Jessica you sound so sweet and I can totally empathize with you on the space situation. But just to complicate matters-- some of your underperformers may just need a little more time in the ground before they really come into their own. Another season or two and they might just become what your original hopes for them were.

If you are committed-- craigslist. When I moved from the US earlier this year I had to get rid of many of my beloved plants. I craigslisted them and listed them on here for anyone that was interested. I met so many nice people that came to pick them up. I mailed African violets around the country as well, and got lots of lovely messages and emails in return from their new homes. Don't give up and shovel prune-- many people may be interested, and you can continue the spirit of sharing. Alternatively, schools or churches often have gardens and they might love some new additions. Good luck!

Craigs list is great. Some cities also have plant donation sites. One other thought...Whenever I feel badly about putting a plant into my city yard waste bin, I tell myself the plant is not lost. It is only transformed. It will contribute to making someone some great compost. Thank you for starting this thread and best wishes.

Bonnie

I can see we would have some fun shopping together! I have a couple of favorite thrift stores, but am purposely staying out for a while. (I love white hob nail milk glass and have a nice collection)

I have 4 pass along roses that came to me from a neighbor who hates to see the waste as well.

I now realize I want that space for different roses so I am going to dig up and...Pass them along again to a young couple with a zero dollar garden budget. I may end up digging holes coming and going...lol

I have some Icebergs that I would like to replace with those new Chinas I want, but the Icebergs do great in the shade and since these are ownroots, I have no problem digging them up and moving them to the shade.

Even the HT's I bought as filler are getting moved where they will be too tight, but easy for mom to pick a bouquet. I feel better about that than tossing in the trash and mom is looking forward to it as well.

Hurray for Craig's list.

My Rose Society has a rose raffle each year. Everyone brings the roses they no longer have use for. Some root their own roses and bring extras. It's great and it raises money for the Society. We also do a plant swap and people bring roses to meetings and we either raffle them or have a quiz contest. So maybe contact your local society to see if they will take some.

But if you are like me, you will probably come home with more roses than you bring :)

I'm the worst at hanging on to duds. I have a bunch of one cane wonders that should have gone a long time ago. Problem is they survive my harsh winters. When so many of my favorites succumb to the cold how can I doom these poor guys who, despite the odds, make it through each year. It's a conundrum. I'm working on it. My dream is to have a garden where every bush has at least THREE canes, lol!

Also any nearby garden clubs might be interested.

I live in the countryside and have been able to give away only a few roses. If they're really duds I also don't feel comfortable foisting them off on someone else. What I do is cut the rose down as far as possible and clip the branches as mulch around the remaining roses. I often throw the root ball under a large tea rose where it's hidden but will eventually benefit the rose. It helps me to know that I'm "recycling" while at the same time I'm doing my best to make the garden look as nice as I can, if not right now then at least hopefully for the next year.

Ingrid

I pot them up and give them away when they have buds and are about to bloom.

This post was edited by zack_lau on Mon, Nov 10, 14 at 16:25

From one pack rat to another - I get it. However, if I swapped out roses after only one growing season, doubt I'd have any successful roses at all. Agree with Ninkasi that your young roses likely need more time to settle in & mature. In my experience, young plants can & do change their bloom & growth habits & disease resistance routinely for the better as they grow older. Youngsters often have an awkward stage they outgrow. Leaves & stems become thicker, more plentiful & productive as the plant takes root & fills in. As this occurs, blooms typically become larger & more lasting & repeat more frequently. Roses picked for their fragrance often give only faint promise of that till they hit their stride, and blossom colors often become richer & more nuanced once a rose is well established. Many roses have outgrown bouts of black spot & fungal issues as their immune systems matured along with the rest. Vouching for this in my current & previous gardens under no-spray conditions in an equally hot & humid climate. Sometimes a plant needs help with a change of placement into more or less sun, further out from a wall, less crowding for better air circulation, mulch removal & fresh replacement to reduce overwintering fungal spores, watering routines or other operator issues. A detective hat comes in handy for these puzzles.

