HISTORY OF LANDSCAPE ROSES
Seasoned rose gardeners know the various classes of roses well: hybrid teas with their tendency for long, single stems; grandifloras with big sprays of blooms; floribundas with multiple flowers on more compact plants; climbers with their arching canes that could reach over a roofline. These traditional forms gained serious popularity after World War II as the rise of suburban landscaping, supported by a new access to fertilizers and other chemicals, contributed to an international rose craze. What once was the purview of hobbyists became a common pursuit for homeowners looking to add a sense of class and elegance to their yards.
But by the 1980s, people had become weary of the romanticized focus on flowers that unduly forgave hard to maintain rose varieties, particularly the chemical treatments they tended to require to keep them healthy, along with all the attendant support to keep them healthy and blooming. Instead, gardeners seemed primed for a new kind of rose that didn’t require as much deadheading for constant color, could resist the constellation of diseases that often beset a rose garden, and could be successfully massed together and shaped with hedge pruners for greater landscape effect. In addition, roses that grew on their own roots as opposed to bud grafted varieties meant less suckering and stronger overall constitution.
These new roses, dubbed ‘landscape roses’ or ‘hybrid shrub roses’, were developed for this new perceived rose future. Not only could they introduce a new standard for roses to existing rose gardens, they could also offer a new kind of rose to people who otherwise wouldn’t plant roses.
Flower Carpet® Groundcover Roses
An initial success story from the 1980s is the one behind what has become a landscape staple, the Flower Carpet series of landscape roses. This series was developed in Australia by Anthony Tesselaar who, based upon his experience, sensed that future rose trends were headed toward an emphasis on low maintenance. Judging by the way Flower Carpet took off since its debut in 1992, first in Australia and New Zealand and then internationally, rose customers around the world were definitely ready for something new. Since its first introduction, Flower Carpet ‘Pink’, this series has expanded to a dozen different colors and has garnered over 30 international awards.
Knock Out® Landscape Roses
One of the most heartwarming stories about this new kind of rose is the one behind the Knock Out series. While most new rose varieties are the product of professional hybridizers, the first Knock Out rose was developed by an amateur rose breeder, William Radler, in his basement in Milwaukee, WI in 1989. Soon after, Radler partnered with Star Roses to eventually bring his invention to market in 2000 based upon its novel characteristics, like its tendency to self-prune (deadheads easily fall off instead of having to be cut off), straightforward disease resistance, a decent resistance to drought, and its status as an own root grower. Knock Out roses have since become a dominant force in the rose world and one of its best sellers.
Drift® Groundcover Roses
Based on the initial momentum of their new Knock Out rose line, Star Roses partnered with French breeders in the early 1990s to create the Drift series of roses in search of something to address the success of Flower Carpet. This new rose would combine the spread of ground cover varieties with the higher profile of a miniature rose. However, beating Flower Carpet at its game proved to be difficult and it wasn’t until 2007 that the Drift series began to get traction in the marketplace. Since then, Drift has expanded to nearly a dozen different hardworking cultivars.
Easy Elegance® Shrub Roses
The search for easy-care roses continued into the early 1990s at Bailey Nurseries in Minnesota, resulting in the Easy Elegance line of roses. These were described with the newly coined term ‘hybrid shrub rose.’ This conveyed their distinctly dense habit without the thick canes typical of older rose varieties as well as being own root. These characteristics meant they could be employed in the landscape as stand alone plants that could be shaped with hedge shears. Bailey worked for a decade trialing cultivars from Minnesota to Oregon to Texas to Arizona, yielding a rose series that is one of the industry’s most diverse, sporting 27 different colors from rich reds to radiant pinks and corals to vibrant yellows and stately whites. Easy Elegance also features many varieties that are truly fragrant, a trait that has turned out surprisingly rare in this new class of rose.
Proven Winners® Oso Easy®/Color Choice® Roses
Proven Winners was established in 1992 as a source for new propagation stock for American growers and they began the search for their own landscape rose varieties, releasing the first of their Oso Easy rose line right away. They were developed to be bushy, disease-resistant, own-root hardy and have repeat blooming. These shrubs have a variety of flowers from single to double in a range of colors including red, pink, orange, yellow, and lavender, and their size ranges from analogous to miniature roses to dimensions more like a smaller floribunda. Proven Winners’ rose options have also expanded to include not only those in the Oso Easy line up but also the wildly popular At Last and other landscape rose series like Suñorita and Ringo, bringing their offerings to more than 30 different varieties.
Nitty Gritty® Groundcover Roses
Monrovia Growers has also joined the landscape rose trend game, introducing their own version as the Nitty Gritty rose line in 2021. Available in five colors, these roses require very little maintenance in exchange for their continual blooms and feature decent disease resistance, light fragrance, and growth from their own roots.
What are Landscape Roses?
You’ll hear them called by different names, but we like the term Landscape Rose. This is a broader category of Hybrid Shrub Roses, sometimes called Groundcover Roses, that can range in size but share the same general qualities, including a more compact form than traditional single-bloom Shrub roses or Floribunda types.
- OWN-ROOT: Landscape roses are not-grafted and grow on their own rootstock. This means they sucker less and are exceptionally cold-hardy, resilient plants.
- REBLOOMING: Landscape roses have a big bloom season starting in mid-Spring They continue blooming sporadically through the Summer heat and then heavily again in the late Summer into Fall.
- SELF-CLEANING: Landscape roses will send new stem growth and flowers up after spent petals fall away, without the need for constant dead-heading, though they appreciate occasional pruning to maintain a more manicured form.
How big do Landscape Roses get?
These types of landscape roses range in size, but generally grow around 2′-4′ tall and wide. Some varieties like Flower Carpet and Drift grow lower to the ground. Others can grow up to 4′ tall if left unpruned. Contrast that with Grandiflora or Hybrid Tea Roses that can reach 6 feet or more.
