A Well-Watered Garden

We planted three types of roses in the spring of 2011: Memorial Day hybrid tea, which are a beautiful old-fashioned pink with a lovely damask scent, Moondance floribunda, which sadly did not survive last year's brutal winter (all I have of them now is the photos), and Pink Promise hybrid tea, which really have flourished the best of the three. They have very strong thick stems and massive light pink blooms. Our roses do best in early spring and late summer, when the Japanese beetles are not active. Is there a reason why the two hybrid teas survived the winter and the floribunda did not? It could have just been the placement - maybe Moondance got slightly more wind and cold then the others. These photos were taken of the Pink Promises last fall (2014). Happy Valentine's Day!

Here are the Pink Promises and Moondance blooms this morning. You can see the leaves are skeletonized a bit by the Japanese beetles from the past few days, but the blooms, which mostly opened last night and this morning, seem safe. 8-5-11 The roses are both flourishing and struggling with pests. Early summer I noticed the blooms seemed to have spots on them, and when I peeled back the petals, I saw the frantic scurrying of thrip larvae. I used "Eight" on them and it seemed to control the thrips. The bushes and leaves are very healthy, and they've grown to at least twice the size in height and width. Such beautiful blooms - just need to keep the pests off. In the next month or two I'll be studying best practices for wintering them. 6-2-2011 The spot in which we originally planted the hydrangeas  is deceptively sunny. It's directly north of the house, and surrounded by shade plants, yet this particular 8 or so square feet gets constant...