Need help with Brisbane rose selection?

Dear Rosie’s,
What a pleasure it is to speak to like minded people. I have a problem that I am hoping you all can help me with. I live in Brisbane and the weather is humid and hot, hot, hot! I have tried to grown a few roses, but being in pots it was hard to keep the water up to them. Now I have moved I relish getting my hands in the red earth and deep planting some gorgeous scented roses. Someone gave me Just Joey which I have in a Pot. It is doing great and the perfume and colour is delicious. This is the foundation colour for my new garden to be. I have criteria for what I need and would like some input from BRISBANE PEOPLE or Nth Qld to comment if the ones I have picked are true to colour, (as the photo’s below) and have a really strong perfume and performance up here. So many sites have varying information, and colour can change dramatically with heat. This is my criteria.
*Must have an intense/strong perfume like Mr Lincoln, Jessica, Angel Face, not myrrh) What does damask smell like?
*Must be very disease tolerant of our weather. Dark green upright foliage 1200 -1500mm x W 800-1000
*Must be a Tea or Grandiflora as I want vase roses that hold their petals and shape
* Must be prolific, recurrent with at least a 7-10 week flush or continuous, plus good in the wind.
*Must have character, i.e. large with great pastel colours, some or all, of the following; old fashion english, wavy, many petalled, cupped, (I don’t want them all to be all standard tea shape or open flat).
*Must look great and blend together in the vase.
THESE ARE WHAT I HAVE PICKED:
 JUST JOEY
QUEEN ADELAIDE (which is best perfume, disease resistance, and shape in this, wanting light mauve/pink: Admiral Rodney, OR Your Garden)
 CLOSE TO YOU
HEAVEN SCENT (which is best perfume, disease resistance, and shape in this powder pink colour,: Heaven Scent, Children’s Rose, Bell of Berlin, Eiffel Tower, Anne Letts) Prefer a solid not clear colour.
 POPE JOHN PAUL II
 BARON DE ROTHSCHILD
BEST FRIEND (which is best perfume, disease resistance, and shape cerise/deep pink colour range, best friend, Esmeralda, parole, forget me not, thank you)
BIG PURPLE (which is the best perfume and doesn’t fade? Big Purple, Fragrant Plum, Plum Crazy, Moon Shadow, Neptune, Royal Amethyst)? Looking more for dark Mauve to Purple than a dusty plum. Definitely no Lilac.
 PRETTY JESSICA
 BRINABELLA PINK BOUQUET (as a bush, not for the vase)
I don't know how to add the rose photo's I've gathered on this page, so I'll try and add them to the gallery page. Many thanks for all your help in advance!

Hi Karen,

When you say they must be a Tea I guess you mean Hybrid Tea. These are the main cutting roses but to be really brutally honest they are not suited to where you live. The Teas, on the other hand, are very well suited to where you live and will reward you with 12 months of flowers and foliage.

Of the list you have put up the only one that I would say might do ok where you are is 'Brindabella Pink Bouquet'. If you can get hold of 'Brindabella Bouquet' it would be worth trying too. 'Just Joey' is a beautiful but will require disease management. I'm not familar with 'Queen Adelaide' or 'Close to You' but looking at the breeding of them I would imagine they too will need some form of disease management in your climate. 'Heaven Scent' will need some serious disease management in your climate as will 'Baron de Rothschild'. 'Pretty Jessica' is a David Austin rose that even he is trying to get nurseries to stop selling because it is such a poor rose (it has its supporters.. I'm not one of them). I grew 'Pretty Jessica' and persisted with it for three years and in the end yanked it out and burned it. 'Best Friend' has a lovely flower but will also require some serious disease management as it's parents come straight out of florist growers greenhouses. 'Big Purple' just might be the pick of the bunch, so to speak, but will probably have colour fastness issues in the heat and suffer from bluing and will probably need disease management there too. I'm trying 'Blackberry Nip' which has 'Big Purple' in it but my Tassie climate is very different to yours. Similar disease pressure but much more mild. 'Pope John Paul II' is a new release and I've not heard how it does... I know some are pinning some hope on the Pope though.

