22,152 Garden Web Discussions | Roses
Down hill is better. The roots shouldn't want to travel up hill to the bed to get water and nutrients. Although they might! I'd still make it as far as possible away from the roses though.
Yes, roses are "shrubs" but they are also bloomers. Where most other types of shrubs are not or only once a season bloomers. Those will take the rest of the whole season to store enough energy to produce next years bloom. For roses to bloom repeatedly they need food, a lot of food. If they don't get enough sun, water and nutrients they'll grow adequately but they may not bloom at all.
I don't know anything about the root structure of Cypress trees so I can't say but trees in general will spread roots as far as they can, and the easiest they can, to get what they want. A nice tilled, watered and fertilized rose bed will be very attractive to them.
maybe not the answer you are looking for, and you probably thought of this already, but what about putting the roses in containers? Yes, they would have to be big, but then you could monitor the water/food situation, and move them if the trees are blocking them too much. I am picturing it in my mind and it is sure beautiful, big pots of roses between the Italian cypress. You have such a good selection of terracotta there in Italy too.
So true, Cross! I never trust the company hype any more. Early on I fell for several of those ad campaigns only to find the roses didn't perform anything like they said. I don't even trust the photos! But I've found that HMF really does try to give a true description of the rose in question. And the comments on the photos posted by the gardeners themselves of their actual experiences with a rose are invaluable! That's why I try to post photos and comments regularly.
Thank you Jim, Carol and Sammy. Sammy, I do believe my Perfume Delights are doing fine, I do appreciate your post, some good info..
Carol, I can't remember if you already have Perfume Delight or not. I was looking back at some old pictures and came across one of my Perfume Delights in a container and it was loaded with buds and blooms. It helped me remember that when I had one in a container it really was an excellent bloomer.
This post was edited by Sara-Ann on Sun, Jun 8, 14 at 7:18
Olympiad planted last year has got everything right except fragrance. Firefighter in front was he runt before it went in the ground and then has grown like crazy. Chrysler Imperial started off good, got attacked by mildew and has been in a funk since. All the other HT have started another growth spurt.
Nick - Good luck with your Love Song, it is a beautiful rose and hopefully yours will do fine, I think you will really enjoy it, it's a good bloomer. Love your picture desertgarden. Boncrow, both of mine have good repeat bloom. This bloom was from my recent spring flush.
I have Vineyard Song! It is really cute and I love it. And the fragrance is very pleasant.
I guess must have I ordered it five or six years ago, I forgot from where, but it was a very very small band and didn't make it over the winter -- so I thought. A teeny- tiny little shoot must have survived, which I nurtured, not knowing what it was anymore, the label having disappeared. This spring I found what I thought was a rose seedling with tiny leaves growing in a pot and that I thought I would keep, just to see what it was. Lo and behold it this spring it had lovely fluffy, rosey-lilac flowers and was sweetly fragrant. I thought it was a mini-rose, perhaps, but didn't remember purchasing one. I would have remembered buying such an unusually fragrant mini rose. I compared it to Sweet Chariot, which I also have, and which is doing fine. Not that. When I investigated, thinking to transplant it from its pot to a permanent position, I found a woody twig under the soil from which it was growing and realized it had never been a seedling, and it was a ringer in all respects (except for its tininess) for Vineyard song. I can't really remember ordering it, but I have nurtured along several other twigs in pots that got injured over the winter in years gone by and lost their labels, subsequently. I thought were done for for sure: they are Autumn damask and The Nun -- they are also both now blooming still in their pots (abeit as rather small spindly plants). Strangely, this tough winter, which has been so hard on the hydrangeas, has not affected them. I guess they were all saved by the snow cover that lingered in the spot by the north-facing wall where they all winter over. No photo, alas.
I just had my first experience with canker. I had ordered a Rosa Gypsy Carnival from ebay because I could absolutley not find it any where. I thankfully planted it in a stone pot instead of putting it in my rose garden. It was an bare root rose and I did all the things you do when you plant a bare root rose. The canes began getting dark brown on the tips of the canes. I would prune it and come back a few days later and it had moved down the cane. I again pruned it back.. After only a few weeks it had taken over ever new bud that tried to form on the cane.. I think this was canker but since I had never dealth with it before I wasn't sure, but from what I read and how fast it was moving I wasn't taking any chances. I through it in the garbage, not the compost bin. Emptied out all the dirt in the pot in a area that nothing grows.. I cleaned out the expensive stone pot with a clorox. I hope this kills it because I would hate to destroy the pot. I guess leaving it in the hot sun to bake for a month will definitely kill it. I have heard that Rose Canker is almost impossible to kill if you can't control it with pruning. Please let me know if you have any expert advice
Don't kill the rose. Canker is not some exotic disease that spreads like wildfire. It is common and almost normal. Spores are in every rose garden and infections develop around wounds to the bark during cool damp weather. Cankers kill a patch of bark and then tend to go inactive as the weather warms. A traditional rule of thumb is to prune if the canker girdles over 1/2 of the diameter. I prune out larger cankers at spring pruning and then don't worry about it for the rest of the season.
