A gardening expert’s guide to rose varieties

A Gardening Expert’s Guide to Rose Varieties

Activist and writer Emma Goldman famously said she’d rather have roses on her table than diamonds on her neck. I, however, am simply happy to have these romantic blooms brightening up my garden.

A revolution, according to the late Cuban president Fidel Castro, is no bed of roses. Neither, it has to be said, is a pandemic. However, the extra time I spent at home this spring means my actual bed of roses is in great shape.

For the first time in years, I’ve given my organic rose garden the care and attention it deserves. I’ve weeded, mulched, and fed my prickly companions, and I even pruned them all before they burst into bud. By “pruning,” I mean I ran a pair of electric hedge trimmers over the top of my white carpet roses and attacked the rest with secateurs, loppers, and a miniature chainsaw. The sharper the tools, the more satisfying the task.

Why I Love Roses

I adore roses. Who doesn’t? Ever since the 18th-century Scottish bard Robbie Burns first compared love to a red, red rose in 1794, these picture-perfect flowers have been synonymous with lust and affection.

Roses, like the daffodil bulbs we bury in autumn for a spring display, are symbols of eternal optimism. In winter, stripped of bud, bloom, and leaf, rose bushes are bare-legged ugly ducklings. But when the soil warms again in spring, they burst back into life. Come summer, they are the epitome of floral exuberance—and that’s even before you sink your nose deep into their scented petals.

Heritage Roses

In my garden, the first rose to bloom each spring is the fragrant French heirloom tea rose ‘Jean Ducher,’ which was bred in France in the 1870s. It has stood the test of time with blushing apricot-pink blooms like crumpled handkerchiefs.

‘Jean Ducher’ keeps company with a posse of other old French dames, including salmon-pink ‘Albertine’ (introduced in 1921) and the coppery-pink climber ‘Souvenir de Madame Léonie Viennot’ (1858), which is better known, albeit rather less salubriously, as “the bog rose” in New Zealand.

Early Kiwi settlers were fond of draping Léonie’s lanky limbs over their outhouses, and many an abandoned farmhouse sports this charming rose to this day. On our farm, she grows happily at the front gate, where her lichened branches are routinely pruned by possums and rabbits.

Heritage roses ooze romance and charm and tend to be quite resilient in country gardens and small-town cemeteries. However, most flower only once a year, in a spectacular spring or early summer display. Modern hybrid teas and floribundas, on the other hand, have been bred to repeat bloom from spring until autumn. Lop off the old flowering stems after the petals have faded, as this process of deadheading encourages a second or third flush of flowers.

Modern Roses

Although dahlias are currently top of the pops among flower gardeners, roses will never go out of fashion. They haven’t always been easy, however, as rose breeders formerly focused on exhibition success, leading to show-off blooms on sickly plants that required a military spray regime of alternating pesticides and fungicides. But these days, the breeding emphasis is as much about healthy foliage as it is flowers.

My Favorite Roses

I have at least 50 rose bushes in my garden, some more worthy of praise than others. Last summer, my favorite for picking was ‘Columba’s Rose,’ a hybrid tea honoring the Dunedin school of the same name. It is as tall as me, with large fragrant flowers of clotted cream.

The small-flowered but vigorous rambler ‘Chevy Chase,’ grown from a cutting I was given, is a superstar and a sentimental favorite along a farm fence, as is the tall David Austin rose ‘Tess of the d’Urbervilles,’ with large flowers in the exact same shade of crimson.

I love the richly scented deep purple blooms of ‘Charles de Mills’ (bred in 1786) and the candy-striped ‘Variegata di Bologna’ (1869), but both succumb to fungus and, by summer’s end, are black-spotted mongrels.

Growing Roses Without Chemicals

It’s possible to grow gorgeous roses without chemicals, and so we should. The Auckland Botanic Gardens has spent more than 20 years trialing roses that perform beautifully despite the city’s humid summers. Varieties that get the thumbs up include the free-flowering ground cover rose ‘Flower Carpet Scarlet,’ the miniature pink polyantha ‘The Fairy,’ and ‘My Mum,’ which Whanganui rose breeder Bob Matthews named for his mother, Pearl.

‘My Mum’ always sells out at my local garden center, and for good reason. She’s absolutely gorgeous, with ruffled blooms of vintage coral-pink centered with glowing apricot. Delightful in a vase, she has all the prettiness of a David Austin English rose but with proudly “Made in New Zealand” credentials.

A Charitable Beauty

Every month, the New Zealand Rose Society chooses a highly recommended Rose of the Month. In October, that rose is the floribunda ‘Pink Ribbon,’ bred by Bob Matthews in Whanganui. A sumptuous repeat-flowering bush that produces clusters of soft girly-pink cupped flowers, ‘Pink Ribbon’ is a beauty queen with a purpose, as $2 from the sale of every bush is donated to Breast Cancer Foundation NZ.

“It’s a simply fantastic variety,” says Bob. “It’s one of the first to flower and just keeps on going. It’s also very compact, so well suited for today’s smaller gardens. It requires no deadheading and the petals drop cleanly, which all adds to its easy-care nature. It was a standout for many years in our spray-free trials.”

Last winter, when I was impulse shopping for roses at my local garden center, I was told I simply must pop ‘Pink Ribbon’ into my trolley. I’m so chuffed I did, as it’s already covered in buds.

For more information on rose varieties, visit the HelpMeFind Roses database.