Hall of Shame Roses

Well... let's face it... not all roses are created equal Some are just plain duds no matter which way you look at them

Post your hall of shame roses and tell us bit about why you awarded it the golden shovel award. Just post one variety and after a while I will make a poll for the grand golden shovel award.

My vote is for Woburn Abbey. No matter what I tried with this one it failed to thrive for me. The plant was always small and sparse and it's flowers went from bud to fully blown in one day and bleached in the heat. The flowers tended to be produced in under foliage too so they weren't shown to their best effect and were never produced in great numbers which is unusual for a floribunda rose. Maybe it was the individual I had but in my mind there are much better oranges to chooe from.

I have to admit, my Woburn Abbey grows good powdery mildew. I'll give it another year but I'm disappointed in it.
Val

It's funny you should mention this Val. You know how you say things in the heat of the moment and then later you look back and think that maybe you were a little hasty or harsh (or, as in my case, both!)

My Woburn Abbey was brutally attacked in winter... I got sick of its poor performance (in the ground) and reefed it out and hoiked it into the back paddock for the goats to clean up

Some months later I was walking through the back paddock and low-and-behold what do I find!!! WA was sitting there on the ground with not a leaf on it, a series of sorry looking twigs but a shoot was coming out from just above the graft union. It had landed roots-down and it must have been getting just enough water to let it make a last-ditch effort to survive. Feeling guilty I picked it up and took it up to the house, cleaned it up and put it in a nice BIG pot with a nice rich potting mix that I'd mixed up for some other roses and thought 'OK, I'll give you one more chance... don't blow it!".

Well, I will take a photo of it through the week and post it here because it is looking really good and about to flower. Maybe this rose falls into the 'best in a pot' category for down here It even seems clean here right now and I haven't sprayed a thing. Oh well... maybe next time I will be more patient

Mine would have to be Tequila Sunrise, over the years I have killed three of them. I am trying again but I'm getting those green centre things on this one. How much do I get for taking to it with a Machete.

How much do I get for taking to it with a Machete.

How about

TasV wrote:It's funny you should mention this Val. You know how you say things in the heat of the moment and then later you look back and think that maybe you were a little hasty or harsh (or, as in my case, both!)

My Woburn Abbey was brutally attacked in winter... I got sick of its poor performance (in the ground) and reefed it out and hoiked it into the back paddock for the goats to clean up

Some months later I was walking through the back paddock and low-and-behold what do I find!!! WA was sitting there on the ground with not a leaf on it, a series of sorry looking twigs but a shoot was coming out from just above the graft union. It had landed roots-down and it must have been getting just enough water to let it make a last-ditch effort to survive.

That's just one thing I love about roses - they're SO tough. Well done on that one TasV!

We are progressively hacking down our climbing Woburn Abbey. It is a mildew magnet too. The goats get regular feeds of it. It grows like a weed in a duck yard.
Another bad one for me is Amadeus. I have struggled with it for 3 years. Bill took pity on it and repotted it but it is also a mildew magnet and unthrifty struggler. Goat food!

Here's Woburn Abbey now. Maybe I should threaten a few more like this

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W.A.'s looking really good now.
I shall have a severe talk with mine............
Val

Have had very poor growth from AMADEUS, looks sickly and must have a problem I can't identify. That's the description of it last season. This summer it looks very healthy but will put it under pressure and check it's health after the next flush. Last year I sprayed and this year I haven't sprayed at all?

Cree alerted me to Black Spot problems with most of the modern yellow HT's. The rose used to enhance the yellow colour was very unhealthy and decendants have the same problem.

From memory Bruce I think that was Rosa foetida var. 'Persian Yellow'. I'm aware of some people going back to different yellow species now to try and improive this. So here's hoping roses like Rosa ecae and Rosa xanthina get used more often to to make yellows in future. 'Golden Chersonese' is an ecae hybrid and is very healthy but I can't see people going for the tiny ferny leaves or the once flowering... unfortunately... I think it's lovely and soft...

Correct Simon, sent Amadeus out to Mudgee with Roseman. Will be interesting to hear how it goes out there in the dry grape growing climate.

Rose growing in my climate is not all bad and some may think I exagerate and go over the top with wanting healthy bushes
Perhaps I should describe the life cycle of a HT, Modern English or European rose in my no spray garden.
End July,prune away all the dead canes and shape.
September, October a few nice blooms with the first flush but most ruined by aphids and borer beetles.
November, Black spot appearing and starting to defoliate, continues right through December, January, February and March. Constant borer beetle attack during these months together with constant defoliation. December and January are bad for red spider mites, white fly and most all other bugs known to man.
April, there are a few nice blooms starting to mature but Aphids are still causing a big problem.
May, there are some really nice blooms appearing, colour beautiful.
June, all shut down for winter.

