If you love roses, but don’t necessarily love to pamper them, a garden of David Austin roses is hard to beat. Known for their sheer exuberance of flower and wonderful fragrance, they also have a reputation for hardiness and dependability. David Austin roses are designed to blend harmoniously with other shrubs and herbaceous perennials and are perfectly at home in mixed flower and shrub borders.

 

David Austin is one of the premier breeders of English Roses in the world. For the last 50 years he has been crossing old garden roses (gallica, damask and alba) with more modern roses to achieve the superb fragrance, delicacy and charm of old fashioned roses combined with the repeat flowering characteristics and wide color range of hybrid teas and floribundas. He calls them English Roses and they tend to be easier to grow, hardier, and more reliable than the typical hybrid tea.

 

Though Austin’s roses are not officially recognized as a separate class of roses by the American Rose Society, they are nonetheless commonly referred to by rosarians, nurseries, and in horticultural literature as ‘English Roses’ (the term he uses) or ‘Austin Roses’.

 

English Roses are designed to be used in mixed borders, where their glorious shrubby forms add great impact. These bushy plants have a graceful, shapely habit which makes them incredibly versatile in the garden, whether used alone in a traditional rose garden or mingled with herbaceous perennials where their long flowering season is very useful.

Almost all David Austin English Roses are rated as hardy, which means that they can be grown successfully in areas where the winter lows don’t typically fall below -20F. All of our David Austin roses are also grown on their own root, which means if they die to the ground in a hard winter they will still come back true to variety. We still recommend winter protection in case of unusually cold temperatures. However some varieties, like Winchester Cathedral, have been know to survive temperatures of -30F.

So if you dream of a garden of roses with large full blossoms with fragrance galore, but you also don’t want to spend all your time caring for them, stop by and see our selection of David Austin English Roses. They are just what the doctor ordered. And they are just now coming into bloom, the perfect time to select the perfect rose.

Sources: Wikipedia and davidaustinroses.com.