The Tea roses are an old group of roses that is shared with other roses called China and Noisette roses. These thrive in your climate and will give you flowers all year round. Many will grow like stink on a skunk up there and attain a large size, but there are more tame ones to choose from. Down here they grow slowly and to a moderate size. Up there, they would do very much better. Scent is a subtle quality of most Teas and I have trouble smelling it.

Damask roses are those roses from which rose oil concentrate is extracted for the production of many perfumes. It's a classic rose smell.

Cheers,

Simon

Roseluv
I'll be a harder judge than Simon and suggest that if you want the roses listed (including the Brindabella range) then you will need to spend more time on desease management than it is worth.

We live on the Sunshine Coast and have found that, unless you like to spend yout time spraying noxious chemicals on your plants, most modern roses are simply not worth the effort. Which is why you will find that there are no good rose nurseries in Brisbane.

As Simon says teas, chinas, noisettes and hybrid musks are the roses for our region but you will not have vase perfect roses all the time and some of the perfume is a bit light on. Also you need lots of room for some of the teas. One of ours was 7 metres in diameter and 3.5 metres high until it got hit by one of the storms last year. Its now only about 4 metres diameter and 2 metres tall. Far more managable.

But they are generally good looking shrubs and flower all year round. Its a trade off that unfortunately in the coastal areas of Queensland you have to put up with. Living in paradise has it's let downs and this is one of them.

Thank you both so much. I have been surfing the net and going back and forth for the last week. It is so hard, because roses are basically a cool climate plant. In saying that, I have had both Baron de Rothschild and Pretty Jessica before and the flowers were beautiful. They did require a regime of spraying but I was lucky to be able to take turns of both organic and chemical controls with great success. I'm afraid Tea's and the like will be too big for my garden as I only have a set area. I also have a Japanese and Aussie native garden, so my plant love is fairly diverse. I love my Roses so much I can't imagine not having at least a few. Why, oh why, do breeders continue to breed roses without scent is beyond me. I don't understand people buying florist roses with no scent? You might as well by silk flowers. It just seems to break all the laws of nature, and I for one, would like to draw and quarter the purist, that muck with perfumed perfection over shape and vase life. I cannot wait to stick my snoze in a brunch of beautifully scented healthy roses. Truely they are honey for the soul! Just for your info, "Close to you" is a lemon and cream hybrid tea available at Trewllyn Nursery and Corporate Roses. Queen Adelaide has been around for a while. It has large mauve/ light pink blooms of many wavey petals and depending on who you want to believe, has either little, or a strong perfume. On your advise I will give "Heaven Scent" the flick; although I love the old english shape, and replace it with "The Childrens Rose". This is also available at Corporate Roses. The Teas, China's and Noisettes, just seem too large and spinderly for me. It is quite windly here and I may be wrong but I think they could loose their petals fairly quickly. If you know more of more subtancial smaller varieties with the perfume I need, I am all ears. Blackberry Nip, looks great, but it is too dark, for the small patch I have. Ebb Tide is also a lovely one!
Lovely to meet you both. I will continue to search a bit more. Finding the right disease resistant plants for this location is proving harder than I thought!

'Ebb Tide' is a terrible rose!!!! Avoid it like the plague!

There are smaller China-like rose you may like to try. Roses like Cecile Brunner and Perle d'or may be more to your liking. Perle d'Or ( [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] ) has a wonderful fragrance and is a small compact grower in apricot. Cecile Brunner ( [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] ), has a lovely perfume too. Some other polyantha might do well up there too. I loive in the path of the Roaring 40s.. not many places in Australia more windy than here.. blow a dog of a chain sometimes.. these two hold up fine.

I often find, too, that density is a function of cultural practices. In a well tended garden where water is not a limiting factor and teh soils are rich in compost the Teas and Chinas are far more densely foliaged.

Simon, I have to ask. Why dont you like Ebb Tide ?
It is on my wish list along with Blackberry Nip.

You can have my 'Ebb Tide' , all you have to do is pick it up.

It doesn't do well here, come to think of it don't know anywhere it does do well.

roseluv, there are so many roses bought into the country from overseas that turn out duds. The large nurseries with the big glossy catalogues Australian patent them. I know of one such nursery where there is nothing except roses, all the pestercides and fungus sprays kill everything. That's what they call maintainence, I call it unhealthy.

