I'm so jealous of all of you with lovely Savannahs! I have one that is 3 years old and still disappointing me. I will probably give her another year to see if that makes the difference. Lovely, healthy, vigorous shrub but small, sparse blooms and they are quite flat.

That foliage really is something, especially with no spray at all in November — clean leaves like that make the whole plant look good even between flushes. I agree with Markay about giving it some support while it gets established, since those big clusters can pull the canes over. It's definitely moved up my list for a spot where I want a healthy, fragrant shrub that can get big.

Dianela, your Savannah is beautiful and healthy. I tried twice and both times mine weren’t great, but I do remember the wonderful fragrance. My experience was prob similar to Claudia’s.

Thanks, Markay! I'll be sure to get after mine more aggressively, given that it'll be living in a 15 gallon pot :-D

Vapor,

II wanted to support your post but because of the ravages of the reinfestation of rose midge fly in late summer, and the devastation of saw fly and cabbage butterfly caterpillar damage, my flower output for the fall flush was/is abysmal.

I will say though, that the flower of Reminiscent Coral is huge and has a presence that draws you in. There is one fading bloom now on my one and only bush, which was outstanding at its peak. I was planning to remove Reminiscent Coral because it defoliated from black spot to an unacceptable level, but that lovely flower has caused me to give it a reprieve. If I need to spray it next year, I will, reluctantly, because of my goal of having a black spot free a rose garden as is possible, is not being kept....but that flower! Hopefully it will mature out of its black spot susceptibility.

Moses.

I have that too @Moses, Pitt PA, cold W & warm/humid S z6s! I thought I was in the clear and then, bam! That is why I'm especially thrillef to see some of these blooming their heads off. Those are the real winners. Pompanella Is hardly affected by midge. I think she's too big for your garden unfortunately and thorny to boot.

Vaporvac, Roseladykaty on Instagram was disappointed in her Princesses Charlene de Monaco, then she moved it to her sunniest spot and it really started to perform. I did the same with mine this Spring, and am experiencing the same result.

Deborah, good to see you post and I love your dahlias. I'll go look at that other thread now.

Oh, I have ordered several times from Trees.com (recent name change from Fast Growing Trees.com). I was hesitant at first but a few people I know ordered from them and were very happy. So I took a chance and honestly have been pretty happy with everything I've gotten from them. LOL actually I think my little Mr. Bowling Balls were from them!

Hopefully you will have as good luck with them as I have

:)

Dee

Thank you for this thread @porkchop_z5b_MI. I added one Mister and 4 Mrs. this year. I ordered them from Home Depot with shipping direct from the grower and they were big enough to give me confidence in their survival, but not so big as to be daunting when dighing the planting holes. They were pruned back hard for shipping, so no berries this year. I worried that setting Mr. Poppins back more in tge shade might be a problem so I appreciated hearing y’all’s experiences and fell much more vinfident about how I’ve arranged them!

No frosty grass here so far, and the prediction I just saw had us frost free up to Nov 8, which was as far as the daily predictions went. However, you really warm up. Our highs for the last few days have been in the 50s, but warm to the low 60s on Nov 7, my birthday. Can you guess how ancient I'll be then? It's too awful to think about......81 years old. How the !@#$ did I get this old? No way!! An 81 year old teenager. And you get colder by day on Nov 7. Only gardeners would have this discussion, and maybe farmers. Yes, we still have the blasted potato drop on New Year's Eve, and most farmers in this area don't even grow potatoes. Their land is too valuable for low profit crops like potatoes, so they grow hybrid onion seed and hybrid sweet corn seed. My step dad also had a mint still and he grew peppermint for candy companies. The mint was distilled into oil for those companies to use. I tell you that your sinuses were cleared when you drove down that country road, and the mint still was blasting away. That was many moons ago, but a fun memory. Another was having to come to a complete stop for a bit while a sheep rancher drove his sheep right down the road and harvested fields to the winter pastures. Guys would be driving the sheep on horses and in cars, and on motor scooters. I'm talking hundreds of sheep at a time, so you sat in your car for a good bit. Well, I'm a geezer, so I can drone on...... back to roses. Greatgreatgrand Nanadoll

A while back before the deer

Forgot about the hydrangeas. This limelight colored up nicely although the picture doesn’t do it justice

mixed bed of fall colors

Very pretty, late October pics @gardenho_z5.

Houzz is a west coast company - I have one more hour!!!

Abelia schumannii is a flowering machine. It runs from late May to frost.

