@Appleblossom, I've got a selected few roses in the garden, and also bits of it set aside as habitat (back boundary near the creek that runs behind our place). Doesn't need to be one or the other. 🙂
I guess I've never seen roses as a middle class thing. My family was more working class, but we and lots of our garden-keen family friends had roses. A couple of friends who were farmers had a beautiful big flower garden including lots of roses around their farmhouse with a good fence keeping the sheep in their rightful place. They've now semi-retired into town, and still have lots of roses.
Mum and Dad were really seriously keen gardeners. They got catalogues in from various specialist nurseries and were friends with specialist gardeners. So the ones in Mum's garden include some popular roses, and some unusual and interesting species. She's got a "Reine des Violettes", which is an old 1860s variety, and which I want to get a growing piece of. I've got another old one that Mum gave me growing here- "Anais Segales", an 1830s pouffy pink rose that's flowering like mad at the moment, then won't flower again until next spring.
Anais Segales