For years, I grew Alexandre Girault. It was a fun rose in a lot of ways - very healthy, very flexible, not particularly thorny, but it hardly ever bloomed. It bloomed on old wood, and rarely managed to overwinter any. So I'm curious if Alberic Barbier would fare any better. The parentages seem similar.

BTW, Kordes HMs are hardier than Pemberton/Bentall ones. From what I've seen, so are Lens HMs.

RoseFolly, I also garden in zone 5. Are your roses own root or grafted?

Good luck, Rosefolly, and thanks for the report. Were it me I would go for more of the once-flowering old roses, but I'm aware most people want re-bloomers. About ramblers, have you considered any of Dr. Van Fleet's roses? I would imagine he bred with cold-hardiness in mind, as well as Brownell. Hpwever, I doubt I can suggest anything you haven't already thought of.

I don't know how much room you have or how busy you want to be, but I hope you're thinking of peonies and lilacs.

My Moonlight Romantica is a 'winter wimp,' even here in zone 6b. It stays, because what wood that has not been winter killed, is usually sufficient good wood to make for a respectable sized bush by summer. Had it died to the ground again this winter as it did ~4 yrs. ago, it would be waiting for shovel pruning now, with no further waiting for new crown growth to restore it over several more years to a respectable sized bush.

Did you get the Buck rose, Quietness? It would surprise me beyond belief if it died for you this past winter. It is tip hardy here, and still my most favorite rose. I now have 5 Quietness bushes, 2 seniors at 15+ yrs., and 3 youngsters, under 5 yrs., and they all are blooming machines here. I would give it a try if you haven't gotten it yet.

Marie Pavie is a great rose. I had a number of them back when my garden was no spray, OGRs. There are at least 2 forms of Marie Pavie being sold. One is semi-double, <24 petals per bloom with stamens prominently showing when the bloom's fully open. The far better one is superior in flower output and bush size (4' X 3'), compared to 30" X 30".

The bloom of the superior version is the same diameter of 2.25", but very double at 50+ petals, with stamens mostly obscured by center petals of fully open blooms. You can plainly see the different bloom forms by observing the blooms posted on HMFR. The fully double form is not the most posted form. Either form is pretty much black spot free. Old, defunkt Pickering Nursery was the only seller of the larger bush, fully double Marie Pavie I could find. Everyone else sold the semi-double, shorter bush form.

I grew April Moon and found it a profuse bloomer, but its flower form lacked 'neatness,' so it's gone.

I'm hoping to try the much praised white hybrid tea/floribunda, Easy Spirit, soon. It has great press. Easy Spirit's flower form is impeccable. Our Roses Forum member, Lily Finch, has posted a shot of it, grow to perfection. It is an, A.R.T.S. Winner, so Easy Spirit could work wonderfully for you.

You will find that young bushes that struggled for their first and even second winters can really toughen up as they mature and be, 'Winter Warriors,' given the time.

None of my bushes get any winter protection, none. Those that can't produce a respectably good sized bush for its type, in a reasonable akunt of time, get removed, no regrets.

None of my bushes get any winter protection, none. Those that can't produce a respectably sized bush for its type in a reasonable amount of time, get removed, no regrets.

None of my bushes get any winter protection, none. Those that can't produce a respectably sized bush for its type in a reasonable amount of time, get removed, no regrets.As you, 'learn the ropes,' there in zone 5, I hope your roses exceed your expectations as you fjnd out how to let zone 5 work for you instead of against you. Rose growing is easy in only a few places on earth. You're in a tough one. All your accomplishments won will be more precious to you because of the trials you face. is easy in only a few places on earth. You're in a tough one. All your accomplishments won will be more precious to you because of the trials you face.

Moses.

(Sorry for the repetitious material above....impossible to correct it with my connection to Houzz's archaic and defective system.)

Mad Gallica, I do hope Alberic Barbier will bloom given that I do not plan to wrap the canes in burlap. I saw a neighbor do that with his climber, and it is not something I plan to copy! Thanks for the hint on various HM lines. I'll do some more research.

Bellarosa, some of my roses are own root and some are grafted. The ones I bought from High Country Roses are own root, as are the ones I got from Rogue Valley. Most of the other ones came grafted. I'm not sure about the Canadian shrub roses.

