I've got a spot, on a path,that's very prominent, and I want a dark,true violet-purple for this place. I have both P. Eden and T.Zone in pots; both have great colour, but neither plant is mature enough for me to understand it's habit; I want something nice and bushy for here. In fact, I also have Purple Lodge in a pot-this one has great colour, and the one already out in my garden impresses me for it's vigour,but according to HMF it grows taller than it is wide, and this habit does seem to be confirmed by the way the one out in the garden is developing, so I've discarded that as an option. So, I'd love to hear from any of you who are familiar with P.E. or T.Z.-any info is welcome. What are their growth habits like? which is more floriferous? which more vigorous? etc, etc, etc...Thanks in advance!

You don't mention what zone you're in (or state) so it's good to remember that how a rose performs in one state may differ greatly in how it performs in another state and/or climate zone. A rose that does very well in Calif. may not do as well as in, say, New York.

I'd never heard of Purple Eden until I looked in the rose data base here and realized that it's also sold as Ebb Tide.
I have 2 Twilight Zones and 1 Ebb Tide/Purple Eden. Ebb Tide has taken forever to get established in my So.Cal. garden. This is it's 4th year and it's not all that impressive. The color is very drab (for HERE) and it's "OK" as far as bloom production goes. It has peaked out at 4' tall and about 2' wide but it is very fragrant. NOT a show stopper by any means for my climate (10a) and not at all "vigorous".

OTOH, my 2 Twilight Zones have done exceptionally well for me. They were both planted at the same time (bare root, 2 years ago) and are both in excess of 4' tall and about 3' wide. Very generous with blooms (so far…) much nicer color than Ebb Tide and much more fragrant...which is why I have 2 of them. They are much more vigorous than ET.

Growing roses can be a real crap shoot, so it's "trial and error" a lot of the time, depending on where you live and your climate.

Thank you, Mike. I live in Tuscany, Italy,and I think that Tuscany is considered more or less as a zone 8 or 9,but frankly that doesn't tell that much about the climate. We have horrible summers-extremely hot and dry,made worse for my garden by the fact that it's on a slope facing south-west. However, at least it's in the hills, at about 600 meters above sea level. My garden relies on rainfall for irrigation; since I don't have running water out there, only first-year plants can count on recieving extra water.
Elsewhere I have heard opinions that confirm your appraisal of the two roses, with TZ getting a higher vote than PE. However, there is one woman on the Houzz forum that apparently has a PE (ET) "to die for". The major local rose producer here in Tuscany, Rose Barni,has been offering PE (ET) for a long time now, and the plant I have in a pot is one grown by them. I bought it locally-it was a very, very good-looking plant,much, much more vigorous and healthy than the other Barni PE plants that this local store had in stock, so I snapped it up. Like many Barni potted plants, it was planted in their standard container, with the graft well above soil level, so I re-potted it into a large pot, deep enough to get the graft at soil level. Now, in it's second year in a pot at my house, it does look pretty good, though still only one main thick cane, and one skinny side-kick , but this might well be because it is working on it's root system and can't worry for now about top growth. So I admit that I do have some hopes that this specimen will prove to be rather better than the average PE/ET.
Instead, I got my TZ bare-root from an on-line nursery (German one, I think),maybe 3 years ago. I planted it out ,and it survived pretty well, but the soil was not well-prepared enough; it was in very heavy clay, ( only recently have I finally hit on a reliable way to lighten and aereate this type of soil ). So it did not flourish. I dug it up and put it in a pot, and it does seem to be coming back. The fact that it survived as well as it did in such poor conditions speaks well for it's vigour.
Can you go into more detail about the growth habits of the two plants? Do both of them produce the flowers just on the top of the plant,for example? How do their growth habits compare to that of the classic Hybrid Tea style plant? I want to avoid an HT-style plant in this spot...

I'm not a hard core rose-a-phile by any means, but I'll attempt to answer your questions: There are several classes of roses and I only have experience with Floribundas and Grandifloras, so someone more learned can expound on the rest.

TZ belongs to a class of roses called grandiflora. I don't know if Europeans use that classification or not, but they do here in the USA.
From what I know, and have read, Grandifloras usually grow taller and have larger blooms in clusters vs. one to a stem like Hybrid Teas...thus you get more flowers per stem. Some grandifloras can reach 7 to 8 feet tall.
PE (ET) is a floribunda which doesn't grow as tall and has smaller flowers, yet still in clusters. They typically max out at about 4' tall.

