A very common rose for median planting is the rugosa Charles Albanel.
Steve

You have to check out davidaustinroses.com! It's the best collection of roses that you could ask for!

Most if not all Austins would make poor hedge material in Zone 4. They would need to be pruned pretty much to the ground each spring after winter.

Steve.

Most Austins, but NOT ALL Austins.
I have a very nice Fair Bianca hedge composed of 40 bushes. I grew them all from cuttings over the winter, and they easily survived last winter. All Fair Bianca's in this zone get bigger and bigger each year AS LONG AS THEY GET FULL HOT ALL DAY SUN!!!
Another one is Tamora. Like Fair Bianca, Tamora is a descendant of the quite hardy Belle Isis, and has been hybridized with a rugosa, to boot.
Both Tamora, and Fair Bianca make wonderful hedges in Zone 4. They are both EXTREMELY disease resistant, EXTREMELY productive, HIGHLY fragrant, and very hardy in this zone.
Also, they both have pliable canes, they are out of the patent, so you can propagate them NICELY!!! by layering, which is easy!!! and you get a nice big fat bush that keeps getting bigger each year. All of your neighbours will be soooo jealous, a hedge of white roses, and a hedge or apricot/yellow roses. PLUS!!! BONUS!!! Fair Bianca will ALWAYS send up a nice deep pink sport for you, that is easy to propagate, so you can have a nice pink DA rose hedge as well, for free!!! Every now and then a super hard winter will kill the canes back to the ground, but because you have used the deep planting method, you bushes will be self rooted, your layerings will be self rooted, and because Belle Isis suckers freely from the roots, so will your Fair Bianca and Tamora and Pink Fair Bianca also sucker freely from the roots and send up many big canes, so you will never have to worry about losing your work if you get one of those once in 10 years DEEP FREEZE. Especially if there is a good snowfall, there will be NOTHING to worry about. I NEVER put ANY protection at all on my austins, and they keep on coming year after year.

I didn't know Tamora and Fair Bianca were so hardy. Where do you live?

Anyone have any Tamora and/or Fair Bianca cuttings they'd like to trade? I've had them in the past, but we moved and left them behind, and I've been dying to get them again.

This is Sault Ste. Marie Ontario. you are probably a half zone colder than us, but possibly you may have a longer and hotter growing season. i am growing roses in the "upper" higher ground, away from the river, in a fairly exposed location. Use the "deep planting method" - meaning bud is 6" below the soil level. the canes will self root, and my experience is that the roots are very hardy, as opposed to some other varieties that will also self root, but the roots get killed by the cold in the winter. All 40 of the rooted cuttings I planted last spring made it through the winter nicely, with only the tips of the canes that were not covered with snow showed winter kill. I can take some FB cuttings for you, because I live on the border I can mail them from the US side and they will get to you quickly. I planted 8 Tamoras this year, so I do not have cutting material for you. Are you set up for indoor propagation of cuttings (like George Mander or Cheryl Netter). I grew my cutting OVER THE WINTER INDOORS, so I ended up with surprizingly big bushes. the nice thing about FB and T is they are NOT very big, so the indoor growth is restrained and does not get out of control.
I buy my bare root bushes from Pickering Nurseries in Ontario. They do ship to USA, but right now is too late. You can call them to place an order for next year. I recommend this, so you have a good backup for failure of cuttings to root. FB roots easily. I haven't tried T yet, but likely it is similar

Although not a huge plant, Sven is very hardy, fragrant and purple.