The most important consideration when choosing a rose is what you want it to do. Some grow quickly to cover vast areas, while others are suitable for containers. Many roses repeat flower all summer while some varieties produce just one head-turning display.
For summer spectacle and scent, it’s hard to beat roses, and few gardeners feel their plot is complete without at least one. The colour range is vast and with everything from rampant ramblers to dainty patio roses, there’s something to suit every size of garden.
While they may be the stars of summer, between November and March is the best time to plant. Bare root roses are not only cheaper than potted plants, they also establish more easily. Here are a few popular types of roses, described to help you choose the best for your garden.
Hybrid tea rose
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If you’ve ever given or received a dozen red roses, you can be sure that they were tea roses. Growing one bloom per stem, tea roses are the perfect choice for florists and floral designers. Their flowers are large and many-petalled, come in a range of colours, and are often beautifully fragranced. They flower throughout the summer and autumn and do best in containers and borders. Popular varieties include the bright pink ‘Mum in a million’, and the double-flowered rose ‘Volcano’
Floribunda rose
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Floribunda roses are smaller and flatter than tea roses. They bloom in clusters at the tips of stems; and each flower within the cluster opens at a different time, giving a long-lasting display throughout the summer and autumn. That’s why they’re called floribunda, which means ‘flowering freely’. Many varieties of floribunda are fragrant and they look great in containers and borders. The apricot-hued rose ‘Champagne Moment’ and the vibrant rose ‘Precious Ruby’ will help to fill gardens with colour.
Shrub rose
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Shrub roses are normally larger than hybrid teas and floribundas. The flowers can be single or double bloomed, and they’re usually borne in clusters. Modern varieties of shrub roses like rose ‘Macy’s Pride’ are repeat flowering, whereas old varieties like rose ‘Buff Beauty’ will produce one heavy flush of flowers in early summer. They’re usually very fragrant and suit borders and hedging.
Climbing rose
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Want to create that romantic, English cottage garden look? Growing a climbing rose around your front door will do it. Climbing roses are upright, vigorous, stiff-stemmed plants that are more subdued in their flowering habits, which usually repeat, providing a long display throughout the summer.
Many climbing roses are fragranced, such as the vigorous rose ‘Compassion Climbing’, and there are several different types of blooms to choose from. They grow best against walls or fences, over arches and pergolas, or up obelisks in the middle of borders.
Rambling rose
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Rambling roses are more vigorous than climbing roses. They will cover a larger area more quickly, and so are great for disguising unattractive bits of your garden. But this does mean they can be more difficult to contain. Most only flower once, in the summer,but they make a memorable site with one heavy flush.
Blooms are single or double and are borne in clusters on short shoots from old wood. Many varieties are fragrant and they are happy climbing over a wall, fence, pergola, or growing into a tree. Do check the eventual size – ‘Kiftsgate’ roses are monsters that are only suitable for large gardens. Rose ‘Phylis Bide’ is a rambler with a smaller habit, and is ideal for arches or fences.
Miniature rose
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The clue is in the name: miniature roses are very compact with small leaves and flowers. They produce clusters of single or double flowers in flushes throughout the summer and autumn, but they are rarely fragrant.
These tiny roses work best in containers, window boxes and border edges. There are even indoor varieties like rose ‘Cutie Pie’, which sit beautifully on a windowsill. Low-growing ground cover roses grow horizontally rather than vertically, and are ideal for tricky spaces such as banks.
Standard rose
Image: Rose ‘Sweety’ from Dobies
Standard roses are perfect for adding height to borders, creating an edge to a path, or for more formal designs. Grafted onto a tall stem that doesn’t branch out, they flower into a ‘lollipop’ shape. The top-heavy nature of a standard rose needs a stake support, and regular pruning to keep the ‘head’ neat and encourage flowering, as in the image of rose ‘Sweety’ above.
Standard roses are generally grafts from Floribunda, Hybrid tea or Shrub roses, and some, even have grafts from multiple varieties on one stem!
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