They look lovely, Jackie! And maturity counts for something with big roses. However, my experience and observations: I had 'Mme Berkeley" (from Vintage) for about 5 - 6 years and it grew into a nice-sized plant with great foliage and bloomed regularly; but, yes, I did shovel-prune it, though I too love teas and have a bunch of them. It's not warm winters that do 'Mme Berkeley' in (which is basically what "Zone 10" means), but summer warmth, like temperatures in the 90sF for weeks on end and often higher than that (110, 112, 115F...), like here in Livermore. Under those conditions, her blooms shrink to the size of quarters and turn a very harsh, unpleasant shade of red-pink and stay that way all through the late spring, summer, and fall. Some other examples: There is an old, old plant of MB in the gardens at the California Nursery Historical Park in Fremont that I just visited the other day and it was already showing such effects from just our last short heat wave -- Fremont's not quite as hot as Livermore, but hot enough. However, MB in Berkeley (UC Berkeley Botanical Garden, for one), where it stays cool during the summer, keeps normal-sized blooms and wonderful coloring and does not turn harsh -- it was the Berkeley plant that inspired me to buy her from Vintage in the first place.

Where you live, Jackie, by the coast, you are blessed with moderate summer temps, so Mme Berkeley is great there (a bit of envy on my part...). I would still give a heads-up about her tendencies to those who have hot summers. (Edit to note that the first flush of my MB every year was glorious, so beautiful, akin to yours, but then the heat would set in...) (And, by the way, nice 'Lady Roberts' blooms! I do love her. Mine is in the midst of her second flush and has some very nice blooms now -- on that one it's the FIRST flush here that generally balls and is poor -- she seems to like a bit of heat.)

Thank you both for your sharing! "Madame Berkeley" has a special place in my heart as the first rose I successfully struck from cuttings. After over six years in a container, her branches spread wide enough to drape themselves over the container rim, so I planted her late last year. The mother plant, in Berkeley, was also from Vintage Gardens once upon a time.

I'm between San Francisco and San Jose, so I'd say the flower color in my milder summer is still more towards strawberry pink than reddish pink in warm weather. The first picture here was an unusual pale flush in March, and the second is the more typical warm weather bloom hue in April, just a month later after the odd heat spike happened. Sometimes "Madame Berkeley" has a cool overlay of lavender that is very pretty too.

Mine here is small. Probably the heat.

WildWhiteRose - I love your second pic of a bloom of MB - nice dark colors. IMO roses which produce differing shades of more than one color blooms because of the weather are fascinating. (Not so much if they shrink to the size of a quarter and are an ugly color, as catspa describes what happened to hers in 110 + degrees! If it ever got that hot here, I would NOT be out in the garden looking at rose blooms anyway - Yuck!.

Sheila - yours may be small, but still lovely. How old is that bush? I ask because that was about the size of all of my MB blooms when the bushes were "young" - 0 to 7-8 years old. After that the blooms and the bushes got bigger. How hot is it where you are now? I have been to Ashland in August, and as I recall it was about 100 degrees (but NOT 115!).

Jackie

My MB is about 10 years old, Jackie. It is against the stucco wall. We have had a few days in the high 90s so far this year, but not 115 F yet. I don't want to know how hot that south facing wall gets. Researching the Teas in that bed, I put MB in the back row because I read she could get to be large. Well, apparently not here in that spot.

It would be interesting to get another and put it in a cooler spot. She has beautiful blooms.

What a beautiful bloom, Sheila! Yes, MB can get quite large -- the MBs at the California Nursery Historical Park are pruned a bit to stay out of the pathways but are still at least 7' tall and at least as wide, with many flowers when I saw them yesterday. These old plantings at the park (they also have 'Niles Cochet', of course, which was discovered there!) are among some large, mature trees so they get some relief from full sun. Over in the new plantings, where they just finished a formal labyrinthine set of walkways with the rose varieties mostly arranged according to hybridizer (designed in consultation with Paul Zimmerman, the former owner of Ashdown Roses), they have also included trees (great idea!), but they are just young little things yet and don't provide much of a break in sun/heat exposure.

Speaking of Niles Cochet, I got this one as a cutting from a very old garden about 2 blocks from my house. It perhaps needs more sun, as it sort of stays medium small, because the older canes do not survive long, but up come new ones. That part of my garden is now under the shade of a rambunctious huge street tree, but we are planning on our gardener doing something about that when he comes next week (the tree is rooted a good 30 feet away from this rose, so I do not feel bad trimming it a bit).

Jackie

@catspa_zone9sunset14 omg next time, before you shovel prune, please please message me. I’m in the Oakland hills and I’d happily drive to Livermore to pick it up!

@WildWhiteRose where are you located?

@SD Shine -Z10a Bay Area, Well, if it's any consolation, that MB was ousted at least 15 or 16 years ago and was replaced by 'Le Pactole', which is a far better tea for this climate. But, if I'm giving anyone else 'the eye', I'll let you know!

@catspa_zone9sunset14 I was still living in Canada, FOMO averted lol. Let’s trade cuttings!