You’ll probably never see a sign on a rose plant that says, “I’m a landscape rose!” But there are some roses that are better suited than others to being grown alongside other plants in your landscape. But how do you choose?
Color your garden happy with the rich hues of landscape roses.
When you have a
‘Home Run’™, your landscape is sure to win!
Photo Credit: Ann Hooper
The red and white striped blooms of
‘Fourth of July’™ can bring life to a fence or arbor.
Photo Credit: Ann Hooper
These are the qualities that make a rose a good choice for adding rich spots of color in the landscape:
- It should bloom nonstop throughout the season, with large, colorful flowers or clusters of flowers.
- It should require little in the way of pruning, with blooms that fade attractively and fall cleanly once they’re spent, making room for the new flowers to come.
- It should be resistant to the usual rose diseases, such as black spot and powdery mildew, so you don’t have to mess with spraying.
- It should have pretty much the same culture requirements as the other plants growing around it.
- It should be hardy, without needing protection in climates where winters are cold.
- It should do the job you want it to do.
Roses have a reputation for being fussy. But these days, many of the newer varieties are so easy to grow, they can be as carefree as the plants you want to mix them with. In fact, you can have a colorful yard that stops traffic without much effort at all!
Rose hybridizers – the people who create new varieties of roses – have developed breeding programs that improve the qualities that make roses desirable, while eliminating the qualities that make the plants difficult.
So many of today’s landscape roses – the shrubs, shrublets, floribundas and climbers – have amazing flower power, with a great variety of unique colors, huge clusters of flowers and a fast repeat bloom. The plants are clean, dropping their flowers before they turn brown and ugly, and they produce new flower clusters continuously throughout the season.
Many of them are also disease-resistant, if not disease-free, making fungicide spraying virtually unnecessary. The foliage stays lush and green all season long, while the flowers just keep on comin’! And they can be watered and fertilized the same way you care for adjacent plantings.
But most important, the roses you choose for your landscape plantings should do the job you want them to do. And with the selection of disease-resistant own-root roses available, you can choose from among a large selection of colors, sizes and habits.
Here are a few suggestions:
If you want a short, compact plant to add color to the front of a border, select a shrublet like ‘Rabble Rouser’™, with its gleaming gold flowers and glossy foliage that’s free from black spot. The plant is a small, rounded mass of gleaming gold and green. And if you love red, ‘Raven’™ is a slightly larger plant, but small enough for a tight spot.
The most disease-free rose on the planet is ‘Home Run’™, which grows to about 4 feet and is always covered with perfect foliage and multitudes of velvety flame-red blooms. If you buy one rose this year, ‘Home Run’ should be the one! It grows anywhere.
If you need a tall, upright plant, consider the delectable orange ‘Livin’ Easy’™ or its peachy-yellow offspring, ‘Easy Goin’’™. These plants electrify drab corners!
And fasten the long canes of an own-root climber to grow horizontally along a fence. The red and white striped blooms of ‘Fourth of July’™ will razzle-dazzle ’em!
There’s a rose for every purpose, a color for every discerning eye, a growth habit to suit every empty space and a world of enjoyment in your very own roses in the landscape!
