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ORDERS FOR SPRING 2008
Our 2007 bare root shipping season has now ended. We are currently accepting advance orders for bare root roses for delivery in Spring 2008.
BUY ROSES BY MAIL ORDER
Over half of our US customers now order their roses online. To order, first search for the rose you'd like, then add it to the basket. Our database of roses can be searched by category, color, flower shape or name. The search results will include a brief explanation of the category of rose to help with selection, followed by images of roses which match the search. To search for bare root roses for shipment in spring 2008, click here.
All roses sold in the US are grown in the US. Roses are shipped as healthy, dormant bare root roses which will establish quickly when planted in the garden. Full planting and cultivation advice will be included with each order. We are so confident of the quality of our roses that every one is backed by our guarantee for twelve months.
We are always happy to provide help and advice before or after your purchase. Please call our customer service team toll free on 800 328 8893 if you'd like more information.
We are planning to make some changes to our website to make it more informative. Please visit us from time to time to see our latest updates.
HANDBOOK OF ROSES
If you prefer to browse through a printed catalog, please request our Handbook Of Roses online or call 800 328 8893 toll free. Our 2007 version of the Handbook Of Roses has been increased to 96 pages. We’ve included many more pictures of roses and several new features which we hope you'll enjoy.
If you are new to David Austin Roses or have not ordered for some time, we invite you to request a catalog free of charge. To request your free catalog, please click here.
GIFT IDEAS FOR ENGLISH ROSE LOVERS
If you're looking for a gift for a keen gardener or rose lover, David Austin's new gift selections or gift vouchers are ideal. Gift vouchers are available in multiples of $10 and $25 and can be used against any of our mail order services.
We've created three inspirational new gift selections, which offer extra value. For more details or to order, click here.
ROSE FOOD
The main secret of growing healthy roses is to water well and feed with a good quality rose food. David Austin's own rose food is organic-based and has a slow-release formulation to ensure strong, healthy growth and abundant, fine quality blooms. You may wish to order rose food for shipment with your roses to save on shipping and handling charges. For more information click here.
THE NEW BOOK
The US edition of David Austin's new book The English Roses was published by The Timber Press in 2006. The book celebrates the great variety and adaptability of the English Roses. Many people have commented on the quality and style of the rose portraits which have been created for us by Howard Rice, who specialises in plant photography.
ADVICE ON SELECTION
If you're looking for a rose for a particular place in the garden, there's sure to be one for your needs. You may like to consult our Choosing roses and cultivation pages, where you'll also find information about rose flower shapes and zone information. Alternatively you might like to call our customer service team for advice.
ENGLISH ROSE GARDENS
Visiting English Rose gardens is the perfect way to experience our roses, whether here in Tyler or those created much farther away such as Gifu in Japan. As always, visitors came to our world-famous rose gardens in Albrighton, England from all over the world, including a great number of American visitors, all keen to explore the origins of the English Roses at David Austin's Shropshire home. One of the main characteristics of English Roses, their heady fragrances, can only be enjoyed in person. We always enjoy watching visitors sampling the fragrances when they visit any of our rose gardens around the world. The fragrance of a rose is a very special thing and it's wonderful to be able to give people so much pleasure in such a simple way.
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE ENGLISH ROSES
David Austin Roses are an entirely new breed of roses which blend the opulent, romantic beauty of the Old Roses with the disease resistance and repeat flowering of Modern Roses. Their wonderful fragrances include the classic old rose, together with tea rose, fruity, myrrh and musky. Their blooms vary from the very full rosettes of Crown Princess Margareta to the lovely open cups of The Shepherdess, both newly released this season.
We believe our garden rose breeding programme is the largest in the world. Over 150,000 individual rose crosses are made every year, resulting in more than 250,000 seedlings. After more than eight years of intensive trialling, David Austin will release the best four to six roses every year as his new introductions.
AWARDS
We are delighted to report another season of success during 2006 at major European flower shows. David Austin Roses were awarded a Gold Medal at the Hampton Court Palace Flower Show in London and at Courson in Paris during 2006.
We were overwhelmed by the number of American customers and English Rose enthusiasts who visited us at the shows, eager to tell us of their successes with David Austin's Roses. Our roses are now grown the length and breadth of the country and are winning many admirers for their beauty, repeat-flowering performance and their health and disease resistance.
'Fragrance is the other half of the beauty of a rose' David Austin
The warmer areas of America have a wonderful effect on the fragrance of our roses. In England, David Austin's roses are believed by many gardeners to be the most fragrant of all the roses but their heady fragrance is accentuated and intensified by the warmer American climate. There are few things more enticing than the fragrance of a rose gently drifting on the breeze. If fragrance is important to you, please visit our Rose Offers page where you'll see a special selection of some of our most fragrant varieties.
Many English Roses are very easy to shape into different sized plants to suit your garden simply by pruning more or less heavily to obtain the desired height. Several varieties can be trained as climbers and once again, you might like to take a look at the three climbers featured on our Rose Offers page. Other varieties stay reliably short and so are excellent for bedding or hedges. All of them share a graceful, shrubby habit which makes them superb for use in mixed borders.
Even though US winters may be colder, there are many varieties that are reliably hardy in zone 4. Please see our page on choosing roses for specific purposes for further details and check out the heights and fragrances on our individual rose descriptions.
We are always delighted to hear from gardeners who send us testimonials and pictures of roses growing in American gardens. Our roses are grafted onto Dr. Huey, the most widely used rootstock in the States.