I could repeat Simon and Balinbear's advice, stay with roses that will handle your weather. I detect you wanting a rose like the DA's, these are well left to growers in the dry parts of the country.

Thank you Bruce,
Why dont you like it ?

Carole, we are in very different climates, it might do well for you but where ever it lacks vigour. I tried it as a seed parent and had difficulty. Could have been my lack of experience pollinating. It makes hips frequently and has lots of fragrance, give it a go and judge for yourself.

Be aware, I don't spoil my roses, they do it tough and only the strong survive. I recently went to a Heritage Rose meeting and a very nice elderly lady asked me what I do for scale on canes. She had been battling it on one rose for 2 years with all sorts of so called cures. I told her the best cure was to put it in the bin. Actually she thanked me and said " That's a great idea"

'Ebb Tide's problems seem to go deeper than 'it just doens't do well here'. It seems to have a genetic predisposition to go into decline... like it has an 'I hate life self destruct once the warranty expires gene '. It does well for the first year or two and then starts to go backwards fast... getting smaller and smaller until it gives up the ghost. This pattern of behaviour has been repeated all over the world... my garden included. Its sister seedling, 'Midnight Blue', has identical breeding but does very well and grows very strongly forming a great bush with no chemical intervention. It is my belief that 'Ebb Tide' was chosen for release here in Australia because it is the more double and showy of the two. 'Midnight Blue' is more semi-double but is a superior rose in every aspect and it breeds excellent seedlings. It is here in Australia in a test garden that I will not identify and there is a rumour that it is about to be released here under a different name but for now we can't get it.

Hi Roseluv

In my limited experience with roses I have found Pope John Paul II does very well for me. It did nothing for quite a while then turned into a non stop blooming machine. Lovely fragrance too. I have since move them to a spot where they will get more shade in the afternoon and the first to recover was Cubuna, not to be confused with Cubana. Beautiful apricot, not much fragrance though. I have heard that Baron De Rothchilds is recommended as for Brisbane roses, but have not tried it myself.

Yes you do have to spray a lot and at the moment, I suspect mainly due to my lack of experience, I am having problems with canker, but I find the rewards all worthwhile.

Thanks everyone. Its annoying that a lot of Rose suppliers websites say my zone is OK for certain hybrids and then the people that are really in the know say "forget it"! It seems suppliers just copy and paste the breeders blurb without going to the trouble of trialling it for their location themselves. I might just get 3 or 4 really special hybrids that I know aren't "too bad" realitively speaking, and get a few simon has suggested. Still....Looking !!!!

roseluv, the trial gardens are in the southern part of Australia where condittions do not reflect what is healthy on the east coast of Australia.
All the wine growing districts are OK for roses, even the DA's. I have a large rose grower/seller here that grows all stock out west of Dubbo and uses the Sydney operation as a show place. Whenever a display or special event is happening here the blooms are brought from the west because the coastal blooms are not as good.

Remember when the Olympic Games were held in China all the athletes were complaining about the humidity. The roses being recomended by members here had there beginnings in China. These species roses have been growing there for centuries. Natural selection sorts out the parents for the next generation. These are the roses most suitable and most can be seen by buying a book called "Tea Roses" Old Roses for Warm Gardens.
Buy this book and let your artistic imagination go wild.

Roseluv,
The book Ozeboy recommends is a lovely book to have. I got it for David (Roseman) as soon as it was available in our bookshops.
Perhaps you could put it on your Christmas wish list.

This is only what I would do and it is the best advice I can give you.
Take a long slow walk around your area. See what roses are growing well. If there are any you like ask the house owner what they are, I am sure they will be only too happy to tell you. If they have lots of roses they will probably be able to tell you which ones wont do so well as they will most lickley have tried them. At this time of year you will probably see people in thier gardens if not you might have to be brave and knock on the door
This would apply to any other plants that you want to plant.
Gardeners tend to be very friendly and love praise for their efforts.
You never know you might just make some new friends and just maybe go home with a few cuttings but hopefully some knowledge of what grows well in your area.
PS: If you walk a dog or push a pram it gives you a good reason to keep stopping and looking
I hope this helps