Fuchsia 'Porphyrio' survived this cold last winter with no extra mulch, so I think it's fully established, unless we have another once-every-30-year winter like 2013-2014. This has some R. regia blood, so is heat resistant compared to the pure F. magellanica cultivars.

Hesperantha 'Deborah's Red' from Cistus, though it's been a while since they offered it.

Some Hydrangeas are still going.

Lastly, another potentially tender plant that made it through this winter with no special protection, to roughly 5F multiple times, Bomarea hirtella/edulis.

A bit more detail since I was in a rush last night...this was my absolute, positively, last try with this plant. So the fact it's been perennial and flowering now for 3 years in a row shows why it pays to be persistent. I've experimented with this (fickle in the mid-Atlantic) species all the way back to my parent's house garden in the late 1990s! As I've discussed with other plants that are in some way marginal for one's climate, the secret now was growing it out from seed to select for a 'local cultivar' that is happy under your own conditions. And it was not even my first attempt to do that. I had first tried maybe 6-7 years ago with seed bought from Tobias Spanner's RPS. I got only maybe one or two really weak growing seedlings that amounted to nothing - didn't get past a few inches. Then I tried again, and I can't even remember where this seed came from: either Jelitto or Alplains, probably. A few died as seedlings when it got hot - they didn't like that. (My understanding is that this basically comes from a central American highland climate! You wouldn't expect them to be even zone 8 hardy, much less zone 7! It's sort of similar to the mystery of Alstroemerias, to which it is related, except some of those are at least native to the colder Andes of Chile.) Finally I got 2 really well established plants. Then this 'almost as cold as polar vortex' winter happened and took out 1, leaving this one.

Final warning about this plant, from when I tried to move it from my parent's garden to the townhouse I owned for a while. It makes fingerling potato-like tubules that are counter-intuitively not propagative. They are just for starch storage. Apparently whatever regrows in the following years is smaller and more fibruous, and if you move a clump, you have to move at least one of those. They detach easily from the 'bulbs'. Back in 2002 I tried to regrow a few of those bulbs, to no avail.

Last edit: I know for sure the first time I tried this circa 1999, the seed came from Chiltern Seed in the UK. How I miss the days when that was a carefree process. I believe I should give credit where credit is due!

Saint Swithun is not the greatest rebloomer, but he does have a few lovely fragrant blooms on him now. Ambridge Rose is an absolute stunner and blooms late into fall or early winter every year now.

Being the curator of a collection of what I would call early English Rose heritage varieties has given me insight into how well certain varieties perform in this climate in particular. Ambridge Rose is a stunner and a star here. Everyone who sees her is impressed.

James Galway is finishing his 3rd season and has decided to become a rampant climber, outcompeting Saint Swithun and Lordly Oberon here for length of new canes. I am going to have to do some serious training on him next spring and expect that he is just coming into his own now.

Claire Rose is also indicating that she wants to be a climber in year four, so she will join four others in close proximity in a unusual and rustic climbing rose bower. I am interested to see what it becomes.

Lordly Oberon is another wonderful surprise here. He bloomed preetty much all summer, still some gorgeous, large, fragrant, cupped pale pink flowers now. I fail to understand why this rose never became popular, at least in a drier climate, he is superb.

Rick

Lovely pics!

It also rather resembles Tamora. https://www.helpmefind.com/rose/l.php?l=2.2469.1

Rosylady, I agree with you and roseseek that Tamora is a strong match — that soft peachy-orange color and compact, floribunda-like habit look very much like the three you already grow. Markay's note about Soul Sister and black spot is a useful warning too, since that kind of disease pressure would put me off in a humid summer as well. If you do try Tamora in that same spot, do you find it stays as short and tidy in your zone 8 garden as it does in the photo?

The A.R.T.S. regions are so weird to me. I’m in the Humid Subtropic (Cfa) region which has testing sites in Texas and Louisiana While the Humid Continental (Dfa) Region has a test site at Swarthmore PA which is only a bit over 2 hours away. It is really hard for me to believe the Cfa region picks are better choices for me than the Dfa region picks.

True Confidence is not on the list for my region, but it certainly looks like a good one.

Markay, it may not have been tested in your region.

I greatly appreciate the effort taken by the A.R.T.S. founders and working rosarians who evaluate the roses, but their conclusions are not gospel canon. I do study their selections carefully, and appreciate the information I glean.

Reminiscent Coral, an A.R.T.S. awarded rose for my district, Dfa, proved to be a bad enough black spotter to get shovel pruned, but the flower is outrageously lovely to me.

Do I bite the bullet and keep it anyway, even if it needs spraying if it doesn't mature out of its first year fungus test failure in my garden? That's yet to be decided.

