It's not a matter of the number of roses, it's the matter of the number on the water bill.

I have between 130 & 150 roses and that's were it will stay as I have a smaller city lot. I intentionally bought a house with this lot size 9 years ago because I saw several garden friends overwhelm themselves because they had a large lot & there was always room to add some new plants or a new bed.

Well water, so just electricity for me. WHOPPEE.

I have right around 100 and there are still a few that I would love if I had the space. I'm always eyeballing the current residents for future rose space. lol

I have 206 different roses on my half acre, and mass plantings of some of the smaller varieties. I think it's more than enough although water is no problem here. If it doesn't rain enough mains water is cheap. But I don't have time to look after my roses as I should wish with our short growing season. I'll probably get rid of some of my roses in the next few years and I have no roses on my wish list at present. I'm sure there will be, though.

A few years ago, I had around 150. This year I had 124 and now 111 after shovel pruning the underachievers or problem bushes. Currently, I have 4 new roses ordered for 2013. My problem is that I run out of "me." Last season was so hot and dry that it would take me 1 1/2 hours to manually water. That's a long time to hold a water wand. It seemed like I was spraying several times a week, e.g. thrips, BS and BS, spidermites, and powdery mildew. Whenever I cut roses, I seal the canes and that's a lot of work, too. However, I LOVE IT! My goal is to aim for around 100 eventually and "try" to keep it under 120 for now.

I have about 120 roses and about 80 of my own seedlings so I'm at the 200 mark. It's really not a matter of the number for me but more about how many can I care for comfortably. I've gotten to the point where I'm maxed out on the time and energy I have to actually give them the care they need so I'm looking to start cutting back. I culled about 70 seedlings this summer and there are around 10 or 15 roses I'm thinking of ditching. They're not great performers and I'm tired of spending time on them. You'll know when you've reached your max out point and the numbers will slowly decline to something more comfortable for you when that happens.

I have over 200 roses at my big old house on 40 acres. I just downsized and bought a very small house with a small fenced yard in a village, conveniently close to work. Now I have to downsize the gardens big time - and I'm glad. I had ordered and ordered roses year after year until the gardens at my other house were so large, so time consuming that it was no longer fun to maintain them. That's the important thing: if it's still fun, there is no "magic number." Everyone is different when it comes to spare time, physical ability, space and budget. Now I am going to spend this winter planning out new beds and which roses I will dig up in spring to move over here. I'm thinking with all the shade at one end of the yard, I will end up with space for about 30 of my best roses, plus my favorite perennials. I want to be able to sit and enjoy my gardens once again, not continuously slave in them which is how I felt the last few years. I still love roses, but that greed to always have more and more and try out the latest has passed for me, thankfully!

After my Spring orders come in I will be at 105! I got my first one in July so this has grown quickly! I just finished measuring and figuring out places for my spring order (65 roses) tonight and still have a little bit of space left! We shall see whether I am this excited next year when I have to take care of it all, being home only on the weekends due to work. All of mine are hybrid teas, small austins, minis, and small floribundas due to having a small city lot of a fourth of an acre.

I have about 450 and I'm aiming at 1000. I have 1.5 acres and am on a well. Nearly all of mine are OGR and mine is a no-spray garden, so it is a lot less work. My approach is rather Darwinian. If they can't survive in my garden with minimal care, they go.

I have about 25 and may get 2 or 3 more. They're in mixed beds with other shrubs and flowers, not in straight rows with nothing else. Most of mine are OGR or own -root, chosen for disease resistance and appearance of the plant, not just for flower production.

All is relative isn't it. I'm a little afraid of myself, and my new zealousness for adding new roses. I was pretty sane at around 80, quite committed to not adding more. Then I must have sat on a bug or something, and suddenly - more, more, more. It's tough to know where the passion ends and the addiction begins.

Seil - your story sounds like what I'm expecting. I'm trying my hand at my first 10 cuttings, and have umteen hips in the fridge with plans to start some seeds. Ultimate goal is to try my hand at hybridizing. Perhaps this will become a passion, or perhaps it'll fizzle out and won't add yet another 100 to the garden, time will tell.

Also tough heading into winter - ultimately no maintenance, and only a few blooms (yup, know I'm lucky to have blooms!). April when the explosion comes will be an interesting time. Last April I think I had around 70. This April will be 110. I think I'm convincing myself to hold off on ordering for the winter, but I don't think I'll be able to bypass some of the body bags coming soon.