This depends on each variety coming into their own if the potential is there. Assume you chose your roses for that potential, based on photos & reviews of mature plants in similar climates & conditions, but you may not have a chance to see that in your garden if you don't give them time to live up to the praise that influenced your decisions. Lucky Westcoasters who can pick up roses in 15 gallons & more! The rest of us pretty much have to get them to that size ourselves, which takes time. A grafted, potted Golden Celebration didn't do much its first year but produce a few single blooms on droopy stems. The second year it concentrated on growing stems & leaves & gave two pretty but unimpressive flushes with scattered bloom between. The third year, existing canes grew in diameter & threw scads of laterals that arched gracefully & bloomed in magnificent upright clusters continuously from early till late. As the stature of the plant improved, so did the bloom configuration, size, coloration, time from opening to petal fall & perfume punch. If I'd given up on it before then, it couldn't have become such a delight. Planted center stage, it said "look at me!" for those couple of years there wasn't much to see. It had modest breakouts of blackspot it outgrew in its second year. Even grafted, potted Easy Does It, a stellar & prolific rose here, didn't become a bushy powerhouse until deep into its second year. I've grown duds, too (haven't we all?) that mainly suicided. Sometimes I figured it was just that particular example & succeeded with a replacement. Some became giveaways only to thrive in other gardens. Keep in mind there's plenty of untapped growing space in this garden & I tend to plant with mature size in mind rather than closely spaced, along with perennial companions, but that's me. Wasn't always so. In rented homes, grew roses in ever larger pots & still sometimes audition them for the garden that way as well as growing some perpetually in pots placed here & there. With roses, there's always more to tweak & learn about each idividual.

Many of the potted roses available here are trucked in from states where the growing season begins earlier, often in full bud & bloom a few weeks before garden roses here reach that stage. Many of those have done well for me. Local garden centers which buy & pot bareroots sometimes use greenhouses in combination with pushing the plants with heavy growth promoters - forcing out of season. Those plants look great when purchased but often flag as the weather heats up & can disappoint. I've learned which garden centers use this method & don't buy roses from them. Such roses recover with gentle care but can be more troublesome the first year. Perhaps some of your roses fall into this category? If so, you may very well find them with more solid health next year after their Winter rest.

You're aware this late in the year isn't ideal for giving away plants or for planting. Next Spring you'll have gardeners lined up to take them off your hands if you decide that's the way to go. You might even dig & pot this year's roses then & keep them a while to see how they do, on the nothing ventured, nothing gained principle, knowing you can donate or Craigslist them later. In the meantime, you might pick the brains of those here about the varieties you have & their experience with them as they matured under similar conditions. Winter is for pondering what else you might change about their beds or spacing or other variables that could positively influence their health, which is the foundation for other good qualities to shine. And your current roses may go on to happily surprise you in the new year...

This post was edited by vasue on Mon, Nov 10, 14 at 15:38

Not any more. I used to try to save every plant. Now that I've gardened quite a long time--if they are duds, they are duds. Outta here.

I'm lucky in that I have neighbors on every side of me that I've enabled into rose growing, and they're happy with whatever I may be able to pass along. For instance, when I have extras of some of the Rogue Valley free roses, I hand them over with an indication of what to expect from the rose.

I totally admit to being a packrat myself, mostly because I HATE to dig up a rose, particularly if it has survived our winters. Like Seil, I have some one-cane wonders but I prefer to treat that as an opportunity to plant a more well-branched rose nearby and let that one cane speak for itself with blooms whenever the spirit moves. I figure our winters do enough pruning out of the weaklings for the most part.

However, this spring I'm resolved to finally dig out two roses that annoy me in my yard, the final criterion for getting motivated enough to move them: Fimbriata, and ironically - Rountuit (just getting "round to" moving this one). Both are large unenthusiastic once-bloomers for maybe two weeks, and I'd rather try some fun big Noisettes or something else in their place. Fortunately for me, the neighbors just to my east have given me free permission to plant anything in their part shade area, and they need some height at the back of that area. Since these roses don't bloom very often, they'll provide a nice backdrop to other plants that do bloom, and I don't have to throw them out.

