Wow, you have some amazing looking roses. I don't know which one I like the best. Your black cherry is awesome.

Rita,
You`re garden must just be fabulous! Everything looks so green and healthy. You have tons of beautiful blooms and I love the selections you are growing. Enjoy every minute of the hard work you have put into this beautiful garden. Lesley

What a great collection of reds and ambers! Black Cherry looks to be a great rose. Thanks.

My HTs are not even open yet except for one or two. About half of the shrub roses have not started blooming yet either.

Wow Rita, those are amazing. Everything is so healthy looking! BeBop is HUGE HUGE HUGE!! Sunsprite is just magnificent.

Jeff

Gorgeous roses---the foliage looks so lush and healthy.

Florence

What a lovely collection you have...! hehe! sorta makes me soooo tempted to get a spray garden versus organic to keep away the buggsies from constantly feasting on my big fat rose leaves, but ah, well, pepper spray is about the best I can do... Enjoy your lovely rose season and year! Lovely pics...

Lovely, lovely - all of them! And I saw some of my own amongst your collection but mine are all still small (new for me this year): Blueberry Hill, Topsy Turvy, Sunrise at Heirloom and new but not quite as small are Easy Going and Westerland.

And funny thing, this very day, I ordered a beautiful red daylily called "Frankly Scarlett"!

Lynn

serenasyh- I only use a fungicide, never use an insecticide. I have worked very hard on my garden to attract backyard songbirds, hummingbirds, butterflies and bees. Spraying insectides is the last thing I would be doing. I am sure that the birds look at the roses as low or midsize shrubs. I see them on/in the roses often looking for bugs and things the way that birds do.

ooo-wow! how did you do that? That is amazing!!!! you must tell me how you got started on attracting all the hummingbirds and other "friendly creatures"! Was your first year a struggle? (I am thinking it takes awhile before an organic garden can establish and balance itself out) I am really struggling with this issue, because my neighborhood is completely sterile... no birds (except for the constant starlings with only an occasional robin), no butterflies and no bees anywhere in sight ... so when I go organic, the bad bugs seem to go crazy over my roses. Since the entire neighborhood "sprays", bugs may likely view my plants as a fiesta? The backyard and patio roses themselves look very healthy, plenty of huge fat leaves, nice gloss and lovely color to them, but oh, boy, those bugs like to feast so I will get quite a few patches of brown! Only the pepper spray seems to give any sort of equilibrium or respite.. Or do you think my forest of gladiolus behind the roses is the problem? a thripes magnet?... Strangely, my front yard roses look very pristine (but only because I figure there's fewer plants there and note, no gladiolus?). Alas! no birds are visiting my roses at all...

I have been redoing my yard from the typical suburban backyard into one attractive to backyard songbirds, hummingbirds, butterflies and bees for years now. Started in 2001. Most of the shrubs in my shrub border are now fairly large and fruit heavily for the birds plus theres lots here to attract hummers and butterflies.

hehe! thanks to your lush, wonderful garden pics I started a new topic at the rose forum to try to egg out all the wonderful secrets of starting an organic garden...Hope you can have time to tell us all the tips for this...

There is no secret, at least not in my garden. I use a fungicide. If there are bugs, there are bugs. Right now there are lots of aphids on the roses but the ladybugs are starting to appear. A sterile bug free garden will not attract birds. Afew weeks ago I saw lots of little green caterpillers on the roses. Ignored them. Watched birds hunting around the rose shrubs and picking off the caterpillers.

I am lucky in that there are hardy any japanes beetles here so I don't have to deal in that pest.

As far as attracting backyard songbirds by plantings, thats a very long discussion not really delonging on the rose forums. I suggest you think about some fruiting shrubs to give them food and cover. I planted the entire south side length of my property line with many, many fruiting shrubs. Attracts the birds and completly hides my neightbors driveway.

Golly,Rita.I have never seen such healthy looking roses.The cold weather there must help out.Its just very hot here and very humid, too.My roses was so pretty just before I broke my wrist, now they are just bare canes,and th e few leaves on them are filled with Black spot.They are not worth the work it takes to grow roses, here.And the deer came back this week and ate every bud and bloom they could find,and even ate up the wave Petunias growing in 2 planters.I have about decided to just forget about roses,except for the Knock Outs and Fairy Roses.Deer don't seem to like them.

Jean

Jean- Come summer its hot and humid here on Long Island. Its just too early for the warm muggy weather. If I didn't spray my roses with a fungicide come summer I too would have bare sticks.

You know how fussy I am about my garden. Those roses (and my daylilies) nhave got to look good even when not in bloom so the leaves have to be healthy.

Yes,I know this Rita.My roses become bare canes here even when I was spraying every 2 weeks.They look good early spring,then go downhill afterthat.
Jean

Spray more often. What are you spraying with? Some things work alot better than others. Needs to be systemic.

Your roses are beautiful, and the leaves are nearly flawless too.

I love your Crimson Glory. Do you grow it own-root, or grafted? I am looking for a grafted CG other than Hortico.

Thanks.

It was bought potted locally and is grafted. It just getting better and better each spring as it settles in. The blooms are quite large and its smells divine.

Well, I goofed. The rose I had thought was Sunrise at Heirloom and posted a picture above saying Sunrise at Heirloom is really Orange Waves. The real Sunrise at Heirloom is not quite open yet. Thats what happens when I don't read my tags and couldn't remember seeing it bloom last year so got mixed up. Sorry.