I like this rose. The name reminds me of an Elton John song.

I've started another blog The Rosewood Rose - Old Garden Roses, et cetera.

Reisman's Rosewood Garden - South Carolina

Some things I learned this year about growing roses:

When I showed Pam Greenewald the compost mix I made she said it looked good, but suggested I add some perlite to the mix. I've done so for the last several months since my visit at the beginning of August. The cuttings and small plants seem to really appreciate the aeration and cuttings are now growing many more and longer roots very quickly. I've also been able to root some things which had alluded me previously. Including Woodley's White Tea Noisette and St. Josesph Noisette.

Also working a little at Pam's nursery, weeding, rooting cuttings and the like I learned a lot about making cuttings. Many roses produce very long bracts when they bloom. I'd previously made the mistake of trying to root these with no success, because they have few or no viable adventitious buds. I'm now cutting longer branches and making sure the base has a good bud or other undifferentiated tissue, such as that at the base of side shoots, which seem to root particularly well.

I asked Pam how, in an organic nursery, she is able to keep her plants so beautifully disease free. Her reply was about hygiene. She keeps the nursery very clean and goes through the nursery one section at a time and removes all yellow, spotted and damaged leaves. This slows down the spread of things like black spot fungus. Since I've been following her example my garden looks so much better. Even the modern hybrid teas are looking much better.

Because of our month of rain with few days without it (which led to the Great Flood of 2015 here in SC), several of my mature roses have gotten rose canker. I've removed almost all the healthy branches for cuttings to start over. In one case I was able to remove just the diseased canes leaving me with a smaller but healthy plant. 'Mozart' is the one rose I'm most concerned about.

The other factor involved in the rose canker / dieback disease is the fact that most of the plants I grow are in partial to heavy shade. I'm going to have to move some more to the front of the house to get more sun now.

Lime sulfur is a good preventative applied when it is cool (before the heat of late spring and summer).

Since I grow everything in pots I must move all new roses to my own mix. The watering and fertilizing becomes a nightmare if I have to account for every odd permutation of soils which they come in. It also gets rid of time-released fertilizers which seem to do more harm than good under my conditions. Besides, my soil is often so much better than others. Some soils are so soggy that plants have gotten root rot became very sick. Some died.

Bareroot plants from the national chain stores are fine but must be potted in very large (5 gallon or more) pots when I receive them. The larger $8-9 plants in the peat pots (Grade 1) plants do much better than the smaller $5-6 roses in the plastic bags. Many of the bagged ones died, the rootstock was dead.

I lost about a dozen roses this year including New Year (Bareroot - never budded out),

Acquired cuttings of this from TAMU 15 Nov 2015.