I'm an inveterate recycler of just about anything else I get rid of, so these types of suggestions on this thread are right up my alley.

Cynthia

I am very happy to see that I am not alone in my compulsion to hold on to every single plant I buy! I loved reading all your responses, hearing so many outlooks on this topic helps to put it in to perspective for me.

Vasue & Ninkasi you raise very good points, ones that I have considered during my pondering this topic, but VERY good points none the less. I definitely have not given these roses enough time to establish themselves fully. I know it takes a few years for a rose to really become established and really show me what they've got, it's just that I fear that with some of them, the aspects that I find undesirable are not going to change to a dramatic enough degree to warrant keeping them. I do have a few favorites (golden celebration for example) that spotted badly this year, and/or who can't hold their flowers up to save their lives that I will be keeping in hopes that they will improve with age.

I think that my real problem here is that I started purchasing plants before I really knew what I wanted, I had only just started learning about roses at the time, I didn't know where to buy good roses, I knew little to nothing about disease resistance, and I knew absolutely nothing about Antique roses, which have now become some of my favorites. I really didn't have any color scheme, or garden plan in mind, so I just started buying things I thought were pretty, & in doing that I ended up with a big ol' hodgepodge of roses, and a few of these I've decided are just not to my taste. A good example of this would be one of the first rose purchases I made - Rio Samba , for me it is a very quick growing, rapid blooming hybrid tea that holds it's flowers forever, it sounds ideal, but the summer heat revealed something about the blooms I just don't like, they start out yellow tipped in orange (maybe too neon for some, but I like it) but as they age in the summer heat they quickly turn into an ugly, blotchy watermelon pink that I just really don't like. I didn't see that coming, but now that I know about HMF, and Garden Web I have able to put more research into my more recent purchases before I made them, AND I can now find the best place to buy them when I do decide what I want. (oh how I love thee Antique Rose Emporium, Heirloom, Roses Unlimited, and Help Me Find)

The good news is I think I found a solution for my problem, I have convinced my Dad to let me plant my unwanted plants in his backyard. (He really went for the idea after I told him I'd dig all the holes! haha) I am so happy about this solution because it means I will still be able to go visit the roses and see their progress, and to help care for them when I have the extra time. Also the fact that he will be able to enjoy them whenever he ventures out back makes me feel much better about my own over-purchasing (read: overspending) this year. He won't care as much about a little blackspot because these roses won't have enough visibility in his large yard to matter as much, and he will have more room to space them out, so that will hopefully improve their BS. I don't know why I didn't think of this before!

I really need to look up my local Rose society, I don't know much about how those organizations work, as I have never been a part of one. It seems as though the Tennessee Rose Society's website has not been maintained, so I'm not sure where to find any information on it.

Kippy, I am sure that we would be best shopping buds if we ever had the chance! I adore thrifting and antiquing, and I have a few small collections to show for it as well (vintage clothes, green depression era glass, 50s-60s sewing patterns, any sort of kitchy 50's floral motif I can find, etc, etc,) I have had to keep myself away from these stores as of late because my house is getting way too full. Oh, but it's so fun!

Thank you all again for your kind words!

Jessica.

This post was edited by Dinglehopp3r on Tue, Nov 11, 14 at 18:53

Each year I keep a list of underachievers. This is one of the tools I use in deciding to remove a rose bush, especially when a rose repeatedly appears on the list. I also put the reason(s) why it's on this list.

Luckily I have a friend who takes all mine... Some I give to my mom also...
That way I can see how they perform each year... Do they get worse? Get better? That kinda stuff...

