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Characteristics of the English Roses
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Click on pictures for more information or to buy the variety as a bare root rose. A selection of the most popular English Roses are also available as container roses. Search the container rose collection.
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They form wonderful shrub roses, ideal for the border.
The English Roses are designed to be used in mixed borders, where their glorious shrubby forms add great impact. These bushy plants have a graceful, shapely habit which makes them incredibly versatile in the garden, whether used alone in a traditional rose garden or mingled with herbaceous perennials where their long flowering season is very useful. Their vigour makes some varieties ideal for training as short climbers or for use as standard roses.
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They are renowned for the variety and strength of their fragrances.
We recognise five categories of English Rose rose fragrances, although many roses have complex fragrances which combine elements from several fragrance groups. Jude The Obscure and Lady Emma Hamilton have delicious fruity fragrances. Gertrude Jekyll (pictured) has the quintessential old rose fragrance: strong and perfectly balanced. Constance Spry brought the classic myrrh fragrance into the English Roses. Scepter'd Isle and Strawberry Hill also have fine myrrh fragrances. For a strong tea rose fragrance with fruity aspects, try Golden Celebration, while Charles Darwin has a floral tea scent mixed with lemon. The Generous Gardener is a lovely blend of musk, myrrh and old rose.
More about fragrance
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They typically have multi-petalled old rose style flower forms.
The lovely quartered rosettes of William Shakespeare 2000 contain around 120 petals. The folded effect creates a lovely mixture of light and shade, creating a wonderful, velvety effect. Teasing Georgia has large blooms with a particularly pleasing cupped formation. Each flower head consists of about 110 delicately folded petals, perfectly arranged.
Click here to see the basic flower shapes
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They are extremely healthy and reliable.
For many years, the breeding programme has paid particular attention to health and vigour. As a result, the English Roses are exceptionally disease resistant and reliable. Easy-care varieties include Charlotte, Crocus Rose, Darcey Bussell, Grace, Golden Celebration, Harlow Carr, Jubilee Celebration, Molineux, Queen Of Sweden, Sophy's Rose, St Swithun, The Alnwick Rose, The Generous Gardener, The Mayflower, Wild Edric, Wildeve and William Shakespeare 2000.
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They will repeat flower several times each season.
Unlike most of the old roses, David Austin's English Roses will provide two or three flushes of flowers during the season. All the easy-care roses listed above also repeat flower extremely well. These roses will give excellent all-round garden performance with minimal care.
For best repeat flowering:
Always plant roses with Rootgrow, which helps them to extract nutrients and water from the soil.
Water well and feed twice each year with a good slow release rose fertiliser such as David Austin's Rose Food.
Deadhead spent blooms during the summer.
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Gardeners new to the English Roses may be surprised to discover how versatile some of these plants can be.
The roses listed online and in the Handbook of Roses as English Climbing Roses are particularly good examples of this. They can be pruned hard and grown as medium to large shrub roses. Alternatively they can just be lightly tidied up and tied to some form of support, when they will form wonderful, fragrant short to medium climbers.
These images of Teasing Georgia help to demonstrate its great adaptability. On the right, the rose is shown climbing up a wall in David J.C. Austin's garden. Teasing Georgia will eventually cover a large area and provides as good a display of bloom in the autumn as it does in the summer.
This variety is most commonly grown as a shrub in a rose border or mixed border, but has many other uses. For example, in one of our pictures below Teasing Georgia is shown decorating a short fence. Roses make wonderful hedging plants and their thorns can be a deterrent against intruders.
Teasing Georgia, like most other English Roses, can be grown in areas of partial shade, provided there is at least four or five hours of sunlight each day. Roses should not be planted directly below trees, as these shelter the rose from rain as well as sunlight.
Growing English Roses as climbers
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