Thanks for sharing Christina! Very nice pics of your roses!
Looks like your off to a good start.

So many wonderful roses! Your Belinda's Dream is very beautiful even if it doesn't have much fragrance. I LOVE the bloom of Nimbus - very unusual color and I like the swirly shape too. How is the fragrance? Your PJPII looks great - mine are not opening yet:-(. Enjoy your roses.

Masha

That first picture took my breath away---

Your pictures are wonderful

What a treat---and of course I love Zeffy and her fragrance

Florence/Zeffy

Oh trust me...Belinda's Dream will most definitely have a fragrance once she matures. Mine is very fragrant and impossible to miss.

I must have Eden. Thanks for showing her to me. Or is it him (Pierre)?
Renee

I like the color of Nimbus as showing on my monitor. Maybe it will change when the weather warms?

Pope John Paul II is my favorite newer white. Nice picture!

Wow beautiful pics Christina! I love PJPII! Wish mine would do something. I can't wait to have blooms like that! And NIMBUS.... I loooove the oddballs. It's a great rose!

Beautiful and organic! There is no better two-in-one deal than that! LOL! Just lovely! You've got one of the best photos out of Rose de Recht that I've seen with its beautiful violet magenta. People love this rose, but it's not exactly an easy rose to take photos of I think. And Zephirine Drouhin is looking great! I always hear people say how she always gets tons of blackspot, and yours is doing so fantastic! I especially love your Belinda's Dream and Souvenir de la Malmaison.

Hi!

This is my first post that I looked at after our holiday. I've been away (Maui!!) for 2 weeks, and I'm rose starved. Still too cold here for roses to come out of the garage at night. So THANK YOU!! for the fix!!

I really like your Belinda's Dream photo. Looks incredible! Wow!!

I also like your Sweetness. Mine was new last year and was really disappointing - few blooms. What is yours like?

Thanks!
Carol

Thanks everyone for your nice and encouraging comments. It really makes me happy that I can share my roses here on GardenWeb with you all!

Jim, I can't wait for the peak of the spring flush. My oldest roses are three years in the ground and some of them have reached a decent size this year and are loaded with buds.

Masha, Nimbus has fragrance but you really can't call it overpowering ;-). But I noticed that almost all my new band varieties, which are supposed to have a strong fragrance and are flowering for the first time are rather mildly fragrant if at all. Maybe they need to be a little bit more mature before they can produce fragrance.

Florence, from the pics that I have posted in this thread Belinda's Dream is my favorite so I am happy that we are on the same page :-)! I am also amused that we are both under the spell of the fragrance of Zephirine Drouhin ;-).

Oh Jeff, how I love to read that your Belinda's Dream is really fragrant. I so hope mine gets there, too. I remember that some people said on GW that she is fragrant and others wished that she would smell more.

Renee, Eden Climbing is a great rose though I would like to tell you that some people on GardenWeb complain that this rose is not growing well for them, just to warn you. There were reports that the flowers are balling and that she can get rust. But I think this rose is so incredible beautiful that I definitively would give her a try. I have two plants and mine never balled. They did get some rust in autumn, but it was just a minor problem so Eden simply seems to like my garden. Regarding the name Eden Climbing/Pierre de Ronsard is actually him :-)!

Iris gal, the color of my Nimbus looks quite different from photos that I have seen of this rose, which I liked much more than mine. But again this is the very first flower of a band so the color may change (actually I hope so!).

Beth, I do wish for you that your PJPII starts to flower soon, it is really a great white HT. I can imagine that you love Nimbus. It is truly an oddball color ;-)!

Serena, it is very important to me to try to grow roses organically so I am glad that you noticed that. In my opinion organic fertilizers work perfectly, but I struggle a lot with fungal diseases especially powdery mildew. On some roses it is so bad that I am thinking about spraying but I didn't find a reasonable organic fungicide so far. I also have a lot of bugs like aphids, earwigs, caterpillars etc. on my roses, so my blooms are almost never perfect but I can live with the imperfections for the sake of nature and the environment. Regarding Zephirine Drouhin, SoCa is not really a black spot area, but as I said we have powdery mildew and rust problems. But as you noticed my ZD is very clean right now. She is three years old and seemed to have become more disease resistant over the time.

I am attaching two more shots:

Same flower of Belinda's Dream photographed from a different perspective. She reminds me of a ballerina tutu!

Bush shot of Pope John Paul II. Mine is a two year old own-root rose from Jackson & Perkins and I think that the rose is pretty vigorous and "full" looking.

Christina

I love your photos. Very interesting and unique, great roses. I love the color of Nimbus, too.
Kathy

Very Pretty I love your Pope John Paul it looks very healthy. I also have this rose and love it. A very easy rose to grow.
Carrie

Carol, I am happy that my rose photos could provide a rose fix for you after you came home from your vacation ;-). Maui is supposed to be really nice.
My Sweetness was also new to me last year and was only giving me a few gorgeous blooms in spring and after that no repeat. This year the bush looks much stronger already and the spring flush is quite good. Hope it will start to repeat after the first flush is over. Mine is an own-root rose from Jackson & Perkins, which just might take a little longer to get going. That and the fact that I have it in a little bit too shady location for a rose may have cause it to not repeat last year. I can't post a photo of the bush right now, but I will try to do it later so that you can see it for yourself.

Thanks, Kathy! Interesting that you love the color of Nimbus like other commentator here, too. I am still partial about it but I am anxiously waiting what the next flower will look like.

Carrie, I guess the Pope has a huge fan club :-)! It is good to know that it is easy to grow for you, since some Hybrid Teas are divas. My PJPII is only its second year with me, but so far I agree with your assessment of this rose.