Moses.

This was the healthiest rose I ever shovel pruned. It was free of blackspot, bloomed it’s head off with quick repeat. The blooms lasted a long while too. I removed it because the color of the blooms and blotchiness didn’t do it for me, but you can see how healthy the foliage was.

@rosecanadian, I can’t say I ever noticed any fragrance.

@rosecanadian

I notice that many fragrant roses smell best on first day when opening in warm or hot weather. As it gets cooler in fall I see fragrance lessens and dissappears. . I used to not even smell my roses or just occassionally smell them. I think many roses have fragrances the common gardener does not notice, like me in the past. I think you really need to tune into smelling them and learning when they peak in fragrance to understand that particular rose fragrance.

Pinkerbelle may have a wonderful fragrance in warm weather, just as it starts opening, if caught at the right time.

I realize there is light, moderate & strong fragrances in roses. I am sure Pinkerbelle has some fragrance. I read it was strong & moderate, a Verbena-citrus scent. Love to check it out.

I smell many of my roses sonetimes daily, now, searching for scents. Would be fun to notice and identify different notes in their fragrances.

My interest in rose fragrance has been peaked by you, Carol! Thank you! A whole new world ”to find joy in fragrances has unfolded for me.”

Hopefully, Pinkerbelle will be a lovely fragrance we can enjoy!

Oh, I'm glad I could lead you by your nose. lol :) :) Rose fragrances are truly joyful, as you said. :) Yes, I'm hoping for a great fragrance from Pinkberbelle.

I’ve been contemplating this a lot. I am also out of space so the decisions all get harder from here. This was a tough rose season with drought and humidity being major concerns. I have a lot of light creamy roses ranging from blush to apricot, and while these have long been favorites, they are so often spoiled by weather, or thrips or just… aging to a dull parchment-y shade of blah. I think it may be time to for some serious editing.

I can never remember the name that the person with the incredible Garden Delight uses on this forum... I only remember the name she uses on the NGA forum. IIRC, she lives in the PNW/Seattle-ish, so definitely not hot. All of her roses are spectacular.

Elena, Gold and Great is spectacular in that arrangement! Astounding!

True Passion TODAY October 18 at the Biltmore gardens. Exceptional! Only flaw is lack of scent. Color is hard to photograp.

Most of their roses were defoliated and not blooming. North Carolina is 7b and humid.

The other best performing varieties were some Kordes, Meillands and Flamenco rosita which did not surprise me at all.

One unexpected 2 Austin were holding up well which means I will try them next.

Markay,

I agree, late season black spot is inconsequential. As long as a bush makes it to the end of August with about 2/3 of its leaves clean, and just the bottom 1/3 are spotted or defoliated from black spot, AND that bush grew vigorously all summer long, it is OK in my estimation.

Your earlier photo of Sweet Spirit shows a fantastic bush in all regards.

Moses.

We get some very warm days in winter too Markay. I think that's why I've come back to using gallon jugs. They're not quite clear so maybe it's helping them to not overheat. I got over-confident last year and left mine out in the sun with just the lids off. They did just fine when it was windy but then we had a day in the nineties in late winter/early spring with no wind and they cooked. Lesson learned.

Diggerdee - "it can't hurt to take just a few minutes to take a look" That's true unless you're on a budget. Sounds dangerous. lol Much of my temptation comes from reading here or reading articles about "best plants for butterflies" or "long blooming perennials for sun" stuff like that. I research and make lists.

claudia - great shots of the hummingbird! And calamint is indeed a great pollinator plant - even after a hard frost last night there were a couple bumblebees and honey bees visiting my calamint this morning (10/18):

Markay - I believe the butterfly in the last pic in your earlier post is an American Lady, even though I don't see the characteristic white spot on the forewing. This Am Lady (as well as two Painted Ladies) was visiting a butterfly bush several days ago:

L Clark - on which side of the continental divide are you? Generally, monarchs east of the CD overwinter in Mexico, while most monarchs from west of the CD overwinter in southern (& Baja) CA. I haven't seen a monarch here since this one on Monday (10/12):

There were a couple unusual insects on Montauk Daisy in the backyard recently - a red-headed bush cricket, and an ichneumonid wasp:

Orange sulphur? Pics taken Oct. 9th

Then with bee

Both were really enjoying S. n-a

There's no pollinator visible, but that bigleaf magnolia flower is certainly a big target for 'em.

JFWIW:

I've been viewing this red maple of unknown origin for over 2 weeks now and it's just now going brown.

My species tree in the front yard, didn't hardly turn any color and went brown over a week ago.