From: bhaile@leo.vsla.edu (Bess Haile)
Subject: Re: Goodbye roses!
Date: Sat, 11 Sep 1993 14:25:05 GMT

We're not too far apart, for I'm in tidewater VA, in Tappahannock.
This has been a terrible year for gardens in VA, no matter what you're
trying to grow.  I have a lot of roses, mostly of the old shrub type
or else David Austin's English Roses.  I got them all from Wayside
gardens in South Carolina.  Both kinds of roses are very easy to grow.
They are disease resistant, bug resistant and the DA's bloom all
summer.  They don't look like hybrid teas, with their lovely bud
formation, they are often more like small peonies with lots and lots
of petals on them.  They all smell great though, and give you so much
bloom you can make things like rose petal jelly, etc with them.  

But I do have two hybrid teas, one called Dainty Bess and one called
some thing like King's Gold, which I got form Jackson Perkins because
I wanted a yellow rose.  Now, the King's gold (or whatever) was
planted in a bed of tansy which I'd planted to keep down the mayflies
and mosquitoes.  Guess what else it keeps away!  Japanese beetles!
That hybrid tea, which I thought was going to be the prissiest in my
garden turned out to be the only one which didn't get chewed up!  Keep
in mind, I don't spray ANYTHING on the garden.  What I can't pick off
with my fingers stays there.  

So I'd suggest planting tansy around your roses.  I'm going to plant
it around more of them next year and see how it does.