I wasn't really planning to be interested in Hybrid Teas, because as everyone knows, they are a pain. However, they are irresistable because they are so beautiful, and, like many of the things "everyone knows", a lot of them aren't a pain at all, though they might do better some years than others. I use very few chemicals, and basically will have to live without any rose (hybrid tea or not) that doesn't do pretty well on a regime of garlic and soap tea and baking soda.
I particularly like own-root roses, which most of these are, because I think they are more reliable on most counts than grafted plants.
On the right is Dallas ( a grafted plant). We were going to shovel prune this long suffering rose last year, because it looked like it would really be the kindest thing, but Ladd happened to pass it this past spring with a bucket of rabbit manure in his hand, which he dumped on it, and it hasn't stopped blooming all summer. The only problem it has had was aphids, but it did us proud in spite of them.
I bought it 5 or 6 years ago because it was a red, marked "fragrant", but really had no place to put it. so into a nursery bucket it went. Shortly after, I met and married Ladd, and he made a drainage hole in a 5-gallon pickle bucket, and I moved it there "temporarily", while I got organized. It lived in that bucket, hard up against the west wall of the house, for the next 3 years, getting nothing but the occasional dose of manure tea and water. It bloomed all three years, and after we landscaped the year before last, we finally dug it a hole and put it in the ground. That was apparently a major shock to it, because it promptly keeled over, and it really was on it's way out until Ladd happened by with the rabbit gold. But it looks like it's earned it's place. It's not very fragrant, by the way .. only just barely, but it lasts a long time on the plant or in water. I guess we'll keep it.
Here is Grenada, which has bloomed with a vengeance once it began. I bought it on impulse, and then discovered it is one of the parent plants of Double Delight (which has bloomed freely, but which I haven't been able to catch yet), and is very nearly as fragrant.
And below on the right, Velvet Fragrance, which I bought to replace a grafted Chrysler Imperial which bit the dust before it had been in the ground a month. I was sorry to see it go, (still looking for an own root plant), but I think this one is going to work out just fine. It's a darker red than it has photographed, I think, and is very fragrant.
As late in the season as it is, it seems unlikely that Stainless Steel will produce anything this year, but it wouldn't be the first surprise the garden has given me if it does. Might be worth checking back!
