Roses are the most popular flowers to grow and to give. How can you confidently add this paragon of flowers to your garden? We’ve compiled this complete guide to roses so you can enjoy their glorious blooms and enticing fragrance while knowing how to care for them for years – or decades – of enjoyment.
Expert garden designer and rose pro, Paul Zimmerman, entertains and regales you with the basics of growing roses in this 10 video series “Introduction to Roses”.
Do you know the parts of and terms for roses? We can best care for roses when we know them inside and out. Get to know the anatomy of a rose.
Read the guide to better understand the categories, types, and general growth habits of roses so you can plant just the right rose for your garden need.
When you’re ready to choose your roses, there are a few things to keep in mind:
Adding perennials to your rose garden will enhance its beauty. Learn about companion plants that look great with roses.
We’ve learned so much in our 150+ years of growing roses. Paul gives us expert advice in this 14-video series about caring for your roses.
Wrapping up Growing Roses for Beginners, here is a brief glossary of terms about roses.
ARS Rating: American Rose Society provides a numerical performance rating for recommending roses
Basal Break: watch the video for a concise explanation that’s easy to understand
Bud Eye: this video clearly demonstrates the term
Container or Potted Rose: in fall, roses are shipped to you in a temporary pot or container (instead of bare root as they are in spring); we also use “container” as a catch-all term for a decorative pot in which you may grow your rose and flower garden
Deadheading: removing spent blooms
Disbudding (hybrid teas): removing side buds to create fewer but larger blossoms
Disbudding (floribundas): removing the center bud to improve clustering/development of side buds
Dormant: for plants, dormancy signals when to prepare plants’ soft tissues for freezing temperatures, dry weather, or water and nutrient shortage. Instead of exerting energy to grow, they know to stop growing and conserve energy until mild weather returns
Ever-blooming (blooming habit): continuously in bloom; every new shoot produces a flower
Flush (blooming habit): an intense bloom period with many flowers
Grafted: a technique that marries one plant onto another; these are really two plants: the cane (or stem) and root system
Hybridization: the process of obtaining new roses. In this process, the pollen from one plant fertilizes the ovary of another
Mixed beds: gardens that include roses and other perennials
NPK: common plant fertilizers are comprised of nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), potassium (K)
Own Root: a cutting that develops and grows on its own root system
PPAF: patent pending, applied for
Petals: Single: having five petals; Semi-double: petal count between twelve to sixteen; Double: over seventeen petals usually 26-40 petals; Fully or very double: petal count over 40 and as high as 100
Remontant (blooming habit): having more then one period of bloom during the growing season
Repeat Blooming (blooming habit): a rose that blooms in cycles, running the course of one flowering period before starting a new one, so it might bloom in the spring and then again the summer or fall
Rose hip: video
Rose trials: ARTS, AGRS, AARS are (or were in the case of AARS) organizations that grow roses to evaluate their growing habits and needs to aid consumer growing success
Rose virus: a chronic problem that has infected a plant
Rosette: growth, design, or arrangement that resembles a rose
Self-cleaning: naturally sheds the petals of its spent blooms, making a tidier-looking plant
Share your questions with us on our Facebook and Instagram pages. Happy planting and successful gardening wishes from all of us at Jackson & Perkins.