Melissa, unlike my California garden, this is an in-town lot of a quarter acre. The house, garage, and driveway take up about a third of the footprint. There are also some large trees along the street. My garden is not tiny, but it is nothing like the size of my old garden, and certainly not as large as yours! I had originally not planned for any actual ramblers but I thought I'd experiment with one, that being AB. At that, I'll have to keep it well pruned. The Van Fleet climbers and ramblers that I am aware of are too big for the space, and I don't know of any that are white. I've mentioned this before, but I don't expect people to remember that this garden is to be primarily white. About 10% of the flowers are pale yellow or pale blue, but the rest is all white. I am including some silver foliage.

Hi Moses, I don't know if I mentioned this to you before, but I was born and raised near Pittsburgh, and grew my first roses there back in my teens. They came from Roses of Yesterday, so you can see I started off with old garden roses right from the beginning. I remember the western Pennsylvania climate, though I have been told that it is warmer now than it was when I lived there. (This is just an aside.) As for the Buck roses, I did not grow Quietness because it is the wrong color for this garden. The two that failed for me were Prairie Star and Paloma Blanca. I had high hopes for them but they apparently require more protection than I am willing to supply.

You mentioned Pickering. I cannot tell you how very dearly I miss that nursery! However my California Marie Pavie roses came not from them, but from Antique Rose Emporium in Texas. They had the flower form you describe for the more common variety, but in my California garden they grew 5 feet high and 4 feet wide unless I pruned them back hard twice a year. They cycled quickly in and out of bloom all year round. The one I bought for this garden comes from High Country Roses. It may or may not be that same clone, but I do not expect that kind of size here in the Front Range. In fact, I'd rather it did not, as then I'd have to move it to a different spot.

Pittsburgh has changed greatly, especially the air pollution has diminished greatly. Gone are the days when street lights would come on in the afternoon because the air pollution was so thick. Old timers like me are almost universally afflicted with COPD from long term breathing of toxic air. On the bright side, carbon gasses in the air make the roses grow more vigorously! 😁

Moses.

Less air pollution is good. I remember all the rust-red sunsets! I'm sorry that you have the lingering effects.

Rosefolly, you are much braver than I. I've been glancing at all the new growth but am trying to not get attached to it in case it all gets frozen off. Often that is what happens to anything early. But this year may be the exception. It certainly has been a record setting year for high temperatures.

Rosefolly,

A couple of possibilities occur to me: 'White New Dawn' (not a sport) and 'Mme. Plantier' which, though I find this hard to believe, is rated hardy to Zone 3 on HMF. The latter is once-blooming but beautiful and tremendously fragrant, though the old flowers hang on. It can be grown as a climber. I did remember that your garden is white; the size is probably comparable to what I had in Washington state.

A slight revision of my plans:

We are likely to have watering restrictions this year. I have cancelled my order of Alberic Barbier due to the problem Mad Gallica pointed out. No point in adding a risky rose in a year of scarcity. Susan Williams-Ellis is still coming, but otherwise I am not adding new roses this year. (Though if Alba Semi-Plena suddenly showed up I would of course make exception for it!)

I'm concentrating on growing the plants that went into the ground last year. replacing those that did not do what I hoped they would. Most of those plants are perennials. I have less interest in the lawn, and may give it only a weekly watering to keep in a live, otherwise saving my water for the trees and flower beds.

Oh, and Melissa, I do indeed have lilacs and peonies in the garden.

I wish you a good year, folly. The lilacs and peonies will make you happy, along with the roses.

The lilacs are in bloom right now, and that is true all over town! I love seeing them and go around sniffing plant after plant. They are my favorite flower for fragrance.

Rosefolly, How did your roses do in the snow and freeze last weekend?

Mine did OK. Some new growth on some roses got wilted. I wanted to wait this week to see what came back and it appear Victorian Memory, a Canadian, may have over come it. The roses with established buds did ok. It was only the really tender new growth that died and is now wilted and crispy. This will probably have some affect on the spring flush as those roses hadn't set their buds yet and they were probably coming from the new growth.

Winnipeg Parks is my first bloomer. She usually is, being Canadian.

I have no idea why my roses are so green. We only gave them supplemental water once over this winter and then right before the freeze to try and plump them up. Since the snow last weekend we turned on the sprinkler/drip system so they got water twice this week but they had all these leaves before that.

The flowers on Winnipeg Parks are smaller than previous years, probably due to lack of water. Also not much new growth. However that was my plan by not watering them early. I was hoping to stall the new growth so it wouldn't get destroyed by a late freeze. Tonight is supposed to be 31F so we will see how it goes.

I have one mini rose, Renny, that looks to not be doing anything yet. If I lose something it will probably be this one.