I have no trouble getting rid of roses that do not perform to my expectations...lol

This post was edited by jim1961 on Tue, Nov 11, 14 at 21:15

Guess I'm sort of like Hoovb & Jim1961. In my case I'm a minimalist so if they aren't great in our garden they've got to go, go, go!!! hehe ;) Love that so many of you are compassionate, sharing gardeners. :-)

This post was edited by dove_song on Wed, Nov 12, 14 at 16:31

I would love to get rid of a few roses in my gardens especially the ones who seem to be struggling and are BS magnets. But I could never do it because I feel like it has the right to live. I will do a re-assessment this spring when I really need the space.

Great option to annex your Dad's backyard! My assumption that you researched before rather than after your initial purchases was influenced by seeing you here asking so many good questions - and way off. Began years ago just like you in an enthusiastic kid-in-the-candy-shop splurge. Regional performance info was hard to come by then & skewed by traditional disease control methods I was unwilling to practice. The local ARS chapter focused on exhibition at the time, rather than my interest in roses as garden plants, so wasn't much help. Still have years of ARS Annuals stashed away along with catalogs & softback editions on rose growing (pack rat!) that offered few clues to whether a particular rose might grow well for me, as well as shelves of volumes stretching into the 1800's in an information quest that cast a wide net. The internet's streamlining of this process (including translating!) allows us to peek into gardens around the world now & become acquainted with the wonderful folks who create & tend them. Compared to the wayback, what a wonder! Especially here, where the rubber meets the road in each individual garden.

Uhmm, I always have a list before I go rose shopping in the spring. All the research done in the winter for the preparation of spring shopping. Do I stick to the list? Nope...lol.

I did have an impulse buy this spring, Drop Dead Red. I bought it for my sister who loves the show Drop Dead Diva. It is a surprisingly great rose. I end up really liking this rose.

There were roses everywhere when we bought this house, and we have been removing them one by one and giving them to friends. One friend lives on a street called Rose Circle, or something like that, and she has been good about taking the unwanted roses off our hands. I have been replacing the roses with drought tolerant plants, such as succulents and cacti, which I much prefer. Still, some roses still come back from roots that we were unable to remove, and so it is an ongoing process to get rid of them. We have kept one rose bush in the front yard that makes white flowers, and it seems to bloom all year, which is why we kept it. Also, the white flowers go better with our color schemes than the pink ones. We are trying to get rid of the pink that we inherited with the house. The first thing to go was an ornamental peach tree that attracted possums. We have replaced that with banana and heliconia - not drought tolerant plants, but they work with our existing watering system.

I have a hard time throwing out orchid cuttings, but we have too many epidendrum in the back yard and no place to put all of them. I also have a bit of a hard time throwing out bromeliad cuttings, but I have no trouble at all throwing out roses, as the thorns are quite nasty. Some of the bromeliads are nasty also, and so I do not feel bad about throwing those out.

If it pricks you, do not feel bad about throwing it out is my philosophy. It's nice when you can find homes for unwanted plants, but it is not nice to keep something that is getting in your way.

Funny, because I just cut down a 20+ foot San Pedro Cactus because I don't like it's spikes (they can go right through a trash can fyi.....never had a rose do that...yet)

I deeply sympathize but after gardening for 20 years in my present garden I am getting more thickskinned. I give a rose at least 4 years (I live in Sweden where the climate is harsh), often much more. But I have started culling non-performers and roses I don't much like sooner now. I still have enough space for roses but I am beginning to want other plants, too, more ornamental trees and shrubs, evergreens and large perennials. I hang on longest to roses from friends, it feels like a betrayal to get rid of them, however bad the plants. This New Dawn, an old clone, promises to be a keeper though. I got it and the little white rose in the background (a foundling, may be La Neige) from a friend.

It depends on the rose and the reason I wants it gone for me. If the plant is marked for removal due to excessive disease and such, then I just compost it because I can't see heaving a bad plant onto other people. Especially considering that I don't have any experienced rose folk around to give them to. Others that are good plants, but I want to remove them just to have space for something else, usually end up sitting around so long that I forget why I wanted to get rid of it and it stays. I'm lazy like that. If I happen to actually dig the plant up, I almost always pot it up...where it sits forever till I find a new place for it. :)