Had Clair Renaissance and liked it very much. Sort of a light pink and has a strong old rose fragrance. Grew upright. Unfortunately mine was in a large pot and I lost it to drought and my negligence.
Jim

We have Clair, Helena, and Isabelle in our garden and like them all. My DH refers to them as his "girls" and is very proud of them. They all grow very upright and tall in our Zone 7B? garden. Sometimes it feels more like zone 5 or 6 though. They have all suffered little to no winter damage so are what I guess you would call cane hardy here. Clair & Isabelle have old fashioned style blooms, while Helena is more hybrid tea shaped with a fabulous fragrance. Clara & Alexandra both are very appealing too. Lovely pictures!

Helena
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Thank you very much for the information. I am looking forward to seeing these roses blooming, I am really very impatient and happy because of your positive opinions. Helena is very nice. I think all the renaissance roses have strong fragrance. I was confused about Clair and Clara, at first i thought they are the same rose but they are different.

I have Clair Renaissance too and it pulls at my heart strings every year. This one gets nearly 7 feet tall and is more upright and stiff. The blooms are magnificant and are often not on the bush by the end of the day. It has a lovely sweet fragrance as well. My Clair is about 7 years old now and is as thrilling as the first year.

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Just saw some photos of Claire Renaissance--loved it!!! Gotta have it!!!

But I only grow flowers that can make good contributions to my vases,

Julie: I wonder what you meant by the blooms are gone by the end of day, does it mean they only last one day on the bush or are they picked by you??

Anyways, just want to know if Claire makes good cut flower, i.e. with long, strong and straight stems, last in the vase for at least 4 days.

I am VERY ambivalent about these Renaissance roses - they do have those generous flowers and also are graced with very long stems - excellent cutting roses which last well in the vase and have a good fragrance but.........
They are enormous, ungainly, stiffly upright and out of all proportion to anything else in the garden. Philippa is almost 3m high but lacking any of the arching grace of a climber or rambler - it just points upright (can't reach most of the blooms to deadhead or even pick). Clair/Liliana is shorter but only because I have moved it (twice) quicksmart and been ruthless with the secateurs. The other one (Millie? one of those roses which has numerous names) was a gift so am stuck with it (from youngest son so have to put up with it).
To compound the horror, they are not the healthiest roses, invariably defoliating with BS and in such an enormous rose, this is unbearable. Every year, I plan to remove them completely (to the compost) and inevitably, the sheer effort involved, plus the first good flush, delays the chainsaw (which it will deffo require).
In all, I rarely remove plants (nature usually helps out with premature death) and more or less ignore these roses for great swathes of the year......but had I known then, what I know now, I would have stuck with Poulsen's groundcover roses (a different kettle of fish altogether) and avoided the Renaissance series altogether.

It seems implausible that Pousen would name one rose Clair R. and a different rose Clara R., but that's what they did. Sorry no one has been able to help with Clara. I also have grown Clair and was dismayed by the growth habit and blackspot. Too bad; the flower and bright green, matte foliage (before it spots and yellows) are very beautiful.

This post was edited by michaelg on Wed, Jul 31, 13 at 16:04

I don't have those particular two Renaissance roses, but I dearly love the bunch that I do (or did) have - Clair, Bonita, and my dearly departed Bella. All of them are tall, frequent reblooming, healthy (in my dry zone), fluffy dramatic floriforous double fragrant roses. My favorite was Bella, but she inexplicably committed suicide in the drought last year after 5 years as a showpiece of the backyard. I'll post a separate thread to ask about a replacement as soon as I can find a picture.

Where did you find these roses? Very few folks seem to sell the Renaissance series, and I'd be interested in adding the two you mention to my yard.

Cynthia

Michael, a lot of these roses seem to have several names - Millie has also been Ghita and Mum in a Million, Claire has also been Liliana, Eleanor has been something else which I cannot recall, Philippa seems to have vanished off the radar but is probably just using a different name........so Clara may well be known by another name altogether.

I have my own name for them - Irritating Eyesore.

I have Sandra, a beautiful lavender. Love the color. Sorry about the fuzzy pic. She is upright,and stiff in her growth pattern