All The Roses ( Part 9(!) "T" - "Z")

No "Z" roses.  I tried 'Zephirine Drouhin', as many people do, but discovered Zephie does better in colder zones, with a winter chill and less mildew pressure.  It doesn't perform well in Southern California.  Buh-bye, Zephie!

In contrast, 'Tamora' is great.  Nasty prickles, one of the nastiest, but lots and lots of consistently beautiful flowers, with a strong myrrh fragrance.  It forms a thicket of twiggy canes.


'Tangerine Streams' bears a strong resemblance to 'Pure Poetry', without all the prickles on a shorter plant.  It's been slow to get going, but I appreciate the small stature of the plant, still only about 30" tall.  Very little fragrance and Rust resistance isn't great, but the flowers glow.



'Top Notch' is a fabulous rose.  This past year was the first I noticed any fragrance at all, and it was myrrh.  Short stems, but if you get a lengthy stem, a good cut flower.  It gets black spot but handles dry heat pretty well.  It needs prompt deadheading;  otherwise it rapidly produces very small, deformed new flowers from right below the old flowers, and the small deformed flowers are not nearly as good as the ones you get if you deadhead promptly and take off a few inches of stem.  Roses do what they do, the rosarian adapts. 


'The Ambridge Rose' has made a good hedge.  It's prone to rust, but I like it all the same.  A sweet myhrr fragrance, far sweeter than 'Tamora'.  It took two or three years to rebloom well;  now I can always find at least a few flowers blooming, usually quite a few.


'The Endeavour'.  Something of a small climber, prone to black spot even here where black spot is rare, no fragrance.  Can be quite pretty--but it's not one of the best of the best Austins--though it's not one of the worst by far. 


'The Prince':  would be flawless if it had some vigor.  It must be babied, even here in roses-are-easyland.  The flowers are gorgeous, the fragrance, rich.  However, foliage is widely spaced, making the thin canes canes vulnerable to bad sunburn, so afternoon shade in sunny climates will help.  


'Tradescant':  this has been a good rose for me, but apparently it's not all that great in most other gardens.  There's a beautiful fragrance, but it's ephemeral and fades to nothing after the flower is fully open.  On the plus side, a good cut flower, for an Austin.


'Trumpeter' is so-so in my garden.  Lots of Rust, little fragrance, though the frequency of  bloom partially makes up for that. 


'Tuscan Sun'.  Why can't I find a photo of this one?  I group it with 'Disneyland' and 'Easy Does It'--three smallish floribundas with good bloom production in the orange-yellow-pink range.  'Tuscan Sun' has the most vigor and best disease resistance of the three, the least pretty color (slightly muddy) and the least fragrance.  'Disneyland' has the best landscape display,  'Easy Does It' the clearest, most pure coloration and a sweet Tea fragrance.  Pick your must-have virtue--they are all good performers here. Photos of 'Tuscan Sun' here (link).

'Veteran's Honor':  I used to like this rose a lot more than I do now--'Firefighter' usurped it's position as my favorite red Hybrid Tea.  A fascinating raspberry fragrance, but it's not strong.  It's actually prettier than 'Firefighter', but 'Firefighter' blooms twice as much, has better stems for cutting, better Rust resistance, and ten times the fragrance.  'Beloved' is a full sibling of 'Veteran's Honor' with less fragrance.  It's slightly prettier.  Now, I am not saying 'Veteran's Honor' is a poor HT rose--on the contrary--I just prefer a strong fragrance.


'Vineyard Song' is a rose that kept ending up in poor locations, and it's never done much.  I move it, it has a temporary improvement, and then it dwindles back to a stick once again.  I should probably dig it up and replace it with 'Sweet Chariot' so we can both stop being miserable. 


'Wildeve' is fairly good, just not fantastically good.  It's the lack of an alluring fragrance.  Just hasn't grabbed me, except by its plentiful prickles.  Photogenic, I must say!


'Wildfire'.  After six or seven years of languishing in a too-shady location, it got full sun this year when I cut down the Cercis trees.  It responded by growing like a weed and blooming like crazy, with two or three dozen blooms on it at any given time all year. "Surprise!", it said to me.  Not much fragrance, but in this case I don't mind. A big weed with flowers like this?  I'll take it.


'William Morris'  Ever photogenic, doesn't bloom all that much, but unlike its parent 'Abraham Darby' it doesn't rust.  Typically a cluster of bloom at the tip of a 2 meter (80") cane.  Little fragrance. 


'William Shakespeare 2000'.  Awkward growth habit, good rust resistance, beautiful, beautiful flowers with very good productivity.  Its fragrance is elusive to my nose, though visitors have ooohed and ahhhed over it. 


'Windermere' would be a superb rose if only the flowers lasted more than two days.  A wonderful fragrance very similar to 'Jude the Obscure', though not quite as strong.


'Young Lycidas'  awkward grower with sparse foliage and large, fragrant, gorgeous flowers.  Well, nobody's perfect, right? 

'Yves Piaget' has a big beautiful flower.  Here it has needed plentiful fertilizer and water to produce said monster blooms, but that only makes sense.  I sense it being usurped in my heart by 'Princess Alexandra of Kent', which last week produced the most sublime fat pink flower I've ever seen in my garden, with a wonderful fragrance.  We shall see if PAOK produces more of those.  If it does, 'Yves' is in trouble. 

And there you go, all my roses, except the ones I forgot.  They're out there somewhere...