Re: Re: good and bad roses, scent and repeat

**Alicia Bayer abayer@prairie.lakes.com>**

Jeaa1224@aol.com wrote:

>
> I've heard many times over how wonderful this rose is. Do you like T.B.'s
> habit and foliage when not in bloom? How large is yours? Any insect or
> foliage problems?

Therese Bugnet is a BIG rose in my garden, despite only being a few years old
(and a dollar clearance rose half dead in a pot!).  It's probably at least 6 feet
tall and nearly as wide.  Very thorny.  Absolutely no bug problems or any other.
No dieback in winter.  Beautiful red canes in winter.  The foliage is a little
plain-- kinda crinkled dark green leaves.  As a rose it reminds me of a mother or
grandmother, while hybrid teas remind me of made up teenagers.  TB has that
rugged, survivor trait.  She's not as flashy or tiny.  She's  not skinny and
doesn't steal the show.  But you can rely on her.  She's strong and soft, and
when you really stop and look she has a beauty much deeper than you thought.

Ahem.  You'd never guess I was a poet, eh?  <VBG>

> Given the fact that many roses do bloom for most of the summer, it's hard not
> to resist them. I believe there's room for both, and I think those into roses
> tend to have both. The snobishness I've seen is the exact opposite...only "old"
> roses
> will fill the bill and the new ones are interlopers and not worthy of
> consideration.

Ah, see I am a snob about hybrid teas, mostly because of where I live.  I'm in
zone 4, where hybrid teas do not survive without carefully mounding them with a
quarter ton of the perfect materials, surrounding them with booby trapped
machinery, spinning around 3 times and chanting.  And even then they'll usually
die.  They recommend the "Minnesota tip" method for getting them through the
winter, which involves half uprooting your entire rose, lying it in a trench and
burying it.  Why on earth would people go through all this rather than just
picking a rose that's suited for this environment???  Yet everywhere you look in
MN, you see these scrawny, newly planted HT's with their 2 bright flowers on
sticks that point straight up, that you know are going to die in the winter with
or without their styrofoam dunce caps, to be replaced yet again by a stick with a
flower on the top.

If I could happily grow HT's without all of that nonsense and expect them to
survive, I'd love them.  I'd especially love some HT climbers, which I covet like
mad since there aren't very many cold-hardy climbers.  But why should I invest in
a rose that will probably die and will never thrive in my garden, when there are
so many beautiful, tough, intoxicating roses that exist who would love it here?

What's the most maddening is that the market remains one for HTs here since
everybody wants a rose that looks like something from a florist's refrigerator.
Come spring, I'm out shopping for new roses and just about everything is a HT.
Even the greenhouses, who surely know better, offer almost all HTs and other
modern HT lookalikes.

So forgive my attitude towards the beauties.  It's nothing against them.
Mostly.  :)

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