There’s lots of people these days who are purposely choosing flowering plants that are particularly nourishing to bees. I noticed long ago that most bee species do not get beyond the petals of the few varieties of tea roses I grow and spend most of their there time on my Zinnias, Sunflowers, butterfly bushes, mint flowers, perennial arugula flowers crocus flowers and so on. It brings me true joy when I see a dozen species of pollinating bees and flies partying on one, beautiful flowering plant.
They don’t like narcissus either but I still grow some just as I grow tea roses. However, if you grow a variety of tea rose that seems more accommodating to bees I’d love to know of it.
I have this David Austin variety on order this year. ‘Eustacia Vye’
It is supposed to be very fragrant and tolerant of some shade. Every review of it I have seen has been positive. Has anybody had experience with this variety?
I’ve had HORRIBLE results with David Austin roses. I thought they would do a lot better than they have and yet they look horrible and spindly vs the other roses from different nurseries.
DA roses look great in the catalog but for me they are worthless in my site. A big $$$ expensive lesson.
For me some have worked some have not. The best luck I’ve had is with David Austin Climbers (the yellow Pilgrim won many flower show awards with this rose). The bushes and shrub roses are lovely but the stem was always too thin to hold up the large and heavy heads of the roses. They are great for putting into a vase and smushing them together. Heads are too large for the stem.
It depends on where you are. My friends and I used to be crazy about roses, esp. DA roses. Unfortunately, in my area of central MA, they all need to be sprayed for black spot disease; otherwise, you have rose blooms with ugly or no leaves. After spray with chemicals, I was cautious about smelling them. Some of DA blooms are smaller than what they look in the catalog. Many are not prolific bloomers.
