Moonlight Romantica....is yours meeting your expectations?

Moses, Pitt PA, cold W & hot-humid S, z6

last month

last modified: last month

My Moonlight Romantica (Meilland, US patent granted, 2019), which has been in my garden about 5 years, is getting bigger and bigger, but flowers are stingy, even the spring flush is not more than just average abundance. I grow it as a bush, and know it is alternately listed as a climber. Because of this, it could be on the cusp of becoming a generous bloomer, and just needs more time.

How does your Moonlight Romantica do for you? Any words of advice are much appreciated.

Moses.

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Comments (4)

BenT (NorCal 9B Sunset 14)
last month
last modified: last month
Moonlight Romantica was the rose I could not get rid of! My mom went to a rose demonstration, and took home o door prize of a big Moonlight Romantica in a 10 gal pot. I planted it for her, it had the most easily burnt blooms, outsized plant, Mom thought it was some sort of defective rose. Mom lived through WWII and never wasted anything, but she made me dig up that plant and dispose of it. No later had I done that than Grace Rose decided to gift me with a bonus plant for my order…you guessed it, another huge Moonlight Romantica. I potted it and tried to gift it to neighbors, but alas no takers, so I threw it away, too. Meilland varieties are usually terrific for me but MR was a total dud, low quality blooms on a massive mule of a plant.
elenazone6
last month
I also get rid of MR.
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Moses, Pitt PA, cold W & hot-humid S, z6
Original Author
last month
last modified: last month
Oh boy! My future with Moonlight Romantica looks ominous. Fortunately it is located at the back of my 8' deep bed where its liabilities are not as prominently seen as they would be if planted toward the front of the bed.

Ben, your story is amusing, especially planting your mom's 10 gallon monster....all that work to end in a bid dud of a rose. Grace Rose Nursery may have had a surplus of MRs because of slow sales of it. Its liabilities may have become revealed by then, so folks passed on ordering it.

I'm going to stick with it a while longer to see if it shows some redeeming qualities, enough to let it be. Moonlight Romantica does have strong necks, drops its petals cleanly, and has better than average black spot resistant foliage. The flower is just bleh! to me, nothing special, and certainly is not 4.75" across, more like 3.5", and only on a good day, too.

Elena, if we had the money in our hands that we spent on roses that just didn't make the cut, I bet we could duplicate our rose gardens by 2X. What a wasteful, hidden cost of growing a satisfactory rose garden is spending good money on unsatisfactory roses that are eliminated, sooner or later.

Are we too fussy? I don't think so.

Moses.
Josg Maggsib
last month
last modified: last month
I have admired a bed of them at the local rose garden for a few years. they are very cold hardy and vigorous here, and the flowers are nice. I don’t like that stiff hybrid tea habit for my garden, but I could see it doing well for people with other tastes. The flowers are quite nice. I did collect some pollen and got some hips off a polyantha I like.

They get over six feet tall in the Twin Cities.