h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Those are beautiful roses. I hope you are not afflicted with sawfly larvae, which cling to the undersides of rose leaves and suck the juice out of them. Some of my roses are devastated by these icky critters, while others are largely unscathed. Spraying with Neem oil is supposed to get rid of them, but we had frequent rainstorms this year. Water dilutes the effect of Neem oil that you have to spray again.

Well... the pink roses you see on the picture for instance have survived 10 years without any attention while the house was empty. They still survived without problems. I think I have 5 such roses which I 'found' in the garden when we moved in and I removed loads of bushes and half grown trees around them.
The only thing I do is cut off dry blooms and cut off some twigs in autumn. I also use fertilizer for roses once or twice per year.

I guess you can put much work into roses but I just don't do it and they are still ok. They could maybe be even more pretty but I don't have the time. Fortunately they usually don't have any parasites.

Great photos - lovely colours. Thanks for sharing them, Tav

"The only thing I do is cut off dry blooms and cut off some twigs in autumn. I also use fertilizer for roses once or twice per year"

That's what I do with my rose Blackspot can be a problem for roses, but mine is a blackspot-resistant variety, so it is mostly OK. I did have a few insects in it that curled a couple of leaves around themselves earlier this year, but that was fine - the plant still produced plenty of flowers

I do pretty well with wild roses. There's a yellow rose near the office, and it's loaded with blooms right now. It's become something of a conversation piece.

So, you win some and lose some. It might be a question of where the roses are.

Anyway, roses do their best, no matter what.