So I've narrowed my rose choice to Forever Royal or Amethyst Star (while keeping Scented Garden on the back-burner....still hoping to find a space for it....). I found @Marlorena had recommended Amethyst Star a couple of years ago....would you still do so? Is there much difference between that and Forever Royal for scent or growth habit? They look superficially very similar....
@KayJ Forever Royal is my favoured of those 2 but Amethyst Star has many good points. Here are some.. Apart from a very few thorns at the base, it is essentially thornless, with upright stems bearing such lovely olive green foliage. The flowers are quite strongly scented, sweet, and for me at their best in May when the colour is a rich purple, which stands out from afar. Later blooms lighten to a reddish/pink/mauve colour which I did not like so much. It produces large clusters of buds, especially by mid summer. Some blooms are rather more double.
..a few thorns at base.. note the vigorous basals.. ..midsummer blooms and colour..
The thing about Forever Royal is that the blooms keep their purple colour all season. It's also a more imposing shrub.. However I will say that Amethyst Star had the better foliage all year.. FR can sometimes suffer from a touch of chlorosis in my highly alkaline conditions.
No calendar for me, I'm sorry to say, not yet at least.. Nice pics though, with a reasonable variety of roses..
Re Old Roses, I think we in the UK tend to have a looser designation than the American Rose Society, and it's often up to the individual since the RNRS folded, we seem not to have any kind of Authority any longer.. Some take the view anything before 1900. I've never been comfortable with the 1867 La France thing especially as roses from the 1930's like Hybrid Musks are usually put with the Old group... for me it's quite simple.. Old Roses = before 'Peace' 1945 Modern Roses = after 'Peace' 1945 ..
..what a load of baloney.. they had this in mind back in 2018 and I read an interview with them in Horticultural Week back then, which I subscribed to at that time, and nowhere was it mentioned about climate change. They said they were offering too many Old roses that sold only a few each year and had to drastically cut their inventory in half, including some favourites that we know of, as roses with better disease resistance were being bred now.
It was halted because of the pandemic.
A couple of years ago I asked their hybridiser, just for fun, to breed an English Tea rose for our climate as summers were getting hotter, along the lines of Mme. Antoine Mari, as these are drought resistant thrifty roses.. so perhaps they'd like to now take up my suggestion?..
I know he's experimented with Hulthemias but for his own personal use.
Ha! They withdrew the roses in September, but "climatic changes" didn't appear as a reason on the archive pages until October. They initially just mentioned health as you said.
Any date is necessarily arbitrary I guess. It’s never that simple, often murky and yes Hybrid Musks (and some others) are very much old rose in character and earn their place there @Marlorena, but if your personal cut off date is 1945 does that mean you consider all the early hybrid teas and floribundas as old roses too? Or it perhaps more a matter of how best to grow and prune them?
Baloney indeed! Munstead Wood is one of my healthiest and best DAs in heat, Darcy Bussell may not have the best disease resistance but does pretty well in heat too. I know they are a business and are entitled to do what they want, but do they think we are so dull-witted we can’t see through that greenwashing nonsense? Grrr!!
Mountainous Northern Catalunya, Spain. Hot summers, cold winters.
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Forever Royal is my favoured of those 2 but Amethyst Star has many good points. Here are some..
Apart from a very few thorns at the base, it is essentially thornless, with upright stems bearing such lovely olive green foliage. The flowers are quite strongly scented, sweet, and for me at their best in May when the colour is a rich purple, which stands out from afar.
Later blooms lighten to a reddish/pink/mauve colour which I did not like so much.
It produces large clusters of buds, especially by mid summer. Some blooms are rather more double.
..a few thorns at base.. note the vigorous basals..
..midsummer blooms and colour..
The thing about Forever Royal is that the blooms keep their purple colour all season. It's also a more imposing shrub.. However I will say that Amethyst Star had the better foliage all year.. FR can sometimes suffer from a touch of chlorosis in my highly alkaline conditions.
'Scented Garden'..
.. happy choosing !..
Nice pics though, with a reasonable variety of roses..
Re Old Roses, I think we in the UK tend to have a looser designation than the American Rose Society, and it's often up to the individual since the RNRS folded, we seem not to have any kind of Authority any longer..
Some take the view anything before 1900.
I've never been comfortable with the 1867 La France thing especially as roses from the 1930's like Hybrid Musks are usually put with the Old group... for me it's quite simple..
Old Roses = before 'Peace' 1945
Modern Roses = after 'Peace' 1945 ..
Newspaper article mentioning DA's withdrawal of various new roses and trotting out their new angle of "climate change" being the reason, rather than "making more money off new introductions."
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/nov/11/why-climate-change-means-some-english-roses-will-bloom-no-longer
It was halted because of the pandemic.
A couple of years ago I asked their hybridiser, just for fun, to breed an English Tea rose for our climate as summers were getting hotter, along the lines of Mme. Antoine Mari, as these are drought resistant thrifty roses.. so perhaps they'd like to now take up my suggestion?..
I know he's experimented with Hulthemias but for his own personal use.
Baloney indeed! Munstead Wood is one of my healthiest and best DAs in heat, Darcy Bussell may not have the best disease resistance but does pretty well in heat too. I know they are a business and are entitled to do what they want, but do they think we are so dull-witted we can’t see through that greenwashing nonsense? Grrr!!