There’s something special about roses. With their beautiful flowers and their delectable fragrance, they add glamour and elegance to any garden. As well as looking gorgeous, roses are surprisingly tough and can cope with a wide range of conditions. Here are a few of our favourite roses for different situations.
Best roses for shady spots
Roses generally do best in sun, but many will grow in partial shade, provided they get at least 4 hours of sun per day.
- Rose ‘The Pilgrim’ AGM is a climbing rose producing soft yellow flowers with a medium scent of tea and myrrh. Reaching a height of 3.75m (12ft), this strong, healthy rose looks lovely trained against a wall or fence.
- Rose ‘Princess Alexandra of Kent’ AGM flowers prolifically through summer, producing bright pink flowers that are deeply cut with a fresh tea fragrance and hints of lemon and blackcurrant.
- Rose ‘Dame Judy Dench’ is an upright shrub rose with dark green foliage that contrasts well with the lightly scented, apricot-orange, double flowers that are borne from summer into autumn and have great resistance to rain damage.
Rose ‘Dame Judi Dench' - Photo by Geolina163 (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Best roses for pots
You don’t need a big garden to grow roses – patio roses have been specially bred to grow well in containers. Choose a pot at least 30cm diameter x 40cm deep and fill it with a loam-based compost such as John Innes no 3. Water regularly in spring and summer, and apply a granular rose fertiliser in spring.
- Rose ‘White Patio' is a compact rose, perfect for container growing rose with clusters of lightly scented white blooms set against a backdrop of deep green foliage. With regular dead-heading this will repeat flowering from summer into autumn.
- If your looking for a more traditional red rose to grown in a container, then Rose ‘Ruby Romance’ is a compact, miniature rose with big flower power, producing a profusion of long-lasting, vibrant red, fully double roses continuously through the summer.
Best roses for scent
When you think of roses, you think of fragrance, and here are three of our top picks for scent:
- Rose ‘Arthur Bell’ AGM is a stunning floribunda rose, producing clusters of spectacular golden-yellow flowers. Named after the founder of Bell’s whisky, ‘Arthur Bell’ has a scent that will go straight to your head!
- Rose ‘Gertrude Jekyll’ AGM starts flowering early and carries on all through summer, producing exceptionally beautiful pink double flowers with a delicious Old Rose fragrance. It forms a vigorous, upright shrub, and the flowers are perfect for cutting.
- Rose ‘The Lady Gardener’ AGM is a medium sized English shrub rose with strongly-scented, double, rosette-shaped apricot blooms that repeat flower from summer into autumn. The tea fragrance has hints of cedarwood and vanilla.
Rose ‘Arthur Bell' - Image by Teodor Buhl from Pixabay
We have a fantastic range of roses and other flowering shrubs in centre. Visit us soon and pick the perfect rose for your garden!
