I assume you don't spray anything in a butterfly garden, so what you need are the most disease-resistant roses you can find--which pretty much comes down to one of the Knock Outs. Another highly resistant rose is Morning Has Broken, but it is a semi-double about 4x4--perhaps larger than you are looking for. I hope you aren't trying to grow hybrid teas there--they are usually the least resistant of all the possible types of roses you could grow.

For me, mildew has only been a problem when I grew some roses in partial shade, but I'm guessing a butterfly garden is in full sun.

The only other advice I can think of is to make sure you water in the morning--never in late afternoon or evening. That might cut down on the number of rose diseases.

Oh, make sure the roses are not crowded in among other flowers. Roses need space so that there is plenty of air circulation--cuts down on diseases in many cases.

Don't know if any of that will solve your problem, but at least these are some things you might try.

By the way, if you post on the "Discussion" side of the Rose Forum, you might get more responses. This "conversation" side is more for rosers chatting about non-rose matters.

Good luck,
Kate

Have you tried plastic roses? They are resistant to anything and no watering, fertilizing or spraying. Hahahaha
C'est domage, mais c'est la vie. Ton ami, T

For a no-spray butterfly garden you'll need to choose the most disease resistant roses available on the market. This pretty much eliminates all Hybrid Teas, English Roses, Floribundas and Grandifloras. For zone 5 I suggest the Buck roses, Hybrid Kordesii, and Hybrid Rugosa. Many of the Bucks will give you the hybrid tea "look" but on hardier plants. The latter two classes have primarily single to semi-double blossoms, which IMHO is very appropriate for a butterfly garden.

A few suggestions:

FRU DAGMAR HASTRUP (HK, pink)
DARLOWS ENIGMA (Hybrid Musk, white, gets big)
DORTMUND (HK, bright red, gets really big)
GOLDEN WINGS (Shrub, light yellow)
HENRY HUDSON (HR, white)
KNOCKOUT (Shrub, hot pink)

Image of FRU DAGMAR HASTRUP by Juliet11 at Hortiplex

Thanks for all the great suggestions molineux,as well as the other ones! Julie

I hear ya. Roses are such high-maintenance divas, and how do they reward all your caring and fretting? By looking like the Wreck of the Hesperus.

Cleanest roses are:

1. Hippolyte -- a once-blooming Gallica/China hybrid. Blooms for weeks. Forms a nicely shaped shrub that gets about 6.5 feet tall here. Blooms start out reddish purple, age to a deep purple, and finish up as a dusky purple with silvery overtones. Very winter hardy.

2. Fields of the Wood -- a found rose that blooms a lovely deep red, cupshaped blooms, with decent fragrance, and gets absolutely no black spot here. Repeats. Even the bugs don't bother it much.

3. Banshee -- a highly fragrant, old, once-blooming, light pink rose of unknown heritage. This rose laughs at disease and winter. But a rainy period can cause buds to not open. Suckers like mad, incredibly easy to grow, needs very little care. I fertilize it once a year and it probably doesn't need it.

4. Some of the Buck roses are great.

5. Some of the Kordes roses are wonderful; others absolutely suck in zone 5.

6. Blushing Lucy.

7. Donau -- a once bloomer with small violet colored blooms. Smells like violets. I can't smell it up close, but a few feet away and downwind, it has a lovely mild violet fragrance. Another nice thing about it is that the foliage stays healthy and is a very light green, almost a yellowish-green, which is pretty bright for a rose. It's supposed to repeat, but it has not done so for me in the 3 years it's been here. Maybe it needs a longer growing season to rebloom, or maybe it will rebloom when it gets older.

There's not much you can do about bugs eating your roses; not without some spraying anyway.

Of course, roses aren't the only plants that get attacked by insects. But they are the plants that are most obvious about it. :-)

It could be worse -- over on the Antique Roses forum some poor guy is dealing with blister beetles eating his clematis alive. Blister beetles are nasty, demonic insects that are toxic to humans in large quantities and are known to kill horses and livestock when a number of the beetles are consumed. They cause blisters to form on your skin when you handle them.

So, it could be worse. But roses can be a bummer this time of year, when they're at their absolute worst.

I've got a similar less pretty version of the dilemma. I have Green Lynx Spiders, which as spiders go are pretty cool little guys. I'm finally making peace with jumping spiders and have boticed that so long as they don't get too close to me, they are sort of like little gremlins.

I haven't been spraying because I'd like to build a population of the Green Lynx spiders. They've done a GREAT!!! Wowza; even job on the aphid problems, and the rearing up thing is pretty cool too.

I have a no-spray yard-----

I think the buck rose Carefree Beauty would be great---

Clair Matin----Compassion----Viking Queen--- Have no bug damage in all this heat----

Florence

The Knockout roses do great with no care.

Florence