Monica, I'm glad to hear that it was just a matter of time before Sunset Celebration did well in your garden.

Lyn, Your insights are very helpful. I see things in much the same way. In fact, I sometimes wonder whether people should be barred from breeding or writing about rose culture until they've grown roses in at least two places not less than 2000 miles apart. One of the great problems (and opportunities) for rose sites is to help people establish realistic expectations for how a rose might do in a person's own garden. Of course, summer and winter temperatures, levels of sunlight, soil fertility, freeze-thaw cycle patterns, humidity, rainfall, soil types, cultural practices, and special problems with local pests and diseases can all play crucial roles. Sometimes a subtle variation becomes important. For example, a comment about Super Excelsa doing well in the lower plain states of Germany, but failing in Berlin for lack of moisture surprised me yesterday. Each cultivar responds differently to a given set of conditions. Each spot in the garden can be subtly different from each other spot, too. So it is useful to make careful distinctions and generalizations.

One of my own goals is to help people break the mental habit of thinking/saying "this is a good rose" or "that's a bad rose" saying instead "this rose blooms generously" or "that rose is a martyr to black spot, even in the low humidity of Chino, CA." Some characteristics of roses seem quite variable and others seem quite constant across geography. If we are to communicate effectively with each other about roses we need to think in terms of the right level of specificity. The goal of a good website such as this one, it seems to me, is to make these distinctions well.

Of course not all the tools to be successful with this are well established. I think it is sad that the Sunset Zone system a) was not constructed for all temperate climate areas in the world and b) is not used broadly enough because c) it is not nearly so intuitive as the USDA cold hardiness system. It takes many more local variables mentioned above into consideration including soil characteristics. Something like it would, therefore, make a good foundation upon which to build finely tuned geographical distinctions affecting rose performance.

(Back on Topic:) Evidently Sunset Celebration is a rose that very frequently takes a long time to get established even where conditions are favorable, but it tends to be quite resistant to disease. It's a sort of "Little Engine that Could" rose. There are hints in these comments suggesting that its best performance is achieved with more sunlight than is required by many vigorous hybrid tea roses.

Steve