun appears). Mme. Antoine Mari, Crépuscule, Gislaine de Feligonde, Alister Stella Gray, Blush Noisette all failed or are failing the climate test. I have lost two Mutabilis and a Duchesse d’Auerstädt to winters. Mme. Alfred Carriere does tolerably well, Mme. Isaac Pereire is too diseased, has problems with browning blooms and does not repeat well in any case, so I may as well have planted a once bloomer like Ispahan.

I have had more success with some damask/portland damask, bourbon and polyantha roses, the likes of Rose de Rescht, Mme. de Sévigne, Yolande d’Aragón and Marie Pavie. I have a new Jacques Cartier that gave me a very respectable first spring flush and is growing away nicely.

I would certainly be interested in exploring those groups more and hearing more about yours.

Oh and the China rose Cramoisi Superieur does very well in Spring, but then defoliates and only follows up with scattered blooms. Albas, mosses and gallicas I have shied away from, not entirely confident they could cope here..

My main interest is shrub roses, both antique and new, that I like to combine with other shrubs and perennials in mixed borders. I have a good selection of modern shrub roses and a few floribundas from that do well enough to have survived the winnowing process, so far. Not so much hybrid teas because the high-centred form is not really to my taste.

Hedges, yes, our horrible, browning leylandi hedges! They do serve as a useful screen between road and garden, but they had been untended for some years prior and I would never have chosen them. There is also a pyracantha hedge edging the pool terrace that is struggling.

We are looking to downsize in a couple of years, ideally nearer the coast where the weather is hopefully a little less extreme, so I’m really squirrelling away ideas for some imaginary future garden. Future garden will inevitably be smaller, where I would grow fewer roses but I hope I could still fit in one or two larger shrubs and a few climbers. I probably won’t have the time to bring on any new roses now in this garden

Goodness, what a mixed set of conditions. Ours, though warming and more irregular than once upon a time, sound more stable than what you're dealing with, which sounds a bit more like north Florida, where I come from, than like a Mediterranean climate.

We have several Leyand cypresses and like them, in spite of their doubtful reputation, but we don't hedge them. I've always wondered about tall narrow hedges of this tree, having seen more than a few suffering. A really tall hedge is a problem. In my in-garden hedges I aim for a height of 2-3 meters, and find any number of tough shrubs that fill the bill. If you want something taller, and perhaps evergreen--and adapted to your conditions--really I don't know. Italian cypresses planted close together, might work, if they grow where you are. Photinia can grow quite large, and upright if not columnar, but I like it much the best mixed with other plants: otherwise it looks too plastic-y. Bay laurel will get tall enough, but is a bear to control, and I don't recommend it.

Actually, I suppose you've looked around to see what grows locally wild and in gardens?

I was going to recommend 'Rose de Rescht' as a really tough and satisfactory rose. And 'Marie Pavié' hangs on nobly through general neglect and blooms very well. 'Mme. Alfred Carrière' is also good, very fragrant, very tough; the main problem is keeping her under control. But it sounds like I can grow quite a few roses that don't work for you. I share your fondness for the Portlands, but am still trying to figure out whether they'll grow happily in the long run here; they seem to go downhill after a while.

More later.

Yes here in the inland foothills of the Pyrenean mountains (think sierras, river valleys and evergreen oak forests rather than the narrow litoral zone of the Med) we seem to get every kind of weather thrown at us!

The villages of the area are awash with clipped red photinia, the garden and municipal hedging plant of choice, but is not a favourite for the same reasons as you. It’s quite wild around my house though, so formal hedges don’t really suit. I would rather have a mixed native hedge that echoes the hedgerows. Plants such as hazel, cornus sanguineum, lentisc, privet, viburnum and rosa sempervirens. However, space is a little tight on the lower garden terrace and such a hedge would doubtless take over the whole lot in time. I will probably stick to the shaggy leylandi for now, perhaps install a rustic fence below it to hide the worst of the bare bits.

Interesting what you say about the portlands declining, I haven’t had mine long enough to observe that, but I suspect they need more regular water than the damasks. My Rose de Rescht does seem to be the more drought tolerant.