Copper and sulfur fungicides are considered "organic."
Could be Marmara leaf cambium miner causing the problem.
Sactorose website (http://www.sactorose.org/rosebug/irosepests.htm) has great photo of the leaves being affected by a leaf miner. See optional link below.
Here is a link that might be useful: 
We had a rough winter across the U.S. If you read through past posts here you will find many many experienced rose growers lost roses over the winter. Many of us also had to cut back our roses far more than they are normally cut back due to dieback of the canes. I am guessing your landscaper noticed this was needed as well. I agree with the above posters. Patience, and stop fertilizing for now. Keep it watered, and mulch it if you can. I wouldn't fertilize it until it has had its first flush of flowers. It takes a rose a bit to recover, especially when it has to be cut down so much as the rose gains its energy through its leaves and it has less at the present time. If you would like you could post a picture so we can take a peek and see if there are any additional concerns.
There is a couple recent threads on this same subject.
That is (sawfly) rose slug damage cambel...
click below:
Here is a link that might be useful: Rose Slug thread
I just use the bamboo garden stakes. Find one the proper height for what you need. You don't want some giant unsightly stick out the top of the rose. Hold the branch up to the position you want it in and place the stake in the ground accordingly and twist tie the cane to it. Don't make the twist tie too tight though or you can damage the cane. I have to stake things all the time around here. It's never seemed to harm the roses.
The reason is, they have been in cold storage since November and are losing vitality. The mass marketers usually put on sales in June for this reason. Some of the plants will do OK, some will never break dormancy, and the odds get worse as the month progresses. Pots in semi-shade sounds like a good idea if you have hot, dry summers. Or mound the canes, or spray them with Wilt-pruf.
I second the wilt-pruf idea,
I've planted bare roots as late as July and had them survive. Not intentionally. I bought some large potted roses from HD on clearance and when I took them out of the pots all the dirt fell off. I doubt they had been in their pots for more than a week before being put out for sale. They were too inexpensive to bother returning them.
I cut off almost all the top growth, drenched the soil and mounded mulch on them for the first few weeks.
After a little research I am pretty sure what I have are paper wasps, they are a little longer and more slender than some photos of yellow jackets, and they don't really seem to be too aggressive, I tried photographing one that kept flying around and around my potted golden celebration (my rose with the most leaf damage) it was very obviously checking the undersides of leaves & it payed me no attention at all. It was kind of neat to see this in action, these bugs are obviously pretty intelligent and seem to remember finding the larvae in that area before. BUT don't get me wrong, even if this type of wasp is less aggressive than actual yellow jackets I am still terrified of these little critters. Especially after researching them and reading a few of those horror stories out there. I just hope I never happen upon these guys' nest, I don't see it anywhere on my porch or my yard, so hopefully it's in my neighbor's yard!
Michaelg, when you say yellow jackets usually don't do that until October, do you mean that they usually don't show their faces until that late in the year, or that they seem to be more aggressive around that period of time?
As I understand, the yellow jacket workers will not survive winter, so they become randomly aggressive in the fall, by way of teaching other species not to mess with yellow jackets. They are present all summer, with numbers increasing over the season. The nest is a burrow with an entrance 2-3" diameter in well drained soil, preferably on a bank or behind a retaining wall but sometimes in turf. They furiously defend the area near the nest.
Mud-daubing wasps are generally harmless, and paper wasps will sting only if antagonized.
Very nice roses! Strike it Rich really caught my attention! :)
I have paired the 2 grandifloras 'Strike It Rich' and 'About Face' next to each other on a western exposure where I had two huge 'Blue Muffin' viburnums that got out of hand for the space!! I am hoping that the two roses eventually get to about 5' high and about 3' wide. Yes, there will be space between them once they grow to maturity. Both were purchased from Roses Unlimited in April and I was lucky to have found them so late in the season. Most people who want a particular rose start ordering from online website in January/December to get their choices.