BEST NEW ROSES FOR 2018
Few people can resist roses, and no matter how many of these beautiful flowers you have, there is always room for one more. Val Bourne reveals the best newcomers (and old favourites) to plant now for next summer
Val Bourne selects the best for you to grow next year
OnE of the delights of the year is to visit a flower show and fall in love with a brand new rose. In May, Oscar-winning actress Dame Judi Dench unveiled the David Austin rose named in her honour at a celebrityladen Chelsea Flower Show. However behind all that London glitz and glamour there lies an awful lot of hard work. Breeding a new rose takes at least 10 to 12 years, and for every bloom that makes the grade, hundreds are weeded out of the trial field.
Founded around the kitchen table at the Albrighton family farm in 1969, David Austin Roses is a specialist in rose breeding. Every year between April and July the team makes 150,000 crosses, and from those that are successful some 250,000 seedlings are grown on the following year. The chosen seedlings then undergo up to eight years of field trials before they are whittled down to between three and six new varieties.
“Breeding a new rose takes hard work and at least 10 to 12 years”
Back when David himself first began creating new forms of this classic flower, erect roses in brash colours were the order of the day, and his softly tinted specimens with their old-fashioned flowers captured the hearts of a new breed of growers. Now 91, David remains fiercely committed to developing “the healthiest roses possible, without compromising their beauty, fragrance, grace and, most importantly, their charm – the quality they are most renowned for.” In recent years David Austin Roses has produced more disease-resistant roses, and two of my favourites are the pale pink cupped flowers of ‘Olivia Rose Austin’, launched in 2014, and this year’s cerise ‘James L . Austin’. Both are doing well in my rose and peony beds. David’s grandson Richard, meanwhile, is mad about the pale pinktoned ‘Desdemona’, which is on my wish list for 2018 – apparently it looked sensational in their rose garden this year, despite the horrible weather.
Another major British breeder – and one
whose roses I grow at Spring Cottage
– is Philip Harkness. He led the way in breeding healthy roses in this country and firmly believes that you should be able to grow these beauties without having to spray them. The Harkness Roses trial fields near Hitchin in Hertfordshire haven’t been treated since 1994, and this enables Philip to see which roses are still looking healthy and vigorous in the autumn. He also selects for lots of repeat flowers, a decent perfume and a rose that stands up well.
Established in 1879, Harkness releases between four and five new roses every year, and among 2016’s stars is the champagnewhite hybrid tea launched by rose fan (and loyal customer) Mary Berry, who picked it out from the trial field. Small and perfectly formed, rather like Mary herself, it is doing well for me. And because the flowers are
smaller I find it easier to place than its somewhat more upright parent ‘Chandos Beauty’.
Harkness is one of the places where new roses are trialled for the Rose of the Year (ROTY) competition, which has been organised by Roses UK since 1982. There are normally 20 or so entries per year, with contenders from the UK and Europe, and there are seven trial sites around England and Northern Ireland. Each trial is judged by amateurs and professionals over a twoyear period and the roses have to perform in a variety of soils and climates. The winner is then announced annually at the RHS Hampton Court Flower Show.
This year, the coveted title of ROTY 2018 went to Colin Dixon’s ‘Lovestruck’, a lightly scented, cherry red floribunda raised in Northern Ireland. Good red roses are in really short supply and while ‘Lovestruck’ missed its golden moment at Hampton Court because it flowered prolifically just before the show started and was all foliage by July, it is flowering for me now.
Thanks to the current demand for wildlife-friendly roses, semi-doubles and singles are highly popular right now, and this is an area in which Shropshire-based Chris Warner excels. He focuses on producing single-flowered Rosa persica hybrids such as ‘For Your Eyes Only’ (ROTY 2015), while his salmon pink to orange climber ‘Scent from Heaven’ was named Rose of the Year 2017. Bushy and freeflowering, it has shiny green leaves that defy disease, a fruity fragrance and blooms from the ground upwards.
But while we Brits certainly know our roses, no other nursery has won Rose of the Year more times than Germany’s Kordes Roses, which specialises in diseaseresistant, fragrant types. Founded by Wilhelm Kordes in 1887, it has bred six winners since the contest began, the most recent being yellow climber ‘Sunny Sky’ (ROTY 2016). I haven’t grown this myself but love the look of the almost frilly flowers.
‘Sweet Haze’, a pink compact shrub with large clusters of smaller flowers that wooed the ROTY judges in 2008, was the product of another German nursery, Rosen Tantau, which also created ‘Duchess of Cornwall’, one of my favourite roses for cutting. Registered in 2005, its flowers hover in colour between pink and salmon, and have an old-fashioned, quartered look. I never tire of looking at this rose – it’s a floral work of art.
“Roses have to perform in various soils and climates”