I do grow China's here.
The key word is they manage to grow them.

Oklahoma is unfortunately not a swamp. We get the most
interminable droughts here in midwest. Last year was particularly bad.

Every free growing rose in my area died including the Dr Huey's!!

I know my zone may be a bit colder but the climate patterns in
Oklahoma City are very similar to KC.

As a casual grower I doubt he wants to irrigate his rose hedge.
As such my buck roses wilted but survived last years drought with
a minimum of watering.

While this winter was nasty in terms of weather it was actually quite warm.
The lowest temp I measured near Hermosa was -2 F. Yet it is dead to 6" off
the ground.
And Hermosa is supposedly the toughest of the Cold hardy China's. And
beleive me
I'm not looking forward to clearing that mess. My Slaters
Crimson has been a disappointment. It crisps completely as soon as the
humidity
dips below 15%. Something wrong with the vascular system of that one.

damage comes from. Chinas are a lot more winter hardy than most folks
think
they are. Ann Peck is growing a couple of dozen of them in the mountains
of
E. TN in a solid zone 6, and many more people in the PA and NY area also
manage to grow them successfully. I NEVER spray mine for disease, and
they
never suffer more than 20% defoliation. I'm in an incredible swamp of a
climate with humidity ranging from 80-100% in the summer and with temps in
the 90's from May through September. Chinas thrive here. Their twiggines
is
an advantage in a hedging situation, and I've never found it to be any
type
of maintainace issue. I mostly just let them be what they want to be with
very little pruning. But, if you're into a lot of shaping and hacking,
you
can prune them with hedge clippers, for goodness sake. :~) They're the
nearest thing to a carefree rose that I've come across.

You know thats what I thought too.
But You should have seen Pearlie Mae and Winter Sunset perform. Easily
matched hermosa and old blush bloom for bloom ever though they are
just one year old and 18" high.
They have so much more sustance than the Chinas and don't burn when
we get those scorching dry west winds. My chinas blooms are usually gone by
noon time in our scorching summers. and then you have the ugly litter of
scorched petal lying everywhere and blowing around.

I seriously think Buck roses perform their best in our brutal summers. It
may
be they don't perform as well in other climates.

--
Theo

in KC Z5

I do like the Buck roses, especially his yellow and apricot ones like
Prarie
Sunrise and Prarie Harvest, and they *are* disease resistant. But, I think
of them as individual specimen roses and not hedging roses. And, they
cannot
put out the sheer amount of blooms that any china will. I'm totally
serious
when I say there isn't a single moment from April through November when
you
can't find a blossom on Mutabilis, or Cramoisi Superieur, or Arethusa, or
a
dozen more.