If your rose garden needs a bit of grandeur, consider adding a grandiflora. With such distinguished parents as the hybrid tea and floribunda, this class of roses has produced many beauties since the 1954 introduction of its first member: ‘Queen Elizabeth’.
Grandiflora roses combine the high-centered beauty of the hybrid teas and the grandeur of a large, upright growth habit.
Photo Credit: ©2001 Dolezal Publishing/John M. Rickard
You’ll get a bevy of beautiful blooms from your grandiflora shrubs.
Photo Credit: ©2001 Dolezal Publishing/John M. Rickard
Generally, grandiflora roses are vigorous, hardy bearers of floribunda-like clusters of large showy blooms, though some varieties also produce individual, long-stemmed roses. They bear repeat flushes of blooms throughout the garden season, each flower cluster comprising a few hybrid tea-like blooms of large size.
While you can use these larger-than-average shrubs in lots of places around the garden, they work fantastically as a background planting or a barrier hedge. Of course, featuring solo specimens in prominent locations not only looks great, it’ll give you a ready supply of beautiful cutflowers for quick bouquets or gifts.
Grandifloras are a wonderful intermediate step between the shrub roses and climbers. They create a strong, eye-level planting that nestles in the foreground before a tall trellis, arch, arbor, pergola or gazebo draped with the rambling canes and blossoms of climbing roses. They’re also well-suited to mixed plantings when combined with hybrid teas, floribundas, polyanthas and shrub roses – as long as you remember to take the grandiflora’s large stature into consideration at the time of planting.
These large shrubs also blend well as backgrounds that disguise or hide fences, low structures or utility fixtures. Consider creating a backdrop mass of grandiflora color on a tall wall or fence in a sunny location, with smaller rose varieties emerging between the grandifloras to create a foreground contrast – c’est manifique!
Despite their name, grandiflora roses don’t grow grandly everywhere. These plants actually grow best in long-season, warm, dry climates. Many of the tender varieties struggle in cold-winter regions – nearly to the degree of the hybrid teas – so they’ll need winter protection in those areas with severe winters. If you live in a region that’s cool and damp (or one that’s warm and humid), be sure to space the plants widely to permit good air circulation. This simple step at planting will prevent hours of care spent dealing with fungal diseases and insect pests that prey on plants weakened by powdery mildew and black spot. But that said, do not fret – with the right care, you, too, can enjoy the grandeur and beauty that only grandifloras can bring!
