I think Elemire is correct we must look at expert advice and determine whether or not it is suitable for our garden in our location. Most of the people who give expert advice have grown many roses in a one or a few climates/locations, therefore, their advice is colored by their experience in those climates and cannot be viewed as universal. I don't think anyone can possibly know everything about how to care for roses in every climate. I think it is necessary to filter the advice using our own experience in our gardens. I have now got the experience of growing roses in two very different climates. In Socal, my gardening experience was totally different than in my Nocal mountain garden. Pruning practices that worked down south do not work well in my northern garden. I have had to change how I go about the work in order to have healthier plants. I was told long ago to let the rose be your teacher and that there were a lot of right ways to grow roses. With those two concepts in mind, I have found that I don't remove as much of the twiggy growth as recommended by most experts because that growth produces leaves which shade the canes and protects them from sunburn. I don't prune as hard up here as I did down south because I have a shorter growing season. Some of the roses that thrived down south struggle in this garden. Jackie is right about growing the roses that like your climate. It takes a lot less work. If we have a long wet spring, (every year is different), I have found that it really does help to remove pruning debris that has shown disease because I have found I do have more disease when I haven't done that kind of cleanup in this garden. There were a couple of years in a row due to illness and injury that I could not do this work and found that disease was more of a problem in the garden. Here, it is observation that dictates the how I deal with pruning waste. Ingrid... we don't have any garbage pick-up and have to haul our own garbage, recyclables, green waste to the dump. YUK. I just throw my pruning debis over the cliff across the street. It's far too much effort to haul it to the dump. Susan... since you are local to Gregg, it makes sense to follow his advice. Also, I don't prune every rose in the garden every year. I always start at a different point and over the seasons, they all get their "clean prune". I just can't seem to get it all done in one year, since I garden on four levels and one project always leads to three more. I garden and grow roses because I love to be outside working in the garden. Yes, I'd like to make it easier, but weeds grow, seasons are different and each year I learn something new that makes things work better. I've made plenty of mistakes and spend time moving plants to better locations, change how I fertilize, prune, etc as I watch how the plants perform. It's all a process and there is no one right answer. Smiles, Lyn

Jeri - you know, I've had very mixed experiences with Hybrid Musks, sometimes it seems that one nursery simply has a healthier version than another. My first hybrid musk was purchased from the old Rose of Yesterday & Today: Lavendar Lassie, grafted, and may have had mosaic virus, but it was a monster of a rose: 12 ' x 15' and a wall of flowers. I've been trying to get one to grow where I now live for over 9 yrs and it's still just a scrawny 5 footer that squeezes out a few flowers twice a year. This LL is ownroot, so perhaps grafted is better for this particular rose. I really should just shovelprune it already and try again. My microclimate shifted from where I grew that first LL, just a block from the beach to a couple miles inland where it's a bit warmer -- but whatever the reason is, LL's not happy here.

Henry, you will find many micro climates in your garden. They are EASY to accidentally create. Roseblushlyn grew Sweet Chariot in her front garden here in SoCal where it mildewed badly. She moved it around to her back garden and it never mildewed again. Sometimes all it takes is cutting something near the plant back to provide less humidity and more air flow, or even more direct sun. Quite often, mildew problems arise because the rose isn't receiving sufficient water. I'd read in LeGrice and Harkness that water stress could cause mildew even when conditions didn't support the fungus. I never believed it until I DID it in nearly triple digit heat with near single digit humidity. You can also force many roses to rust badly due to insufficient water. Penelope at a client's house mildews badly because of the reflected, radiated heat from the block wall it grows on. No matter how much water it's given, when the temps climb, the heat bakes out more water than the plant can absorb, so I have to use systemic fungicide on it to keep it clean. t home, I will move a rose (and other plants) around to determine where they are going to be most satisfied, before planting them. You'll be surprised how many not only don't need, but actually suffer from as much sun as you're used to providing. Others stretch out in the heat like an old cat. The one constant though is, in this extreme heat, aridity, sun intensity, as long as your drainage is sufficient, you can NOT over water! You might also try overhead watering with an oscillating sprinkler. You will be amazed how huge,clean and bug free your foliage is when it really gets cooking here! Kim

Wow Brenda! Your tax return must have really been a difficult one to do this year! LOL! Or should I assume you DO taxes for other people? We sent ours out again this year. Too hard and too much time. Let the Pros do it, I say!