Christina

Carol, hopefully you see this: here is the promised bush shot of Sweetness! I think for a two year old own-root rose it is doing well, even though the canes are still a little bit weak and therefore the large and heavy flowers nod sometimes. But this also could be due to the too shady planting location. I hope that when the rose matures it grows out of this problem and I am also considering to take out the huge Burgundy Iceberg rose to the right that is shading Sweetness and overpowering another rose on the other side.

Christina

Christina, the pic of Eden is wonderful!

Your garden is fabulous, wonderful blooms and pictures.

Oh wow!!!

Mine never looked that great!!!! I would only have one bloom at a time. Something great to look forward to.

Coincidentally (or not), my Sweetness might have had a little too much shade too.

Your Sweetness is AWESOME. Now I'm glad I bought that rose!!

Carol

Christina, these are really beautiful shots of some wonderful roses. I have to say I really like the color of Sweetness and Belinda looks absolutely gorgeous. Yours is probably the best photo of Pope Paul II that I've ever seen. Yolande d'Aragon is very dramatic and I imagine the fully opened bloom is even better. You can be really proud of your beautiful roses and your photographic skills.

Ingrid

Thanks Krista for you nice comment!

Carol, I hope your Sweetness will become more floriferous over the time. I think that maturity really enables the roses to bloom more.

Ingrid, thank you so much for your kind and encouraging words regarding my roses and my photography.
It is very wired but the blooms of Yolande don't open more than shown on my photo. They kind of stay that way and then they drop the petals. I suspect that the pot I am growing this rose in is way too small and that this is what inhibits the flowers to develop completely.

Christina

Christina, I just love the full bush shots with Pope John II and Sweetness! To me I will always treasure full bush shots the most because they really show the full rose in all of its health and beauty. Many cheers to you with your lovely roses!

Christina, have you ever tried combining Fish oil foliar spray with Greencure combined?? I would have lots of powdery mildew on my Lincolns if I did not use this combination. Powdery mildew hates, hates, hates!!!! fish oils and the Greencure combo. Last year I only had about one week to test-try one of my early organics experiments, but then a week later we got cold temps and the roses started to really go dormant so there was no need to continue this experiment. But I noticed just a few hours after my application of the fish oil/Greencure foliar spray, the powdery mildew started to shrivel and die off, and 3 days later, the powdery mildew seemed to vanish.

I'm not sure if the fish oil/Greencure will protect my roses from BS 2010, but I do know for sure that PM chokes over the oil and Greencure combo. Likewise I'm not sure if fish oil/Greencure will protect against rust, but you might as well give it a try. At least your roses will be protected from the PM so that they can fight off the rust easier.

Serena, sorry for replying so late to your comment I was so busy! I am glad that you liked the bush shots!

Thank you very much for sharing you organic recipe against PM. When you say fish oil do you mean fish emulsion (the stuff you can fertilize plants with) or really fish oil (the supplement that you buy at the drugstore and that people take to get omega-3 fatty acids into their body)? I have not heard about a product called Greencure, but as soon as I have time I will check that out. The powdery mildew is still really bad in my garden and if there is a harmless way to get rid off it I am more than willing to try it out. Luckily I don't have too many problems with rust under normal weather conditions so if your treatment just fights of PM that would be fine with me.

By the way Sweetness and Pope John Paul II don't have any powdery mildew at all in my garden. I am wondering if that is due to that they really pay attention to breed more disease resistant roses lately or just coincidence that these two varieties simply love my climate.

Christina

Well, Pope John Paul II is famous for its health and so are certain roses. And interestingly some roses are very healthy with one disease and vulnerable with another disease. Roses just seem to have their own separate personalities and health variables.

But back to the issue of powdery mildew, what I'm talking about is fish emulsion/fish oils like DrammaticK or Gardenville. You put one TBS. of either and combine it with 1/4 tsp. of Greencure maximum and stir. This usually gives you enough to spray 12-15 roses at a time.

What makes this combination so wonderful is that you can see the PM shrivel and die within minutes of the application. I try to use this fish oil/Greencure combination with Blackspot, but the problem is that the mixture has to settle in for a few days to really protect your rose. Once it starts raining and raining, all your hard work goes to waste in terms of Blackspot. Not so with Powdery Mildew. I have found the fish oil/Greencure mix to be 100% effective in my garden against PM. You see it only takes a few minutes to kill the PM whereas blackspot requires no rain for several days in order to help protect one's rose.

This year I'm using DrammaticK but once I run out of DrammaticK, I will revert to my favorite fish/seaweed fertilizer Gardenville. DrammaticK is working fantastic, but I'm just consolidating shipping costs and supporting my favorite rose fertilizer Gardenville Sea Tea--I'm absolutely addicted to this stuff! I order 2 jugs of Gardenville Sea Tea at a time to try to even out the shipping costs versus the amount I get.

Here are the hyperlinks for DrammaticK, Gardenville and Greencure.

DrammaticK at the PlanetNatural website

Gardenville Sea Tea

Greencure

Hope this will really work magic against your powdery mildew. It certainly does with mine! Cheers to your lovely, beautiful roses...

Serena, thank you sooo... much for taking the time and telling me in detail how you tackle your PM problems and also for posting the links to the products.

I just looked up Greencure, which sounds like an organic fungicide to me that I feel OK to spray in terms of the consequences on the environment and I am ready to try it out. I was even lucky and found a nursery within driving distance, which carries it and I hope to get it today! I am using "Neptune's Harvest" a fish and seaweed fertilizer to feed my bands and I assume that it is equal to the fish fertilizer products that you have mentioned.

Since we are on the Rose Gallery I don't want to bore people with a lengthy "how to get rid off PM" - discussion here. Do you mind if I e-mail you privately in case I have any further questions or to let you know about my results using the products that you recommended?

Christina

Hi, Christina! Yes, email me anytime!