Everything’s Coming Up Roses

At the start of my horticulture career, I absolutely hated roses and vowed to never work with them. As it happened, I wound up becoming a rosarian. I became the rosarian at my first public garden job and I was all in – like it or not. As fate would have it, they grew on me, and I continued working with roses. I now maintain the Poetry Garden, which houses our most significant collection of roses at Brookgreen Gardens.

A question I usually get is which roses are the easiest to grow. Naturally, I turn to my favorites. When I think about which roses I love, I think about which look best and aren’t fussy or need much extra care. Since I love talking roses, let’s look at my top recommendations that you can see in the Poetry Garden (and even consider adding to your home garden too)!

Psst…! One more thing - we do not spray our roses with pesticides, so all these roses are extra easy in that you don’t need to break out the chemicals to enjoy them.

Rosa ‘Sea Foam’
Let’s start with ‘Sea Foam,’ a ground cover type rose that lives up to its name. White flowers cover this shrub from mid to late spring until frost. As with all the roses on this list, it doesn’t seem particularly bothered by disease, and while it may get some black spot, a fungal problem common in roses, it doesn’t keep it down. Black spot will cause leaves to yellow, develop black spots, and in most cases, fall off. In the case of ‘Sea Foam,’ while there may be some leaves lost, it’s not enough to make it unsightly!

Rosa 'KORaruli' (Sunny Sky Eleganza®) and 'KORquelda' (Golden Fairy Tale)
Next up is a double! Both roses are yellow hybrid teas, and they’re so good I can’t decide between which one to highlight – so you get both. As the kids would say, Sunny Sky Eleganza® and Golden Fairy Tale have been killing it in the Poetry Garden. Hybrid tea roses have that classic rose reputation of being hard to care for and riddled with disease problems. While this may be true for some, I can excitedly say it is not the case for these two! Even though their fragrance may not blow you away, their near-perpetual flowering certainly will!

Rosa 'MEImirrot' (Apricot Drift®)
I’m willing to bet that you or one of your neighbors probably already has this next rose or a member of this rose “family” in their garden. Drift® Roses, along with Knock Out® Roses, totally transformed the rose game as we know it. With the introduction of these very tough, low-maintenance roses, many people added them to their gardens. The fuss was over, and roses could be grown at nearly anyone’s house without breaking out the hazmat suit to spray or turning into a pincushion with regular pruning regimens.

We grow Apricot Drift® in the Poetry Garden, and it certainly lives up to the hype! Apricot-colored flowers are long-lasting and plentiful. However, when I planted this rose, I expected it to act as a ground cover and was surprised to find it grew to about three feet tall and wide, creating a mounded shape. Even though my initial thought of its growth habit wasn’t quite right, I still love it in the garden!

Rosa ‘Spice’
‘Spice’ is a China rose and another great addition to any garden. Although roses are broken into many different classes, as we’ve already seen (Chinas, hybrid teas, shrubs, and so on), it’s nothing to get hung up on. Anyway, back to ‘Spice’ – this rose maintains an excellent, shrub-like habit and remains dense with foliage. All. Year. Long. While I was surprised to see that many of the roses here held onto their leaves during the winter (in stark contrast to the bare stems I had known back in New York!), ‘Spice’ always seems to be absolutely loaded with leaves at all times; who was expecting an evergreen rose? In addition to its attractive foliage, it also has white-pink flowers that have a lovely, spicy fragrance.

Rosa ‘Blush Noisette’
It would be a huge slight, not to mention a Noisette rose! Noisettes are the roses that originated in Charleston – practically in our backyard! ‘Blush Noisette,’ besides being a Noisette rose, is also a climbing rose.

‘Blush Noisette’ dons beautiful soft pink, intensely fragrant flowers all summer long. This is one of those roses you can smell from a distance – but it certainly doesn’t hurt if you get close! While we’ve noticed black spot does take up residence on the leaves, and they do tend to drop, the flowering does not seem to be affected.

Rosa 'KORplunblo' (Mandarin Ice™ Planten Un Blomen®)
And finally, because I have to cut myself off somewhere, is Mandarin Ice™. The color on this rose is out of this world! To put it mildly, the pink-orange petals with a silver reverse are drop-dead gorgeous. You would think the color of this flower (and, of course, like all the others on this list, the vigor) would be the main reason for me gushing over it – but there’s one more thing I can’t get over. This rose holds on to its flowers like no other I’ve seen before! Typically, you’ll see a rose start to drop its flower after a few days. With Mandarin Ice™, it seems like a week or more - it just won’t let go! And it’s not like the flowers look ratty after all that time; they still look great. Now that’s some flower power if I do say so myself!

Now that I’ve hopefully gotten you as excited about roses as I am, it’s time for you to come and experience them for yourself! Plan your trip to Brookgreen Gardens soon so you can still catch these in their full flush and enjoy them in person – it’s definitely worth the trip.

See you in the Gardens!