I only grow floribundas because my garden is very small and I only have about 60 roses as opposed to some members here who have hundreds.
Plus, growing floribundas gives me maybe 5 times the amount of flowers over a longer period of time. The ones I have also repeat bloom very well.
TZ is my only grandiflora and may indeed grow much taller in the next few years and that's fine.

Yes, both roses produce flowers on the top of the plant. Floribundas tend to produce a lot more side branches than HT's so you get more blooms, and from my experience they grow wider and produce more blooms. I've tried several Hybrid Teas over the years and have found them to be too much work for what they produced and are just too fussy.

I always tell people that for every rose that is successful in my garden there have been three before it that failed.
Where I live we have hot and humid summers. I'm basically at sea level and the Pacific Ocean is 1/8 mile from me.
Luckily, my soil is sandy clay and roses do fine in it. It's water retentive yet well draining at the same time.
Many roses I've tried do NOT like the heat and humidity of our summers. David Austin roses in particular...although I do have a few that tolerate the heat and humidity pretty well. Roses that thrive in the warmer interior valleys about 20 miles from here are abysmal failures for where I am.

From my experience, most floribundas seem to tolerate our damp coastal conditions as well as the summer heat and humidity and seem to be less disease prone. JUNE is a very overcast and damp month here, so rust and powdery mildew can be a problem if/when I don't spray with fungicide. Some years are worse than others.

Heavy clay soil can be a curse for some (if not all) roses. Try amending it with very coarse organic material that will allow it to drain. Mix it in liberally to about a foot or more. Your roses (or any other plants) will only grow as good as the soil they're planted in. Rose roots run deep, so if your soil is heavy compacted clay you'll need to amend the heck out of it so they can spread out as well as go as deep as they can. It's almost impossible to "over amend" heavy clay soil.

I've never grown roses on a slope or hillside. My garden is totally flat. It sounds like you need to construct some sort of water holding basins around yours (after you amend the soil) to prevent run off and then make sure they get plenty of water in your hot dry summers.

There's really no universal solution to successful rose growing in every situation. So many variables can affect how they grow and trial and error is the best way to learn. Patience is definitely required !

Thank you for those tips on amending clay soil Cal Surf. Bart, I would be interested in what you do to lighten your clay.

Red lava rock and/or this product called "argilla espansa". I don't know what that would be in english, but it's made by "cooking" clay at a very high temperature,so it forms little hard balls filled with air pockets and becomes very light-weight. I just started using this, since they didn't have any red lava rocks at the local store,but I have very high hopes for it, since it also helps retain water.My soil is extremely uneven in quality (my garden is very big).In some areas it seems to be very sandy. In this particular area,it is clay so dense and heavy that you could almost sculpt with it, lol.This is the area in which TZ was growing. I had amended with lots of organic matter, of course, but that caused no permanent change. I think that it just broke down very quickly and left the soil just as it had been before,so I hit on the idea of adding these things that don't break down, and it seems to be working.
Thanks again for your comments, Cal Surf. I do have hundreds of roses, but for the most part they are climbers, old roses,ramblers, etc; I've only recently started trying floribundas and their ilk,so I'm not even sure if they are robust enough to be able to handle the tough conditions out there. With the lack of running water, any plant that I grow has to be able to accept lack of water during the summer,and it's amazing how well the vigorous roses deal with this. Even more jaw-dropping is the fact that delphiniums-those showy, supposedly fussy perennials-do quite well with only rainfall!!! Of course,the rainfall is essential, and I thank Heaven for it,but I have to resign myself to the drought of the summer months -I don't get much re-bloom after the big, glorious spring flush,and I don't really care; who wants to be outdoors when it's 90 degrees at 10AM? So the floribunda thing is an experiment for me. But I figure it's worth a try; after all, if delphiniums can handle these conditions, maybe they can, too...

Hi Mike, reading about your TZ makes me so envious. Mine didn't do so well in the ground so I took it out and placed it in a pot just last week. I never got more than 10 blooms and it topped out at about 3'. So glad I stumbled upon this post. Thanks for the info about ET. Bought ET yesterday but, I think I'm going to return it and exchange it for Violet's Pride. Here's a pic of TZ in the spring when she did perform.

I think you'll be much happier with Violet's Pride. Compared to TZ it's much more floriferous.