I have around 120 and that does not count the ones I have multiples of. If I cut down my peach tree I can plant a few more. If the seasons stay shifted and we keep getting cool springs, my early peach will never get any sugar in the fruit. I admired my neighbor's tree for years and when I finally grafted a piece of his tree and grew it into a decent sized tree, the doggone weather changed! So it's going to be removed or else some big climbing rose will be sent into it. I do like the peach flowers in springtime.

This is probably the number I can care for on my own. I don't have a big property where I can let them go wild. I have to keep them off the path. There isn't another plant I'd spend money watering except another camellia and my camellia addiction is only curbed by the fact that I am unwilling to give up sunny rose growing space to build shade structures to have more camellias.

It doesn't help living with my sister because when I say ...." we could remove this one and have a new DA rose to try"..then she says that we couldn't possibly give up THAT one and so I don't see myself going back under 100 roses.

Right now both my big green waste containers are full every week and I rent a trailer for spring cleanup and mulching. Without help, I think I have hit my limit.

I have about 1.5 acres and around 500! It rains enough here, so the water bill isn't much of an issue except for my pot ghetto, but my water bill never gets over $40/month. I also don't grow a lot of "high maintence" roses such as HTs, I'm more into the old roses and shrub roses, so that saves me a lot on feeding and pruning. My theory is, if it takes me babying a certain variety, then I wasn't meant to have it! I also can't sit still EVER, and it gives me sometihng to do without going out and spending money (well, I buy mine online so I guess I do spend money...just at home lol). I think it just depends more on the person and their land...if you have the need to get more...go for it!!!

Tammy

When I lived in Fl my garden topped out at about 180 bushs. All on fortuniana root stock. A little bit of everything. When I retired and moved up here 4 yrs ago I promised myself to never let it get bigger then 90 total bushs. I still grow a little bit of everything going a little heavy on the HT's (35). I enjoy taking care of the garden. Hand water everything. I know EXACTLY what is going on with every bush. If I introduce any new roes to the garden, somebody has to go and I'm pretty happy with everything right now. Out of all the new rose intros over the past couple of yrs, only Austins Munstead Wood and the orange one they introduced this year have caught my interest. I can cram them into the OGR/shrub bed I have.

We have about 350 varieties, maybe 500 plants, and another 78 coming if they don't die in transit (we're having shipping difficulties). I'm another Darwinian gardener of old roses, so no spraying, and no watering after the first year. I'm feeling my limit approaching, not space, not water, but maintenance time and my husband's and my age, as I'm well into middle age and he'll be eighty before too many more years have passed. I think I might settle for about 500-550 rose varieties, almost all old roses or older kinds, and perhaps 700-800 plants. This could easily become too many to maintain, but that's a problem for later. I doubt I'll ever stop buying new roses, but suspect that the push to acquire them in quantity is going to last only a couple more years. After that I think that I'll be happy to get to know my roses better, add other kinds of plants, work in the garden, refine the garden design, for as long as I'm able to.

I thought about just not answering this question. I am growing over 1200 roses here. It's beyond a hobby. It is my life's work. I work in the garden full time. It's what I do and I do very little else. Am I OK? There are times when I feel overwhelmed. I don't have the strength that I had 10 years ago. Mostly though I'm thrilled with it all. We have our own water. Mulch keeps the weeds down. We do our best to save on ammendments. There are worse ways to spend time and money.

I'm glad you answered, Mendocino_rose. I love hearing each persons perspectives. Are you "ok"? You're probably mentally and physically healthier than "most"! What each one of us get from working with our roses - I don't think most anyone outside of "our society" can understand. And to have this passion that enables us to be physical and outside - people buy treadmills, or stand in crowded rooms with a bunch of other sweaty people (yuck) trying to get the exercise we get as a side benefit for enjoying the passion we do.

And catsrose - I'm intrigued at your statement of "aiming at 1000". Would you care to elaborate?

I have about 130 roses and after I plant the roses Kim brought to me, I probably won't add any more. Once my WATCH LIST on HMF reached 100 roses, I realized that I will never have time and room to plant all of the roses I think I would like to add to this garden and that it was time to tame my rose lust.

I'll be removing some roses to make room for the new roses, but like Pam, I am beginning to notice that I am working in an older body and just can't do as much as I could 10 years ago. Gardening on four levels has made me stronger than many of my contemporaries, but hauling mulch that I have gone out and gathered from the forest up from the street level to the rose garden level and rose debris down out of the garden is getting harder. I don't want to work that hard. I want to enjoy my time out in the garden.

