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cjrosaphile

Recommend Old Roses for Rainy Zone 8

cjrosaphile
13 years ago

I'm now getting interested in some old roses but am not sure which ones would do best in the rainy Willamette Valley. I love fragrance and disease resistancy. Thoughts?

Comments (7)

  • lucretia1
    13 years ago

    Ones that have done well in my no-spray garden and smell great:

    Rose de Rescht. Repeat bloomer, gorgeous plant, with deep blue-green, healthy foliage. The photos don't do it justice--the blossoms almost glow.

    Felicite Parmentier: Once-blooming alba, beautiful pink blossoms, smells FANTASTIC, healthy.

    Belle de Crecy: once-blooming gallica, great healthy plant, smells wonderful, and amazing color.

    Duchesse de Montebello: once blooming gallica, pretty pale pink flowers, healthy plant, might be my favorite fragrance of the roses in my garden. Smells like petit fours should taste and never do.

    Celine Forestier does very well for me, is a gorgeous yellow, and I love the smell. My husband gets no smell from it at all, but he can smell all the others. It's in a protected spot in my yard--it's supposed to be cold sensitive.

    If you don't mind once bloomers, gallicas are hard to beat.

  • luxrosa
    13 years ago

    My mother grew "Mlle. Cecille Brunner" in Seattle in her no-spray garden and it was the first Old Rose I fell in love with.
    I'd grow Spray Cecille Brunner" if I had room, where I live near San Francisco it gets to be c. 8 feet tall by 6 feet wide and produces longer bloom cycles than either the original type that is c. 5 feet tall, or any of the climbing forms.
    Fragrance is sweet and like a damask rose with a hint of black pepper at the finish.
    Foliage is lush and beautiful.

    in general in a cool rainy climate :
    -the disease most prevalent will be powdery mildew, followed by blackspot in the warmer summer months.
    -roses that open best are those with 30 or fewer petals.
    Many Noisette roses are more resistant to p.m. than many roses of the China class I've grown.
    we grow these no-spray:
    "Lamarque" very healthy where conditions favor p.m. and an abundant bloomer in our no-spray garden.
    Reve d'Or
    "Crepescule"
    Alba Semi-Plena is nearly bulletproof for disease resistance and I love its' golden boss, blue-green leaves, and light but wonderful scent of bloom.

    Luxrosa

  • melissa_thefarm
    13 years ago

    The once-blooming European old roses did well for me in my Olympia, Washington garden. I had Albas, Gallicas, Centifolias, and Mosses--I ran out of room before I got to the Damasks and can't comment on them. I loved these roses, still do, and the longer I grew them the more of them I got. I didn't mind the once flowering, since I also had repeat-blooming roses, but there is a risk with once-bloomers that extremely heavy rains at the wrong time will knock out the year's flowering. This happened to me once in nine years. But I think it's well worth taking a chance. I didn't spray.
    I agree with the suggestion of 'Spray Cecile Brunner' and also like Lucretia's roses. I suspect the Hybrid Musks would do extremely well for you, as they like the cooler and moister parts of the garden here and flower beautifully in those conditions. Examples are 'Cornelia', 'Buff Beauty', 'Vanity', 'Francesca', 'Kathleen'. These make good-sized shrubs or contained climbers and are fragrant and repeat-flowering. I also had a rampant once-blooming species musk rambler in Olympia, but I don't know its name as it arrived mislabeled. It may have been Rosa brunonii.
    Other gardeners will have to advise you about large-flowered repeat-blooming fragrant old roses on contained shrubs, as I'm not knowledgeable about them in your growing conditions.
    Good luck!
    Melissa

  • musings_cox_net
    12 years ago

    I don't have an agricultural chart in front of me, but does Zone 8 cover Washington state? I'm in Zone 8 on the east coast, mid-Atlantic Virginia, where we have high temps in the summer with both high humidity AND drought simultaneously! Black spot and aphids are both rampant here.
    Can anyone suggest some antique roses for my region?

  • michaelg
    12 years ago

    Cathy, USDA climate zones refer only to the annual low temperature and so encompass very different climates. Compared to eastern zone 8, Washington State zone 8 has cooler, drier summers, longer summer days, and a dark, rainy late fall, winter, and spring.

    Best OGRs for you will be teas, chinas, and noisettes, in the particular varieties recommended by people in your area.

  • jerijen
    12 years ago

    And she can likely be successful with many of the Hybrid Musks, as well -- I bet.

    Autumn Damask should do really well there for you, too.

    Jeri

  • nickelsmumz8
    12 years ago

    Buff Beauty is doing FANTASTICALLY well in my Portland yard. It's on an east facing fence. No spray, fed a couple times a year, pruned lightly if I get around to it, and it just pumps out flowers and grows fast.

    If Austins qualify, Abe Darby is also doing fantastically well on the same fence, about 15 feet down. It gets slightly more light (further from the house) and the same treatment.

    Abe gets some spotty leaves later in the season, but nothing to get upset about.

    My mutabilis in the front yard is in a too-shady spot, and has been sitting not doing much for about four years. This year it suddenly has some vigorous growth. In a better spot, it would obviously be much happier. Very healthy, just a slower grower.