Ever dream of filling your garden with beautiful roses? Imagine walking to your garden and being greeted by a riot of multicolored blooms! How about drinking tea in your garden while enjoying the mesmerizing scent of fresh roses?

For beginner gardeners, growing roses seem daunting at first. One might think that growing a rose garden requires professional help or specialized tools. You'd be surprised how easy it is to grow roses! Modern rose bushes, in particular, are tough as nails. Some varieties could even thrive in poor growing conditions. If you’d like to grow your own rose garden, try these gardening tips:

Types of Rose Varieties

Hybrid Roses

Hybrid roses are prized for their large, perfectly formed and defined blossoms as well as the flowers’ robust rose scent. Usually, hybrid roses form from a single long stem with small foliage at the base of the plant. Hybrid roses do not grow too big so they are fairly low maintenance. But to encourage new growths, regular pruning is a must.

Floribunda Roses

Floribunda roses are known for their vividly colored clusters of flowers. Hardier, more resilient than hybrid roses, floribunda roses thrive in most growing conditions. This rose variety will cover the garden walls and floors with fragrant blooms with zero bare spots. This means Floribunda roses work perfectly as natural screens or hedges.

Miniature Roses

As the name implies, these are mini varieties of roses that thrive in containers and pots. However, the name of this rose variety refers to the size of the flowers, not the foliage size. Perfect for small gardens or as living accents on the deck or patio, miniature roses yield smaller though vividly hued blossoms. Since miniature roses are planted in pots, they are much easier to move around. An alternative to miniature roses is miniflora roses. These roses are space efficient although they grow larger than miniature roses.

Climbing Roses

Climbing roses love to crawl up on nearly anything, making this rose variety one of the best natural screens for the garden. Climbing roses produce large, elegant flowers in a multitude of colors. However, climbing roses can be unyielding and out of control if left to grow freely in the garden. Regular pruning is a must to retain the size and shape of these rose varieties.

Tree Roses

This rose variety was grafted onto a standard cane stock. Tree roses are best grown in mild to cold climates. These are hardy plants so they can be grown without much coddling, making them perfect for beginner gardeners!

Choose Your Rose Variety

Roses come in many varieties, some produce multicolored blooms, others help frame specific areas of the garden, like a rambling rose. It is possible to build a beautiful rose garden without spending a lot of time, money, and energy maintaining it. You just need to choose the right plant variety to grow to get the look that you want.

For formal gardens, you cannot go wrong with hybrid roses like Iceberg, tea rose, or amber Queen. You can also grow a variety of old rose varieties like Francis Dubreuil, Lady Banks, or Yolande d'Aragon. Shrub roses, like Ballerina, Peace, and Mister Lincoln, are best for landscaping while miniature roses will work great for small gardens or container gardens.

Climbing roses like Zepherine Drouhin, Renae, Sombreuil, or New Dawn, on the other hand, will look perfect in gardens with trellises, iron fences, railings, arches, and gazebos. These rose varieties grow in long canes so you can simply drape the climbing stems on a trellis or arbor to create an artistic display. Climbing roses could also work as a natural screen so you can use them to section parts of the garden for privacy.

Learning about Rose Roots

When buying roses from a nursery, you can choose between roses that are planted in a pot of soil or dormant, bare-root roses. If you are new to gardening, we highly suggest choosing the potted roses because these are much easier to establish. On the other hand, if you are not new to growing roses, go for the bare root roses. Bare root roses come in more varieties to choose from. These are also less expensive compared to potted rose plants. Bare root roses are more widely accessible even in places where there is no local nursery.

However, bare root roses will arrive dormant so they will require more care in the months after planting. The roots have to be soaked overnight in water before being planted into the ground. The soil must be kept moist within the first few months after planting to establish the rose plant.

Curate Your Rose Garden

With so many rose varieties, it is hard to choose just a few. While it is tempting to fill your garden with as many rose varieties as you can grow, it is important to start your collection with a modest selection first and then work your way up to more roses as needed. Filling your outdoor space with too many plants at the same time could ruin the look of the garden.

Curate your rose collection to 4 or so to create a harmonious garden. Some rose varieties grow too fast, which means you could end up spending a huge chunk of your day pruning to keep the rose bushes neat. Also, different roses have different growing needs so choose those that are grown similarly just to keep your gardening tasks manageable.

Practical Gardening Tips for Roses

Most varieties of roses require at least 4 hours of direct sunlight during the growing season. These flowering plants are best planted in a sunny spot, perhaps near a wall, trellis, or post. Roses require room to grow so leave about 18 inches of space between the plant and the wall or trellis.

Roses love well-draining, lightly acidic soils and hate standing water. If you are using planters, make sure the planters have drainage holes at the bottom so the water drains quickly. Also, never set the container or pot on a saucer to collect the excess water. Standing water could cause root rot and diseases.

When planting roses, dig a hole that’s about as deep as the plant’s soil ball and three times as wide. Then, pour some water into the hole and add fertilizer before placing the plant into the freshly dug hole. This will help establish the rose plant much more quickly, allowing the plant to start producing flowers faster!

Roses grow best in nutrient-dense soils so amend the soil regularly to produce more flowers. Apply the fertilizers early in the spring and then every 6 weeks until the summer ends. You can add a layer of mulch to the soil to protect the roots from extreme heat while keeping weeds at bay.

Hold off the pruning on newly planted roses. Let the rose plant grow until the foliage is bushy to get off to a strong start. Once the rose plant has matured, you can start with the regular pruning.

Roses can be quite thirsty especially during the summer months but do not water the leaves. These plants are prone to black spot disease so water the soil three times a week but avoid wetting the leaves.

Growing different varieties of roses is a breeze as long as you chose the right variety for your local climate. For more gardening tips and helpful resources, subscribe to our newsletter right now!