GARDENING IN PARTIAL SHADE
If your garden is shaded for part of the day, it is still possible to grow English Roses successfully, provided the area is not overhung by trees or larger shrubs and there is not too much competition for water and nutrients at the roots of the rose. Most of the English Roses will grow well in partial shade, provided there is at least three to four hours of sunlight each day. Extra care should be given to feeding and watering but surprisingly good results can be obtained. Check out our roses for special positions pages for other shade-tolerant roses.
Summer pruning may be required when growing larger shrub roses in partial shade to prevent them growing too tall. See notes above.
If you have not grown English Roses before, we hope this collection will inspire you to try them. We are confident that you will be delighted by our fragrant roses like so many other gardeners in the US and around the world.
SUMMER PRUNING
The English Roses are very different in form to modern hybrid tea roses. They have more vigour and the natural shrubby growth habit of the Old Roses. If well watered and cared for, they will repeat flower in flushes up to three or four times a season.
With each flowering, the larger shrub roses will tend to grow taller, especially in the warmer states. To encourage more flowering shoots and create a magnificent, well-proportioned shrub rose, we recommend you summer prune any of your English Roses that, if left unpruned, may grow taller than you would prefer. This will encourage better repeat flowering.
After each flush of flowering is over, simply cut back this season's flowering growth. Remove up to two thirds of the height of each flowering shoot, leaving three or four sets of leaves on each flowering stem. New shoots will appear, which will flower again within a few weeks. This also creates a nice bushy shrub which looks superb in the garden.
We encourage our customers to experiment with the summer pruning of their larger English Roses, adjusting the height of the flowering stems in summer as required. It only takes a minute or two for each shrub rose and we are convinced that you'll be amazed and delighted by the results if you've never tried it before.
During the summer other varieties should be deadheaded, which will encourage more flowering, but will maintain the height of the rose.
HISTORY OF DAVID AUSTIN ROSES
David Austin was born in 1926, on the farm where he now lives. He is the son of a farmer and was farming before going into business as a nurseryman in the early 1960s.
From an early age, he has been interested in gardening and first turned to plant breeding through a friend of his father's, Mr James Baker of Baker's Nurseries. James Baker was introducing new varieties of hardy plants, including Russell's lupins, phloxes and delphiniums. In the 1940s, a copy of George Bunyard's book on Old Roses gave him the idea of crossing Old Roses with Modern Roses. The Old Roses - which include the Gallicas, Damasks, Albas - had all but died out at that time. His objective was to create new roses in the style of Old Roses, combining the unique charm and fragrance of Old Roses with the wide colour range and repeat-flowering qualities of Modern Roses.
He was particularly interested in producing well-formed shrubs which would make good garden plants, ideal for use in mixed borders. His inspiration was the traditional English cottage garden where roses mingle with scented perennials and annuals, creating a romantic, fragrant garden. So the quest began for a peony-style of rose which would gently nod on the breeze in the border, but which - unlike the peony - would be able to repeat-flower, providing fragrance and colour over a long season.
The first variety he introduced was Constance Spry in 1963, followed by Chianti in 1967 and Shropshire Lass in 1968. Sadly, these roses only flowered once in early summer. From these, he developed repeat-flowering varieties with similar Old Rose style blooms. The first group, introduced in 1969, included Wife of Bath and Canterbury. He called these 'English Roses', as the name seemed to symbolise the tradition he so much admired.
When Graham Thomas and Mary Rose were introduced at Chelsea in 1983, English Roses quickly gained popularity both in this country and the rest of the world. Since that time he has introduced over one hundred and fifty varieties.
He founded David Austin Roses in 1969, largely with the objective of introducing English Roses, as other rose nurseries were not particularly interested in them at the time. Later, his eldest son, David J.C. Austin, joined him in the business. David Austin Roses remains a family business, employing over 100 people and growing over 1.2 million roses per year. Now 80, David Austin is still very active at the nursery dividing his time between the breeding programme and writing.
David Austin was awarded the Victoria Medal of Honour by the Royal Horticultural Society in 2003 for his services to horticulture and the Dean Hole Medal by the Royal National Rose Society. He has received an Honorary MSc from the University of East London for his work on rose breeding. He received the lifetime achievement award from the Garden Centre Association in 2004.
THE NURSERY TODAY
David Austin's nursery runs one of the largest rose breeding programmes in the world carrying out over 150,000 crosses each year. From these about 250,000 seedlings will germinate which will begin a rigorous selection program which lasts over 8 years. Only the very best 4 or 6 new garden rose varieties will be introduced each year at the Chelsea Flower Show in May.
The breeding of fragrant, cut roses in the style of the English Garden Roses is a relatively new venture for us. After more than 10 years of breeding and trialing we introduced our first four varieties in the UK in 2004.
The UK retail catalog contains over 900 different varieties, with particularly good selections of English Roses, Old Roses, Shrub Roses, Species Roses and Climbing Roses. It is translated into French, German and Italian and we export to many other countries around the world.
The American edition is extensively revised and contains roses specially selected to suit the US climate and growing conditions. We have added an approximate petal count especially for our American customers, who find this information interesting. The English Roses featured in the US edition are selected for their excellent performance in US gardens, using feedback from professional and amateur gardeners, including some of the major US public gardens. All US sales are supplied from US grown stock.
David Austin has a network of approximately 300 licensees to meet the growing demand for English Roses in all the main rose-growing countries in the world. The wholesale division supplies roses to the trade including garden centres, garden designers and other nurseries.
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