You all have such a beautiful roses, it’s a pleasure to come here and look at them; with this hot weather it’s madness even to think of doing something in my garden and I am really envious you have so many blooms.Â
 Though I like white roses, this year for the very first time I have a lot of Oxythyrea funesta (don’t know the English name for it) so I think I will stop buying and planting white roses right now.Â
 I would like to try a shrub of purple rose, can you tell me about your purple rose shrubs? I’d like it to be very floriferous, very purple, and possibly repeating. Oh, and of course it should have a mice shape and disease resistance, lol
Out for me this year: Diamond Eyes - itty bitty blooms and too prone to blackspot Heidi Klum - rallied well this year but now a defoliated sulking mess Deep Secret - dead secret more like, a most reluctant bloomer Alexander - pale coral in heat , say no more Paul Neyron and Gloire de Ducher - freebies I didn’t want, need nor have space for
Under Review: Alberic Barbier - new, healthy, but washed out blooms brown badly in heat Duchesse d’Auerstadt - possibly too tender for my winters given the lateral dieback Graham Thomas - sickly BS magnet, poor bloomer La Rose de Molinard - temperamental, terrible in rain, but blooms/scent to die for (tricky one this!) The Prince - one of my absolute favourite roses, so why? Well it’s in a large pot against a wall and it gets totally ravaged by (3 species of) sawflies there all season long, so little green leaf to photosynthesise and no energy to bloom, whereas nearby Rose de Rescht and Marie Pavie are largely unaffected.
I agree @fire big field of roses, but also a gardener to look after them 😆 I could then just potter.😆
@dabolem I love my Blue for You. A shrub that grows well, starts early ( May) flowers for two months, ( I still have a few canes of buds) and then after a good deadheading it will come back again and be the last to finish. The fragrance follows you around the garden and smells like Turkish delight to me. Picture taken 16th June
I couldn't resist this lovely thing at my local GC yesterday. It's my first Patio rose, with the delightful name of 'Flirt 2011'. It has loads of buds which open to these lovely clear pink blooms. And it was outside overnight in a deluge and emerged unscathed and upright...so the omens are good. @Fire...I've had two which were absolute magnets for sawfly this summer...'Windflower' and 'Boscobel'. Which was good as it made my determined mission of eradication (which has worked) so much easier.
Really liking the rose reviews, so useful to get real experiences.
@Dabolem, particularly interesting to see yours as most of those are unfamiliar to me.
I have a few purples but would only recommend 2, Ebb Tide if you want a small, totally trouble-free gem and Rhapsody in Blue which I grow as a small climber. Photos from last month, I can never capture the colour but these 2 are definitely dark purple.
I love Ebb Tide's blooms but for me it's a weak plant. Might surreptitiously replace it with a new Ebb Tide with more canes next year because I suspect I'm the problem lol. It had three canes when I got it, dieback means it is down to two and only one cane has seen fit to put forth any buds this year.
On the plus side it smells Christmassy, all cloves and orange peel and cognac.(Sorry about the blurriness of the photo but these colours seem to me accurate.) Â Purplerallim and Tack, both your "Blue"s are truly gorgeous.
@Discandied Amanda P. for me produces long thin sprawly canes later in the season. It can be grown as a big sprawly shrub or cut back during the pruning season. I notice, in some pictures from Mottisfont, that they cut it back a lot. I prefer this way too because it makes it into a nice, tidy, well-shaped shrub for its 1st flush. The 2nd flush comes but can be a bit messier and there are fewer flowers than in the 1st.
@Nollie Do you think that some roses are really more attractive to sawflies? I also have some completely intact and some ravaged but I've always assumed that 1 sawfly simply lays all her eggs on one rose and that one rose is mostly random. Or maybe there could be something about its position. Or it is somehow related to the previous year or previous cycle, maybe the sawfly comes back to her "home" rose. I don't know.
Posts
Diamond Eyes - itty bitty blooms and too prone to blackspot
Heidi Klum - rallied well this year but now a defoliated sulking mess
Deep Secret - dead secret more like, a most reluctant bloomer
Alexander - pale coral in heat , say no more
Paul Neyron and Gloire de Ducher - freebies I didn’t want, need nor have space for
Under Review:
Alberic Barbier - new, healthy, but washed out blooms brown badly in heat
Duchesse d’Auerstadt - possibly too tender for my winters given the lateral dieback
Graham Thomas - sickly BS magnet, poor bloomer
La Rose de Molinard - temperamental, terrible in rain, but blooms/scent to die for (tricky one this!)
The Prince - one of my absolute favourite roses, so why? Well it’s in a large pot against a wall and it gets totally ravaged by (3 species of) sawflies there all season long, so little green leaf to photosynthesise and no energy to bloom, whereas nearby Rose de Rescht and Marie Pavie are largely unaffected.
Newbies that have delighted so far and show lots of promise:
Buff Beauty
Alister Stella Gray
Lady Hillingdon
Mrs. Oakley Fisher
Ghislaine de Feligonde Standard
Mme. de Sévigné - best new pink so far
Plenty of other newbies I’m reserving judgement on
@dabolem I love my Blue for You. A shrub that grows well, starts early ( May) flowers for two months, ( I still have a few canes of buds) and then after a good deadheading it will come back again and be the last to finish. The fragrance follows you around the garden and smells like Turkish delight to me.
Picture taken 16th June
@Fire...I've had two which were absolute magnets for sawfly this summer...'Windflower' and 'Boscobel'. Which was good as it made my determined mission of eradication (which has worked) so much easier.
Â
On the plus side it smells Christmassy, all cloves and orange peel and cognac.(Sorry about the blurriness of the photo but these colours seem to me accurate.)
Â
Purplerallim and Tack, both your "Blue"s are truly gorgeous.
@Nollie Do you think that some roses are really more attractive to sawflies? I also have some completely intact and some ravaged but I've always assumed that 1 sawfly simply lays all her eggs on one rose and that one rose is mostly random. Or maybe there could be something about its position. Or it is somehow related to the previous year or previous cycle, maybe the sawfly comes back to her "home" rose. I don't know.