This is her first year in my yard, and I love her. She only has PM, but most of my roses (and everything else) have it because of the lack of rain. I've spray sporadically this year and she hasn't shown any bs or other disease.

Your pictures don't look like a diseased rose, some PM

Buford the rust is in stage 1, orange spots ...you can see some on the leaves in the second picture bottom right. You can Also see the yellowing leaves at the bottom of the first picture (caused by BS) That you can see if you enlarge the picture.. I have pictures of the antrachnose spots too. So the diseases do not show very clearly on the pictures I posted. Only the light PM attack is clearly visible, but like you said so many roses gets that and that is controllable. But I know that a rose that already have 4 fungal diseases at once will not be a keeper in my garden. They will need more spraying and care than I am willing to accept for the roses in my cutting garden.

Compared to some of my roses right now, it looks beautiful. I know it's not what you intended, but I actually enjoyed your photo very much.

Randy

I dunno Cupshaped -- I've seen several Austins look MUCH worse than that in my garden.

Jeri

We tend to be our own worst critics.

I think you are right abot the diagnosis of ME. I demand more from a cultivar that is marketed as "Healthy" and then in my garden turn out to be susceptible to 4 fungal diseases ...all at once. In my book that is pretty bad performance...

Sure if it had a fragrance to die for (Like Gertrude Jekyll) or was exceptional beautiful (like James Galway) as floriferous as John Clare (many hundreds flowers on each bush each bloom cycle) Then I would nurse the rose like a ICU patient!!!
I look for roses with good disease resistance or tolerable disease resistance if sprayed (the way I grow it in my garden/climate). So my conclusion is that Sophys rose does not meet those criteria. What particularly worries me is the rust... cultivars that show stage 1 rust has to be remowed ( I grow nearly 600 rosebushes in my cutting garden) since I have seen rust spread like wildfire....

So yes I demand a lot from the cultivars I grow ... they better have good/tolerable disease resistance or they will get showelpruned like Sophys Rose got this morning. Euthanasia can be justified in a world with so many good roses :-)

Mine's in an overflow bed where it's never been sprayed. And right now, it's healthy and blooming well.

I find it a very reliable repeater with above average disease resistance. It's a nice size and color also.

That quartet of diseases would describe almost all Austins roses except for English Garden in my climate. I've stopped experimenting. Oh, I have Heritage and Tamora, which are on probation. Golden Celebration is a blackspotted disaster, leaving, maybe today. I'm in the mood to hack something up.

> I've stopped experimenting.

*** So have we.
Few Austins left here, now, and fewer every year.

Jeri

"I'm in the mood to hack something up."

LOL. Go for it. Maybe I'll go after Abe Darby this week; every flower has been blighted despite a dry blooming season, and I rarely get a clean flower from him in this climate. Austins have had a high shovelprune rate for me. Heritage was great but came down with bacterial blight, and I'm already heavy on the blush roses. I'm delighted with WS2000 so far, though.

Rich E. here in town grows superb Austins with state-of-the-art fungicides and full sun. But the several Austins planted in no-spray public gardens here have been wretched, except for Teasing Georgia. I think they have a distinct niche in zone 6, where they are likely to be hardier than Chinese OGR, to repeat better than European OGR, and to have better flowers than most modern shrubs. And I guess there has been progress toward better disease resistance over the past ten years. I just didn't choose the best ones.

I have Heritage and Graham Thomas. I took cuttings of GT then SP'd it last June. I planted one of the cuttings this spring and it is doing well so far. It used to get BS every year, but it was a grafted rose. I am hoping it will do a bit better as an 'own root' rose. I am going to SP Heritage in a week or so. It always gets BS and rust, but I do love the blooms. I will take cuttings, and hopefully, in a year or two, I will have a new spot for it. Of course, I will probably reserve any new spot for a real OGR, so Heritage may never surface again in my garden. I guess we just tend to outgrow certain roses, because I always loved Heritage. Now, I just do not love it as much as my other roses.