While a climbing rose is easy to define – one that grows to a height of between, say, 2m/6ft and 10m/30ft – it is not easy to define which specific varieties are climbers and which are not as it is dependent on climate and position where it is growing. Warmer climates and the backing of […]

In contrast to the climbers, ramblers generally have small flowers, lax growth, are vigorous and do not repeat flower, but like the climbers there are a number of exceptions that prove the rule. With their often rather extreme vigour their main value is for growing up trees or over pergolas where, with their lax growth, […]

This is an all encompassing name for any rose that doesn’t fit in the other categories.  The earliest ones were made from crossing various species roses with Hybrid Teas and Floribundas early in the 20th century. Since then their background has become very much more complex. There is no common denominator: the flower size ranges […]

The Hybrid Musks are a fairly distinct and recognisable group. They repeat flower and have small to medium sized flowers that are produced in large sprays. They cover the whole range of colours, although most are in the softer range and usually have a fruity, musky fragrance. The best known ones, Penelope, Cornelia, Felicia and […]

Polyantha roses derive from a Chinese climbing rose called Rosa multiflora (multiflora means many-flowered in Latin, and polyantha same in Greek). Hybrids between this white, many-flowered species and the hardy, bushy China roses gave rise to cultivated climbers in various shades of white, cream and pink. The first Polyantha roses were open-pollinated seedlings of these climbers, but […]

  Hybrid Tea roses were introduced by crossing the tender, ever-blooming Tea roses with the hardier Hybrid Perpetuals to produce a range of hardy, free-flowering garden plants. The first recognised Hybrid Tea was a chance seedling called ‘La France’, introduced in 1867. Their superiority was immediately obvious, especially when their colour range was extended early in […]

Hybrid Perpetual roses were mostly developed as hardy garden plants between 1840 and 1900, by crossing the Portland, Bourbon and Gallica roses. Most had very large, sweet-scented flowers in shades of pink or red, borne on long arching stems. In Victorian gardens it became common practice to ‘peg down’ these stems to encourage flowers along […]

  Tea roses were developed, mainly by French nurserymen, from about 1830 onwards, by crossing some of the more tender roses that had been imported from southern China. These were hybrids between the hardy R. chinensis and subtropical R. gigantea, and originally described as ‘Tea Scented Roses’ because their fragrance is reminiscent of the smell of fresh China […]

Noisette roses are named after the French nurserymen Louis and Philippe Noisette. Briefly, the story runs: Louis in Paris sent an ‘Old Blush’ China rose to his brother Philippe in South Carolina in about 1802. Philippe gave ‘Old Blush’ to his neighbour, a farmer called John Champneys. On his farm it chanced to cross with Rosa […]

Bourbon roses are a group of hybrids originating from a chance cross between a form of ‘Autumn Damask’ and the ‘Old Blush’ China rose which occurred in about 1817 on the Île de Bourbon (now Réunion) in the Indian Ocean. When it was introduced to France two years later it was used to produce further […]