Tea and Noisette roses flower very well in winter so will have to go with these or give up.
This is the reason why most gardens in the suburbs here have been changed from roses to natives.
If you have the climate to grow cold climate roses then go for it, the blooms and fragrance is fantastic.

Well... after a year of nursing 'Woburn Abbey' I got sick of babying it, ripped it out of the pot again and threw it to the goats. There's no coming back from this one. On the list to go next is 'Double Delight'. "DD" has to be one of the poorest growers here that I've ever encountered. I've budded it onto a multiflora standard cane to see if getting it up off teh ground and taking it off 'Dr Huey' improves it any... but I feel its days are numbered too.

I had a friend that she had a Double Delight that had over a hundred blooms on it ( well I remeber it was alot anyway ). I have a own root of it growing but it's not very big and one time it had a yellow bloom on it, but the last bloom on it had been the right colour. I will be keen to see how it went this Spring/Summer. Double Delight was already growing on a property my exhusband bought when we were together. It had beautful blooms and fragrance.

I'll see how it responds to a dose of Alpaca poo this year

Funny, I was just reading about Rosa foetida var. 'Persian Yellow', Rosa ecae and 'Golden Chersonese' today at work. 'Golden Chersonese' is quite pretty for a yellow but if I remember rightly ecae has no fragrance which would be a shame.

I grow 'Golden Chersonese' Rip and love it. Hoping ot use it in breeding this year or at least try and collect some open pollinated hipsa from it. Takes al ong time ot establish. Hoping mine is going to leap this year in its third year in the ground.

I have just give my 2 Burgundy Icebergs the big heave-ho. They didn't do well last year and obviously weren't going to this year. There was nothing wrong with the roots or the potting mix either.
Oh well I have 2 empty pots for new roses now!

I sent my 'Burgundy Iceberg' to TheE. I've taken a whole lot of cuttings off it to see how it goes on its own roots and to try and graft it onto multiflora because I'm sure the reason a lot of roses fail to thrive here is because they are one 'Dr Huey' which hates my acidic soil.

Simon, I think you know my thoughts on 'Dr Huey', what makes you think B/iceberg is on it. Did it sucker or did the person that you purchased it tell you they use it

It came from Swanes and when I was searching for info about this rose I found this: [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] . It's the Australian patent taken out by Swanes for BI (aka PROse). It mentions their grafted ones were tested on 'Dr Huey'.

Simon I could be wrong( but I do not think so) . Is not the raiser from Tas, you could ask them what they use. Swanes are at Narromine and I think they use multiflora pretty well most of the time, on their standards they use something called evergreen, I do not know anything about it. As for the trial of it, most are done in SA and they like the Dr over there. The only other I had maybe they do some on all types of understock for the different states, for the soils respectively.

My vote for Hall of Shame is "Fabulous"...because it just isn't!

When everything else is happy & healthy, "Fabulous" will be covered in BS & it seems to take forever to recover. It will not be with me much longer...

As you all know, this is my first season growing roses. After joining the forum and talking to a lot of you guys on here and reading books etc. i tackled my rose growing efforts with a lot of intrepidation. Some of the things i was really worried about to start off with in the beginning was the sandy soil, the cane grubs, the heat and humidity, the pests etc etc. Well, here it is at the beginning of our so called wet season and ...so far, so good !! I think the sandy soil will be a huge benefit here when the "wet" really starts to set in as it will allow the water to get away and the roses won't turn into rice. As long as you can build up the soil naturally with a lot of compost etc, i think the sandy soil is the way to go up here. The cane grubs weren't the problem i thought they were going to be. I did have one problem earlier on with my Angel Face climber that i put down to this noxious grub but haven't had a problem since. With regards to the heat and humidity, we have had plenty of that so far and the roses just seem to thrive on it !! Providing you keep the water up to them and plenty of food, the buggers grow like race horses. Papa Meilland climber is continuing to grow at around 50mm a day and is now around 3mtrs high since being planted as a bare rooted rose in mid August. I inherited 4 David Austin roses from my daughter recently and thought they would suffer greatly in this climate, but they too are now thriving. As far as the pests go, i thought with this climate i'd get a real hammering from blackspot but i get very little of it. I don't even spray for it, just merely pluck the affected leaves off. I have seen no aphids or thrips at all. The only pest that has really given me trouble was the leaf cutter bees, so i simply let them have their wicked way and they moved on. Except for a few small green grasshoppers and a few bugs that i have no idea what their name is that like chewing holes in the new stems, i have very few problems. I'm now awaiting the wet season with intrepidation to see how my roses stand up to all the rainfall that we can get here at this time of the year. Cross your fingers but i haven't lost a rose yet !!!

Damo, you could send your "Fabulous" to Wedge in Qld to see how it goes up his way, HeHEhEHeHeHEHe