"Phisherman" wrote:

To look their best roses require regular maintenance. I love roses,
but only have three and that is enough work for me.

I feel the same, roses are a lot of work, I have only one hybridized rose,
it was here when I moved in, and even that one requires constant care...
every sap sucking insect on the planet seems to find it and it's a favorite
of Japanese beetles. At my last house I had planted a dozen rose bushes
before I knew how much work they were... over the twenty years I was there I
gave them all away, I used to beg visiters to take them.

I had wild rose
bushes but removed them--they may look okay in a natural unkept
garden.

Exactly, I would not recommend wild rosa rugosa for the typical surburban
lot sized garden unless one has the space and/or doesn't mind their unkempt
habit... they are also very dangerous if one has young kids scampering
about, even old kids running into that thorny bush can end up in the ER for
a protracted stay, I think it's far worse than barbed wire. If you fall
into one you'd likely need to lie there in excruciating pain and keep still,
and hope someone comes by with a jaws of life pruning tool to get you out.

I realize now that I have more wild rosa rugosa growing here than I at first
realized... I can see three huge ones from my widow, each like 15' tall and
as wide, in the hedgerow between my property and my neighbor... I have
another lower growing one by my creek out front but I need to go outside to
see it, and there are quite a few more scattered about at the edges of the
wooded areas. Every year I have to hack those back where I mow with a
machete or I wouldn't be able to mow a straight line, they grow fast and jut
out, they'd rip me up if I mowed too near. I keep telling myself that I
should get out there with a shovel and pick axe to remove them, but they
make wonderful wildlife cover so they win out. I don't think their flowers
are very rose like, they have few petals (just one skimpy row) and they
don't last more than a day on the plant.. And unless the plant is left
unpruned it won't flower very much at all... the parts I cut back don't
flower until the following year, and they only flower on the very upper
parts, so unless you're willing to let them have their full growth they
won't flower, all you'll have is a bush of deadly thorns. Many of the
hybridized roses are grafted to wild rosa ragosa root stock, so it's
important to remove those suckers before the entire plant resorts back to
wild. Wild rosa rugosa is one of the plants typically suggested in the mix
for wildlife habitant reclaimation programs... it's really not something one
wants as specimen plant. Oh, and yellow jackets love to make their nest in
the ground under a wild rosa rugosa, not a good mix in ones backyard.