I threaten them. I buy a replacement and set the pot right next to the sickly rose and sometimes even plant the new one right next to it. I have 4 sets of twins in the yard because the first one decided to shape up. I'm about to buy a replacement Sexy Rexy and wouldn't you know that one cane wonder is doing its best to produce a big bud.
Honestly I think it's because I water the new one, and that may be what the old one needed as well....
I fertilized this year for the first time. Other years, I use alfalfa pellets, blood meal, mushroom compost, fish emulsion or a brew of all of the above plus superthrive. I have an earthkind bed that gets nothing other than good soil prep at the outset. They look as good as the ones that get the stinky brew. That bed will get water this year for the first time because I planted cannas and hardy hibiscus in there.




This is the area I call the formal rose bed. not so formal anymore.

It all looks very pretty to me.

No rose blooms here as yet although I have lots and lots and lots of buds.

Here's another bed that gets no fertilizer or water, and evidently I've not weeded it either. I do have ornamental grasses that get 7' tall by August, and loads of echinaceas, coreopsis, baptisia, heliopsis and rudbeckia that self-sow in there. The roses are Carefree Sunshine, Sunny Knockout, and any other carefree type shrub yellow rose i come across. (Sunsprite, Shockwave, polka, etc are in there)

I sort of like the yellow and green thing going on, there. Sometimes I prefer to see grass growing in a bed rather than mulch. It makes the rose seem to inhabit a more natural place. It's hard to get roses to look good in big beds, I think. Many prominent rose gardens either use mulch or huge divisions of weeding staff to kill anything that grows between roses. It's what is expected. But in my opinion, when the bed is more than about one rose deep, it's a very unusual rose that can keep me from staring at the mulch and wishing there were more plants mixed in. Roses barely hold their own in the garden when they are blooming, and the rest of the year they can be negligible or even ugly plants. Less true of floribundas. I'm still trying to figure out how to mix narcissus, tulips, daylilies, iris, dianthus, veronica, kniphofia, nepeta, lavender, and salvia in with my roses. Having some success.

I am quite sure that early watering this year and something like 120 lbs of Mills Magic has made a difference in the garden. Only three or four roses are far enough along to know this for sure, because most are still recovering from cold weather, but Baronne Prevost has grown maybe a foot in every direction already this spring, which is the only change in dimension that rose has had in its three year tenure here. He got less than a pound of that, so I'm hoping the other roses follow suit.

Sue, what lovely photos of your mother's garden! I worried for some time about whether I should get Golden Celebration for my garden and where to put it. After looking at your photos I was glad I did, and it didn't really matter where, so long as it was happy with the placement. The way my garden works, I'm hoping for good photos of GS in two or three years...

Steve, my formal rose bed started out with just roses and mulch, and I thought it was just ugly 10 months of the year. I put dianthus, creeping phlox and homestead purple verbena in among the roses, and I like it much better. Sometimes I add wave petunias or rose moss.
That yellow bed changes drastically once the grasses get taller. I think it's prettiest in the winter with the tall grass seedheads, and black seed heads from echinacea, buddliea and rudbeckia.
My Baronne Prevost stays compact at 18" each direction, and blooms after the floribundas have their first flush.

I came at it from the opposite direction. I used to grow nothing but irises, which left me with a boring garden the rest of the year, so I bought a few rose bushes to pep it up after iris season. Now, 2000 rose bushes later, the poor irises are wondering what happened to their wide open spaces.

Oh, my. You really did fall for those roses!