Jason from Fraser Valley Rose Farm concludes his fascinating series on old garden roses with one of his personal favorites—the Portland roses. Often overshadowed by their more famous successors, these roses represent a critical turning point in rose history. Their story intertwines with the excitement of reblooming roses in Europe, a genetic puzzle, and a…
Roses are celebrated for their beauty and fragrance, and selecting varieties with the most alluring scents can take your garden to the next level. Jason from Fraser Valley Rose Farm shares his top picks for fragrant roses, highlighting their diverse colors, growth habits, and distinctive scents. While roses share an underlying “rose” fragrance, their scents…
Climbing roses bring vertical elegance to any garden, transforming walls, fences, and trellises into vibrant displays of blooms. With so many varieties available, selecting the right one for your space can be a rewarding challenge. In a recent video, Jason from Fraser Valley Rose Farm explores some of the most popular climbing roses, offering tips…
Abbaye de ClunyAbraham DarbyAlba MeidilandAlba SauveolensAlbertineAlchemistAlfred ColombAlfred de DalmasAlister Stella GrayAlohaAltissimoAnisley DIcksonAnn BoleynApricot ClementineApricot TwistArcanumArdoisee de LyonArthur BellAustrian CopperAutumn DamaskAutumn SunsetBaby MasqueradeBallerinaBaltimore BelleBarkaroleBaron Girod de l’AinBaronne Edmond de RothschildBees KneesBelinda’s DreamBella di TodiBelle AmourBelle de CrecyBentley’s BeautyBetsy SinclairBetty WillBill ReidBlack CaviarBlack JadeBlanc Double de CoubertBleu MagentaBlush NoisetteBlushing LucyBonicaBoule de NeigeBrilliant Pink IcebergBuff BeautyBurnet Double PinkButtercupCafe…
Do you want a 3m/10ft rose you can tie onto a small arbor or trellis where it will bloom in bright colors all season long? Climber. Do you want to unleash a rose to scramble up and down the side of a barn and delight visitors with its clusters of soft-hued flowers in the late…
Continuing my Youtube series on the old garden roses, this on covers the Gallicas. This class of roses was so dominant in Europe in the middle ages, there were literally hundreds of cultivars. Treasured for its close-to-red color, breeding focused on high petal counts, deep shades of pink and purple, and novelty traits like stripes…
Red is the new purple, purple the old red. At least as far as western rose breeding goes, this is the way it went. Maybe red was always a desirable color, but among the old garden roses of Europe, true red wasn’t one of the options. There was white, light pink, dark pink, and even…
I don’t have a very good excuse for pairing these two roses together: one’s a gallica, the other a rambler, one has huge flowers, and the other has tiny ones. However, they were both in bloom on the back fence of our farm at the same time, so let’s just call it a marriage of…
The earliest roses to bloom in my landscape are the Scots roses and their close relatives. These remarkable roses deserve a proper introduction—though you might want to skip the handshake, given their thorny nature. At the heart of this group is the species rose Rosa spinosissima. Native to the British Isles, northern and western Europe,…
As I write this post on roses and thorns, I have a song stuck in my head. I wish I were classy enough to instead be reflecting on one of these famous quotes on the topic: Anne Bronte wrote “But he who dares not grasp the thorn should never crave the rose” and Alphonse Carr…
‘Altissimo’ was flowering early this season – and that’s when I first wrote about this distinctive rose. The trick is that ‘Altissimo’ never stopped blooming. When selecting roses for the local farmer’s market, I had a hard time not bringing this rose every week. The individual flowers don’t last too long, but the rose reblooms so quickly and…
Griffith Buck bred this rose as part of his program to create a class of roses that had large flowers like the hybrid tea or grandiflora roses, but were more resistant to disease. While he may have made progress towards that goal, this rose is notable for one reason: the colour. Depending on the weather,…
Sometimes it’s just about the flower. It’s pics like the one below that convinced me to try this rose, and I haven’t regretted it – although I have to admit that it’s taken time and pampering to get Baron Girod de l’Ain to perform well. My first mistake was to keep it in the pot too…
This Gallica rose is old, but no one can say for certain how old it is. It has persisted in gardens since at least the 1800’s and is often listed as a favorite rose of people who love the form and scent of old garden roses. You really have to give it to the breeders…