I had some wilting of the very tenderest new growth on Icecap, April Moon, Snowdrift, Buff Beauty, and Champagne Wishes, but only a bit. Icecap showed the most damage of all. Marie Pavié, Winchester Cathedral, Top Cream, and Bolero were untouched. Neither of my two Canadian roses (Morden Snowbeauty and Oscar Peterson) showed any damage at all. All of my albas, gallicas, and damasks came through without a blemish as I would have expected, even the one I had foolishly transplanted a week earlier. Since then I planted a bare-root Susan Williams-Ellis. I worried about that one since the weather dropped back into the 30's last night, but its buds look fine so far. I am going to the Heritage Rose Conference in Texas next weekend and want to get everything I can into the ground where it seems they would be safer.

I have been here for 8.5 years and have never seen a winter even close to this mild and dry here. I was very surprised. Almost no dieback on anything, and the earliest rose blooms I've seen. With no dieback, I have a good handful of roses that are starting out the year already very large. I hope it's a great year for them, if only we could have some rain...

Victorian Memory, Therese Bugnet and John Cabot have a few open blooms on them, everything else is forming buds.

Pic. of my Colorado rose bed on May 6. I think most of the buds froze in the snowstorm a couple of weeks ago. They had stalled and weren't progressing. Except Winnipeg Parks which was still blooming. I didn't see them developing much in the way of new buds for this snow storm, except Victorian Memory which seemed to still be trying. We will have to see what affect this has on the spring flush.

Beautiful, but I would hate to see that in May.

Sheila,

I particularly like the look of frosting on the trees. :-)

Mmmm12, my own garden looked much like yours this morning. At this point in the afternoon, about 3/4 of the snow has melted. We lost a big limb from an ash tree and a lot of the shrubs - including roses - are partially crushed.

So odd, since this past weekend I was in Tyler Texas and Shreveport Louisiana for the HRF conference. What a change in climate!

Unfortunately Amiga Mia, which was huge, took it on the chin and lost 3 large canes. Everything else seems to have rebounded. Probably all the buds are goners. Our trees did ok since my husband whacked them to get the snow off.

I will need to try a Morden rose and Rosa Mundi

This was the hardest year on my roses in zone 5 midwest. It was actually a March freeze period that hurt the tender growing roses. I lost over 8 roses. And several are growing back from the ground.

The only winter cover I use here is snow. I rarely lose roses to winter absent a disease issue from the prior growing season on a plant that was thereby weakened going into winter. Buck roses are generally hardy and disease resistant. I have my roses planted along a sidewalk and next to my driveway. I blow snow on my rose beds in the winter. It is the best winter cover.

I stopped covering roses about 20-years ago. I lost more roses to issues with winter cover, than I ever lost to winter conditions.

I am sure you know all of this that follows as you have a lot of experience growing roses, and I am being windy in my post.

When planting a grafted rose, bury the graft 3-4" deep. If there is die-back to the surface, I wait for the rose to grow back from the parts of the plant buried beneath the soil surface.

To prevent diseases, in the spring, I remove dead leaves under each plant before they leaf out. I spray fungicides. Daconil when temps are below 78, and other fungicides as temps rise. Occasionally I have used a systemic fungicide and insecticide (Bio-Advanced 3 in 1) that goes into ground around the base of each rose. However, I find the sprays to be more effective because I can regulate the extent of my fungicide use, and tie it closer to the rainfall. Do not spray fungicide if it will not dry on the plant within 2-hours or that can act to promote blackspot.

Sorry to be so long, but I am very surprised a Buck rose would be lost to winter die-back, and there might be other contributing factors. Growing roses in the Midwest is mostly more complicated than in some of the drier less humid climates out west.

Thank you for these reports on your garden, Rose Folly. It is always interesting to read about how other rose gardeners are faring in different zones.

I love to hear what other gardeners in zone 5 or cooler are experiencing, so thank you all that reported. Here near Chicago we had a very mild winter (except for a few days) and I had little or no dieback on most of my roses.

I was surprised that there was quite a bit of dieback on James Galway, but I have only had him for a couple of years and he is rebounding very well. Unfortunately, at the moment Mary Rose seems to be a magnet for spider mites, so I'm spraying her with the hose every morning, which is helping. 

Most of my perennials seem to be blooming at least a week earlier than expected. I think many rosebuds will start opening as we have very warm weather predicted for the next few days. I'm so excited!

Mmmm, I'm always interested to hear what you say about conditions there, because my sister and nephews live in the Boulder area and I know about the erratic weather there.

Recently, I was reading about a pink rose called "Canada Blooms". I wonder if any of you northern gardeners have tried this. If, so what do you think of it?

Here is a rose that is extremely reliable here in CO for me, Mme. Plantier. Today: