'Heritage' putting on a show...

Not bad for a never sprayed Austin in Oz

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Just wish it didn't shatter so easily.

Simon
Have you tried using 'Heritage' in your breeding program?

I have this year, Gary. I have resisted it in the past because it isn't always this clean and it shatters so easily. I've used it this year through one of my wichurana seedlings to see if a nicer flower form can be bred into the wich-shrubs. I'm still not sure it's a good idea to use it because it doesn't do this well everywhere lol

Simon - Have you ever cut this one back or did you just let it grow? I remember saying you never cut yours back?

This one has not been pruned in the conventional manner. All I do is remove the dead flower stems back to the first bud because almost every flower forms a hip... so yeah... basically unpruned. This is the form it takes of its own accord. Plant is three years old now. I should mention that not all 'Heritage' plants are created equally, just quietly. I went through three plants (this is my third), from different nurseries before I came across this one. This one is from Treloar Roses and was outstanding right from the start. The other two died and were failure to thrives right from the start. It makes an enormous difference to start with a great plant made from the best budwood possible. 'Heritage' grows from cutting easily too due to its 'Iceberg' pollen parent. Just quietly, I would be buying my 'Heritage' bush now because its PBR has recently expired which means every man and his dog will be growing it soon and quality plants will be few and far between.

It looks absolutely lovely.
A lady at a rose farm last week told me basically what you've said. She also said that it depends on how it's treated and how dry it gets before it comes to you as to how well it will do.
Just like two of my roses (the same type), one is going crazy yet the other barely has any leaves on it after a few months. One has taken off and one is very slow to grow. I've treated them both exactly the same.
I will definitely take your advice on not pruning my roses completely bare. I was slightly shocked when one nursery told me to cut them all right back and remove every leaf in winter?

Up there, your roses won't go completely dormant. Stripping the leaves off in winter is one way that's often advised to help make the rose think it is going dormant... but I doubt it works much up there. It works in some places for roses like Gallica to trick them into thinking they are getting the cold they need to bloom in warmer climates. A problem you will find up there with these kinds of roses is that because they don't go completely dormant they will try to hang onto their leaves for too long and they aren't 'desgined' to do this and so the longer they are on the plant the less resources they have in their leaves that can fight off infections from fungal diseases and the more susceptible they will become. Stripping the leaves off forces them to make a whol enew batch on roses that are reluctant to shed them. It's not a problem down here. They ditch their leaves and go to sleep for the winter very nicely.

So I should strip the leaves off? They will look awful haha

Simon
We used to think our Heritages looked ok until I went to Tasmania.

We pulled ours out not long after we got back.

Ours we all cutting grown apart from the one we purchased from Kmart which went well for a couple of years then upped and died but we had grown a few cuttings from it which all did better than the original.

It certainly puts out the hips. I tried some OP seed (it was next to a tea so I though maybe they had gotten together and made woopie) but it did not germinate.