Nollie, multiflora is an acid lover. If you can grow azaleas, etc. you won't have any trouble with it. If you can't grow azaleas, then the multiflora won't be happy, and will express that unhappiness in multiple ways. One of those ways is dying under circumstances it would easily breeze through if the pH was more to its liking. My pH is 7.2, which by eastern North American standards is very, very high, and I've pretty much given up on anything that is heavily multiflora (actually I've pretty much given up on anything from Japan for pH reasons)

Hi mad_gallica, no I certainly couldn’t grow azaleas in my very alkaline soil! All my roses are grafted onto alkaline-tolerant laxa, so that helps. As does digging in tonnes of ericaceous compost and using acid feeds and iron supplements. It was a climate change consequence rather than a pH issue for me, the hybrid musks and multifloras just couldn’t take the increasingly extreme heat and the scorching African winds we get blowing up.

This was my Ghislaine de Féligonde weeping tree rose last Spring, before a heatwave/hot wind event burnt off all the twiggy laterals and killed half the canes..

This beautiful tree rose is now sadly deceased.

Various comments:

I haven't responded to your description of your conditions, Nollie, because I could see that they're decidedly different from those in my own garden, and I didn't think I could offer any helpful advice. In an odd way, and hills aside, it does sound a bit like north Florida where I grew up. Our house was set in an area where the soil is mostly sand where pines and live oaks grow, but most of Florida sits on limestone, and here and there, sometimes around springs, the limestone is at the surface, and there the flora changes. Beech trees at Wakulla Springs, for example. And this in a world of generally acid soil, where azaleas and camelias are classic, and among the commonest, gardens shrubs. (To explain further, much of the area, where not interfered with, though it always is, has a roaring jungle flora, powered by water, heat, and sun, where instead of the soil supplying the nutrients, they come from decomposed organic matter. It works fine until the cycle of growth and decay gets interrupted and there's not longer that steady feed of nutrients. Higher, sandier, fast-draining areas, like where our house was, formed stands of longleaf pines, where the accumulation of organic matter that would lead in time to hardwood forests is kept in check by forest fires. Nowadays, controlled burns maintain the pine woods.)

My mixed hedges include, along with photinia, really a good shrub when sagely employed, the following: privet (the small-leaved, cultivated kind), forsythia, symphoricarpos, common lilac, hazelnut, Cotoneaster lacteus, Eleagnus x ebbingei, Lonicera fragrantissima, mock orange. I have Viburnum lantana, much not so much in hedges, more as part of plantings with trees. There are just not that many native shrubs suitable for hedging, so I've had to go further afield, but all the plants I've named are commonly grown around here, and readily available.

So, about roses, I don't trust myself to offer you pertinent information, but will be interested to hear what you find if you do move, and my busybody self will be very willing to offer information, if I have any valid to share.

As to multifloras, my experiences echo mad_gallica's, but I want to add for the record, that there are a very few roses with Multiflora in their ancestry that I have grown with some success: 'Russelliana', 'Goldfinch', 'Blush Rambler'; the latter hasn't yet reached climber dimensions, but I am mildly optimistic it will one day. I also had a mystery rose in the garden that I think might have been 'Tausendschoen', that grew well for a decade or so until done in by three years of drought plus competition from an eleagnus. I'm still trying to instill a will to live in 'Rose-Marie Viaud', but it's an uphill battle. To comfort me with ramblers, though, I have the Wichurianas, which do very decently here, on their own roots as well.

It does sound as if our conditions are too different, Melissa. I’m not sure what the equivalent would be, but I’ve certainly read various articles on growing roses in Florida that I found very helpful.

I have a huge inherited Eleagnus and a n 10ft Photinia tree that survive with no supplemental water. Photinia is an attractive and elegant thing when left to it’s own devices so it certainly has it’s place. Another elegant but very tough, drought-tolerant flowering shrub is Abelia Grandiflora, that gets one or two good soakings in very hot, dry summers but most years needs none. Nandina domestica also makes a good hedge., I have it shading my rear terrace from the worst of the southern sun and it thrives with little intervention.

Both personal circumstances and the climate are making downsizing an imperative in the next couple of years, but where to? I would like to stay roughly in this part of the world, but I fear we will all become climate refugees, chased ever further northwards to escape the heat..