You've convinced me. Next Spring I'm going to plant a row of light pink Roses! That color is by far my favorite.

Rita, your roses are so beautiful. I have always loved roses so much. I wish I could transport myself there for just a little while.

Sue

Rita,
The roses are beautiful. How close together do you plant your bushes. I love the effect of them being close together. Okay what is the name of dark purple rose on the gallery pictures???? I've got to have it! It is really purple!
kay

I plant my roses in groups 12-18 inches apart. Then I leave room around the entire grouping. Groupings will be at least two rows and often three. So you can reach the middle ones from either side. This means I have to do alot of prunning especiaaly in the spring. If you are consideriing some of the space hog Austins, this will not work as they sprawl too much.

I will have to go look tomorrow as I can not remember the name of the purple rose. It really is purple but the flowers are very small.

Rita,
I don't know, but I've heard that Austins often don't do well in the south. Purple is purple, small flower or large.
kay

I used to have more Austins. These days I have very few. I shoveled prunned most of them (tossed them out of the garden). Darn things want to get big. Not allowed in my garden. The flowers blow in 3 days. Many of them take forever to repeat. I probaly will get flamed for saying pubicly that I think Austins are over rated. Oh well. Lots of people do just love them. There are better roses out there, like the Clements roses. But like lots of things in life this is only my opinion.

New Orleans is fabulous, but Louise Clements is that one that steals my heart.

Rita, how long do the Clements roses last for you?
Renee

I don't know that I ever thought about it but its the same as the floribundas. A heck of a lot longer than Austins which blow in three days here. I get the clements roses as bands at Heirloom and they grow quickly for me.

That purple rose in the gallery pictures is MIDNIGHT BLUE. I got it fall from Amity.

Correction- That last picture is TAMORA. I don't know were my brain was yesterday when I mislabeled that rose. I did used to have SHARIFA but shovel prunned her because she had rose mosiac virus really, really badly. Anyway TAMORA is one of the few Austins I have left because it doesn't want to grow overly large and the flowers are so beautiful. For instance, I used to have Austin rose GOLDEN CELEBRATION. I really beautiful rose. But it wants to get big, is very slow to repeat and again blows fast. I replaced it with a Jackson and Perkins English style rose called GOLDEN ZEST. You can just see afew flowers of GOLDEN ZEST (yellow) sneeking into the LOUISE CLEMENTS picture above. It has none of the problems GOLDEN CELEBRATION had.