No garden, whether balcony, courtyard or country plot, is complete without roses. If you don’t have a bed or border to display them, it’s worth having one or two in containers that you can tuck to one side over winter so that you can enjoy their glorious blooms in summer. The trick is to choose roses that pump out blooms repeatedly for weeks on end, thus earning their keep in a limited space. Display them to the max by surrounding them with pots of purple salvias such as Caradonna, lavenders, rosemary, trailing campanula or, in fact, any summer bedding, grouping them close together as they would grow in a border. Choose a large pot and as roses are perennial, use a compost mix of soil-based John Innes No 3 and multi-purpose.
Now is the perfect time to buy roses, because you can find them in bloom at a garden centre or nursery. You don’t have to limit yourself to miniature or patio rose groups: there are many outstanding garden varieties that grow abundantly in roomy containers. Groundcover roses, for instance, are perfect for pots, and what they lack in fragrance, they make up for in performance, smothering the glossy green foliage with an abundance of prettily ruffled blooms. Few can match them for continuous flower power. The Flower Carpet range includes a luscious scarlet Red Velvet, Coral and Sunshine, the prettiest primrose yellow. For something a little more exotic, seek out For Your Eyes Only, a beauty with lightly scented fluttery flowers of sugar pink centred with a splash of raspberry. Developed from the ancient bi-coloured Persian roses, their growth is compact, low and spreading, making them ideal for pots and tubs.
If you fancy fashionably rewilding your outside space, look for simple, single-flowered roses that resemble the wild hedgerow roses. They have a relaxed, informal charm that is increasingly popular, not least because of their ability to bring in the bees, butterflies and other beneficial insects. And a bonus is hips following the flowers, so no need to deadhead. Ballerina is a classic, with a mass of blossom-pink and white flower trusses through to autumn, while Peter Beales, named after the famous rose expert, is a splashy flame red, centred with a large boss of golden yellow. Kew Gardens will usefully thrive in shade, and its small but abundant flowers of soft apricot in bud, opening to white, look glorious in the faded light of a summer’s evening.
You could even grow a short, well-behaved climber freestanding to add height, or against a wall. Strawberry Hill is a knockout, with pure pink rosette flowers that have a myrrh and honey fragrance, or for a truly vibrant statement, choose Warm Welcome, that produces simple, bright orange flowers almost from the base, right to the top. Both are perfect in a pot, trained up an obelisk or against a wall clad with trellis or a framework of vine eyes and wires.
For maximum petal power – the kind of roses that have deliciously complex blooms resembling full and frothy ballet tutus – the wide range of David Austin shrub roses, stocked at many garden centres, are unbeatable, and have intoxicating perfumes with top notes of myrrh, tea and fruit salad. Even one bloom held in a bud vase indoors is a showstopper. Although they were bred from the exquisite antique roses, today’s colours have a much wider range, and the plants have a greater disease resistance as well as the ability to flower right through the season. Many of them will happily grow in pots, such as Princess Alexandra, which has rich pink, full-petalled cupped flowers, and Lady of Shalott, with large, golden-apricot blooms that have a strong tea fragrance. For a perfect pure white rose, myrrh-scented William and Catherine is a great choice, even thriving in shade. Eustacia Vye’s glowing soft pink ruffled blooms are particularly beautiful while the classic Golden Celebration has celebrated huge butter-yellow blooms perfumed with notes of Sauternes wine and strawberry. Desdemona’s dreamy peachy-white flowers have a knockout fragrance of old rose, almond blossom, cucumber and lemon zest. You couldn’t ask for more from any rose.
