Tag Archive for: groundcover roses

Tips for choosing roses

tips for choosing roses
It’s like falling in love – you know when you’ve found the right rose. But you still need to check it’s easy to grow, which this one is: the Flower Carpet® Fragrant Shrub Rose Champagne (known as the Showpiece™ Champagne rose in the southern hemisphere and Canada).

If you’ve ever grown a modern rose, you’ve probably wondered why some people are still nervous about growing roses? We’re talking about that whiff of fear that still lingers, inherited from a past time when there were rose specimens so fussy and delicate that they could make a stately home’s head gardener weep. Happily since then, a lot has happened. Modern rose breeders are a practical bunch, and they’ve tackled the issues that needed to be dealt with. Thanks to them we now have a list of care-free options to choose from, with the best of these being the Flower Carpet range of roses. Having said that, you do want to keep your eyes open as you pick your rose, so here are some tips for choosing roses…

1. Feast your eyes. The reason you’re planting a rose – let’s be honest – is likely to be all about the flower so take a good look around and see what leaps up and hits you in the heart. This is not an overstatement because roses are special: maybe because they are so entwined in the culture that washes around us? So make a short list of rose crushes then move onto the next step…

Just look at this foliage – no wonder it’s produced so many blooms. Do your research and relax knowing your rose isn’t going to be tricky. (This is Flower Carpet® Fragrant Shrub Rose Berry, or Showpiece™ Berry rose in the southern hemisphere and Canada.)

2. Background checks. Due diligence never hurt anyone and where roses are concerned, this is definitely worth doing. And that’s because there are still a lot of lovely old fussy roses out there being offered to people who don’t mind a challenge and uncertainty. What you want to do is take a look at each of your rose options in turn, checking that they don’t have a reputation for being difficult. Look for words like, robust, easy-care, lush, disease free, bullet-proof, and (if you’re a very new gardener) idiot-proof. If it turns out that your candidate has a dodgy performance report card, don’t be distracted by descriptions like gorgeous, delicious, luscious because if you have trouble getting the rose to grow well, you’ll probably never have a chance to see a bloom.

3. Take a hot tip. And now for the best tip of all when it comes to choosing roses. It comes from the people whose roses these are, but know that these roses have also been industry awarded and have a significant, happy following amongst un-washed gardeners around the world. Here it comes… plant a Flower Carpet rose. More specifically, plant one of the Flower Carpet® ground cover roses, or one of the Flower Carpet® fragrant shrub roses (also known as the Showpiece™ Roses in the southern hemisphere and Canada). There are five different colour options available in the fragrant shrub roses, and a further twelve amongst the ground cover roses to choose from – in other words, oodles of choice. Flower Carpet ground cover roses grow wider rather than taller, producing hundreds of smaller blooms and the Flower Carpet shrub roses are a bushy shape and produce larger blooms that are fragrant. Whichever version, Flower Carpet roses have a proven track record for being disease resistant, lush, easy to grow and producing many flowers. Of course this makes sense because they’ve all been bred by Noack Rosen (Germany) which is a hugely respected family of plant breeders.

tips for choosing roses
This is the original Pink Flower Carpet® ground cover rose in a setting that shows how brilliant modern well-bred roses can be. It’s easy to grow and covers itself in hundreds of blooms over many, many months. And many, many people worldwide have fallen in love with it over the years, planting it into their gardens.

A rose for everyone

rose for everyone
It’s hard to resist the appeal of a rose’s face: this is the Flower Carpet® Red ground cover rose, crowned with golden stamens at its centre.

Ever wondered why roses have always had such a big fan club? Or why the rose is cast as the hero flower in so many fairy tales? And why private and public gardens are created to be filled with just roses? (Not to be rude but have you ever heard of a daisy garden?) Yes, the rose is the accepted queen of flowers and this is why roses are for everyone…

1. Roses have lovely faces. It’s probably hard-wired in us, that we feel happier looking into a rose bloom. It doesn’t matter if it has an open face with a ring of golden stamens, or it’s a fully ruffled like a cabbage – a rose bloom stops us for a moment and makes us feel wonderful. There are rose bushes which produce several massive blooms, and others that cover themselves in hundreds of tiny cherry sized flowers. And it’s this variety of rose flower forms that makes roses all the more appealing simply because there’s a rose to suit everyone’s taste.

Some roses (like this Flower Carpet® Pink ground cover rose) cover themselves in a sea of ruffled blooms from late spring through to early autumn.

2. Roses come in many colours. From arctic white through creams, pinks, yellows, oranges, reds and violet-blues: there’s a colour option for anyone. Not to mention roses that have candy striped petals or those that change colour while they’re blooming on the bush. Roses are the flower that gives us a full box of watercolours to work with when playing around with a bit of garden planting design.

From striped petals to blooms that change colour on the bush, roses come in many colours: Flower Carpet® Pink Splash ground cover rose looks like candy and Flower Carpet® Amber ground cover rose reminds us of a medley of citrus sorbet flavours.

3. Rose bushes come in different formats, which is incredibly valuable for anyone who plants a garden. There are roses that are low and mat forming (Flower Carpet® roses), those that grow into mounded shrubs (shrub roses), others that are grafted and trained into topiary shapes (tree or standard roses), and others that grow like vines. Put them all together and you could in theory be immersed in roses with blooms at your feet, at your waist, at face level and above.  

4. Roses perfume the air. Just as roses can look very different, from their flower through to the form of the plant they grow into, they also have different degrees of scent. For some, they give the breeze a light crisp scent while for others the fragrance is rich, fruity with spicy overtones. It all comes down to personal taste, but like everything to do with roses, it’s what helps make them as universally loved as they are.

rose for everyone
Roses come in many forms: ground covers, bushes or shrubs, standards or trees. These are Flower Carpet® roses growing in a trial garden: the Flower Carpet® Blush rose as a tree standard in the background and the Flower Carpet Pink® rose trained up a column in the foreground.