I don't really need more roses. It's time to start tweaking the garden to make it look more finished to my eye and to remove the roses that simply don't thrive in this climate.

Smiles,
Lyn

I don't think I've ever had more that about 90 roses and now have fewer, the constraints being water and my very low energy level. If my husband didn't dig the holes and plant the roses I would have no rose garden. I went through a period of insatiable lust to try many different roses but, after many failures, mostly due to my very hot microclimate, I'm content to have fewer roses and to be very picky about what stays in my garden. If I must have a certain variety, another rose will have to go. I've recently ordered Young Lycidas, which will be planted where I now have Lavender Simplicity, which has lovely flowers at certain times of the year but is overall not satisfactory.

So much depends on your own unique circumstances. Your own instincts about what works for you at any given time are the best guide, I think, no matter what anyone else has. If it becomes too much you'll realize it and cut down, but the main thing is to follow your dream and do what's right for you at any particular moment in your life. Change is the one constant in life, but that's what keeps it challenging and exciting.

Ingrid

For those of us with limited space or resources, I think that eventually the garden becomes more and more finely perfected as only the top performers remain. My garden has looked better and better as the unsuitable plants were pushed out or there was another rose that was the same color but a better grower/bloomer. The small garden becomes ever richer as we squeeze in another kind of companion plant or groundcover. I have moved roses around to their best locations and near to other roses of the same growth type or color.

I would love to have my own water or abundant water from the sky and enough space to plant as many as possible and just let them get large. Hooray for every one of you who can do it. We need rose gardens like that in the world where everyone can see what the roses can do with enough time and space.

My little garden is a big bouquet in a neighborhood filled with customary lawns and lopsided clipped shrubs and oddly trimmed trees. People tell me they miss the roses when pruning time comes, so I always plant a big bed of annuals out by the street in January. Gardens give joy no matter how big or small they are.

Oh yes, Harmony - this is totally subjective and often very far from rational. I have about 100 roses and am quite content with this number.....but, this contentment is massively variable, does not always manifest itself and even lurches over into disatisfaction and sometimes despair. At present, my situation is in a sort of limbo so it has been quite easy to call a halt on rose (or any other plant) aquisition as the future looks distinctly random. This reticence is most unusual as I can generally ignore all the main reasons for not adding more roses - certainly lack of space or money has proved no barrier whatsoever to plant addiction - if there is no room in my garden, I badger friends, family and even customers to squeeze in this or that ....and I am afraid to say that I am a shameless propagator too. In a triumph of hope over experience, I cock it up every year so that caring for certain plants turns into nightmare drudgery - 60 tomato cordons are 20 too many. The fruit bushes I blithely planted willy-nilly require hours and hours of scrabbling about picking minuscule berries, then even more moiling and toiling over boiling jam and on and on, trapped in a Stepford housewife 50's fantasy.....
There definitely seems to be a sort of tipping point around 100 (where a lot of us hover)where the collecting bug starts to tahe precedence (think about professional help now!) and the numbers get really big until someone like Mendocino changes up a whole level and the collection becomes art, total committment, a way of life. Being too stretched to do a proper job is a wretched situation but roses, or at least the ones I grow, tend to be more easy-care than most plants and could generally survive total neglect - unlike, for example, the insane amounts of sweet peas I stupidly started (an endless hell of tying in and deadheading). Still, death is an effective limiting factor - I see a high attrition rate owing to my (ahem) 'care regime' so a sort of equilibrium obtains. Momentarily.

In my suburban Chicago lot, I have 75....from everywhere and of every type. Pots, tree roses, shrubs, ht's, climbers, ramblers, minis, etc. I buy them from anywhere, the expensive imports to the grocery store minis. I have the odd and rare to the commonplace. I think I am being looked upon as the crazy rose lady on the block as I also live in a traditional suburb. I believe the kids in the neighborhood refer to me as "The FlowerLady" !! Delivery people always know my home and people have actually asked me if my potted trees are for sale. My lawn service tells me I have the most beautiful yard in town. My neighborhood is upscale but I can always be found in the yard in rubber shoes. I apologize to my neighbors on alfalfa days. It is a tangled , random, lovely, mess that cars slow down to look at. I WANT MORE.

post photos!

rose hoarders