"Unique Too" wrote :
"Mark. Gooley" writes:

(Consoled myself for dead roses by, yep, buying more. A hardware
store in Orange Park has a not-bad selection of own-root old roses
for $15 a bush, a buck off that if you buy more than one; the woman
in charge of their nursery department has a web page I stumbled
across via helpmefind.com: http://www.antiqueroses.net/ )

Sorry I can't help with the deer issue. Well not exactly sorry that I
don't
have any experience with them. More like I'm sorry you have deer
problems.

I did check out the website though, she has some very interesting roses
there.
Many of them are good Florida roses, a change from all the Dr Huey HTs we
generally see available.

Bassino, a groundcover, red single with gold center sounds intersting as
does
Mlle Franziska Kruger, 1880 tea, 5' bush, copper/yellow & pink, very
double.

The photo that most caught my eye was Lafter. I really liked that one.

(If you don't have these roses, you should go buy them and report back on
how
they do for you. g)

I got Lafter from the Gainesville chapter of the ARS, at the spring garden
show
at Kanapaha Gardens (which is developing a nice little collection of old
roses
itself; mostly it goes for bamboos and amorphophallus and insectivorous
plants.
I hope that the director is doing well: he lost a forearm to an alligator
last year,
poor man, while helping tend the area near the ponds). It is almost
trouble-free,
blooms profusely, and I planted it near enough the doublewide that deer
haven't
been eating it. It's not really an old variety (1948) and it's technically
a hybrid
tea, but it looks a bit oldish and has a good smell, has General Jack and
Dr.
W. van Fleet in its ancestry, and is named for (I think) of a long-ago
botanical
illustrator who specialized in roses.

I got St. David's (Bermuda? helpmefind says no), Etoile de Lyon (tea I
think),
Duchese de Brabant, Excellenz von Schubert, Jean Bach Sisley, and I think
Mrs.
B. R. Cant...anyway, six in all. Pretty good size (2 and 3 gallon pots) for
own-root roses. Afraid to plant them out what with the deer, mind you.

I found an interesting article on a slanted electrified deer fence that
sounds
relatively cheap to put up (see
http://www.ext.vt.edu/news/periodica...997-10-02.html
for details). Might go that way...but they don't make it clear how to do
corner
posts for this design.

Mark., prolix as always