Hybrid Wichurana, Large-flowered Climbing Rose 'Dr. Huey'

A friend handed me this limp 8" twig with a long root wrapped in a damp paper towel saying she found this while digging up a flower bed a...Read Morend heard I was good with plants. Well - I potted it up not holding out much hope - it was so small and weak. That was the summer of 2010. It is now about 5' tall with several spreading branches and tons of buds. This will be its first bloom!

Glad I read this, explains a lot about my roses! There was a little rose growing under a fence 13 years ago when I moved into my house. I...Read More couldn't dig it out, and somewhere along the way it disappeared. Then suddenly about 6 years ago I noticed a rose there again - this year I took down the fence, and the rose spread about 6 feet in each direction, was covered with nearly 100 blooms by memorial day! Looking at other's comments, it is clearly Dr. Huey! What a beautiful rose, well worth growing. Unfortunately, I think I have three more that came up from neglected hybrid teas that died! Maybe I can trade them. But Dr. Huey is a beautiful, hardy, vigorous plant. I haven't had any trouble with black spot, only a few aphids. Another did just fine in about 2 hours of sun a day, grown as a pillar rose. I'm in the metro Detroit area.

Besides harsh winters killing less hardy roses grafted onto it, many people in my area are winding up with Dr. Huey because they or their...Read More gardeners don't know how to properly prune grafted roses. They're leaving graft stock suckers on the plant, or even choosing the Dr. Huey branches when pruning for shape because they're vigorous, not realizing they have a grafted plant. Within several blocks of my house are several houses that have bushes with Dr. Huey and a grafted rose that are on the same bush. In a few cases, Dr. Huey has almost finished the job of replacing the grafted rose. I wonder how many of the many Dr. Huey roses in my area are the result of poor care rather than harsh winters.

Bought a WWII Memorial rose that didn't make it throught the first winter. Must have been grafted onto Doc Huey, b/c suddenly I have a d...Read Moreeep red climber. Only one rose first year, and didn't rebloom. Kept meaning to get around SP the thing, finally did, but the gov. granted it a stay of execution. Planted it in a forlorn section of my backyard. Now, only about 3 months into it's new home, it's COVERED with blooms. As previously stated by others, anything *that* determined to live (and look pretty) can have a place in my garden.

I'm not absolutely positive that the specimen I have is Dr. Huey, but I have a strong suspicion that it must be. It's the right color and...Read More shape and all.

And.

When I moved into my house seven years ago, there was a straggly, 1-foot rose-looking thing near the corner of my garage. I zapped it with RoundUp™ because I'm not a connoisseur of roses.

But then the blasted thing survived and got *bigger*. I figured that anything that can survive RoundUp that isn't an outright weed deserves to live, so I let it grow. Pretty soon, I had to hang a trellis for it, and now it's a good 8-9 feet tall.

I still don't take very good care of it because I don't like the color, but the thing doesn't seem to notice that it's not getting enough water or minerals and just marches on. Gotta give props where props are due, eh?

Dr. Huey came to live in my garden after I was
given permission to dig up plants from a home
which would be demolished.
...Read More/>
I can't say enough about this rose, though I often
wondered why so many people grew it. Come to
find out, Dr. Huey is such a good rose bush, that
it was being used as a root stock for grafting other
less durable roses onto. Just as another gardener
mentioned above, when the grafted rose dies, Dr. Huey
remains.

Ah, this explains why there are so many. Not to mention,
you can dig it up, but it seems there is always a small
chunk left behind. Alas, though I thought I'd dug it all up
last spring, I returned to the scene today to find indeed
it has returned. This time it was dug up for Mom.

Such a strong, healthy rose bush!

I have 2 “suckers” of an old garden rose, one growing on an arch in the sun and one in the shade. I am glad that I planted the roses ...Read Moreinstead of treating them like suckers. The rose on the arch has characteristics of a rambler but only blooms in spring. However, the blooms were beautiful (see pics). The rose is susceptible to black spot and I have to spray it weekly. The rose in the shade has been growing less vigorously and had only had 2-3 blooms in spring, but it also had fewer problems with black spot.

It happened Dr. Huey grew from a lost rose and how beautiful ! I look forward to many years of enjoyment from this rose.

This rose is frequently used as a rootstock, or at least used to be in our area. As a result, if the less-hardy hybrid tea grafted to it...Read More succumbs to a bad winter, Dr. Huey emerges. It's not a bad rose--but it is silent testament to a lot of poor rose variety choices in our area.