5 Roses That Should Earn a Spot in Your Garden 2026

Hello and welcome again to Western Nurseries in Chelmsford. Today I'm going to talk about roses, not particularly all the ins and outs of their care and growing them, but I want to talk about my five favourites that I can see at the moment. There's lots of beautiful roses here and I had to choose five. So the first one I'm going to start with here is called the Fairy. It's sort of a shrub rose. It grows about four feet tall and wide and the reason I chose it, apart from these beautiful little tiny frilly full double flowers that start off pale pink and then fade to white, they colour change which is something that I really like, but I wanted to let you know that this selection is a personal selection and where this rose is concerned, my mother used to grow this back in her garden in England and so I have a soft spot for this rose even though I don't grow it myself. It reminds me of growing up in my parents' garden. It was something that she particularly liked as a rose. When they're growing in a pot they're not showcasing themselves to their best advantage but it will grow to a big mounding shrub and it will be a mass of these clusters of little pink flowers. So that is something about plant selection. Sometimes it's an emotional connection to something in our past or people that we choose plants for. It's not based on any particular cultivation factor, although we really should pay attention to that. It's no good saying, oh I really love this plant because my mother used to grow it or whatever and then fail miserably. It's soul-destroying to do that. You really must also try and make sure that what you choose in the way of plants, your feelings don't override your practicalities of choosing the right plant for the right place. But this is my first choice for roses and it's called the fairy because of these tiny little delicate flowers. So the next rose that caught my eye is this one by Proven Winners. It's one of two edible varieties that they have created. This one is flavorette paired. P-E-A-R apostrophe D. So it's supposed to have flavors of pear. I have to confess I have tried it along with the companion one that they have also bred which we appear to have sold out called honeyed apricot which is a soft peach color. And my palate is not particularly good but the honeyed apricot I have to say I did try and the aftertaste was definitely of mild apricot. I was amazed. It's a novelty to have one bred specifically to be edible as well as ornamental. Even if you never ate a single petal off of it, it is a beautiful landscape plant and smells wonderful. So this is flavorette paired. As I say there is another one to go with it which I could definitely taste the flavor of apricot and that's flavorette honeyed apricot. So moving on on my personal selection of roses, I had to choose a David Austin rose. So David Austin obviously has been selling his roses here for a number of years but he has spurred a great emergence shall I say of breeding heirloom style roses that are repeat blooming and also have scent. For many decades towards the end of the 20th century the roses were bred for sort of appearance but not so much for scent. But for the most part David Austin roses smell incredible, look incredible. The one I'm going to showcase here just because it's got some really gorgeous flowers on it that do smell absolutely wonderful. This is the one called Darcy Bustle. It's named after a British ballerina from a couple of decades ago and it does smell wonderful. And just because I can see it's got a couple of dead flowers I'm just going to show you how to prune it. It's making it easy for me because I can see where the new growth is coming and I'm going to do just the same here for that one. So a slight and brief pruning lesson. So cut back to where you see the new growth coming. They are repeat blooming so hence that way you tidy them up, you stop them putting energy into making rose hips and it looks a lot tidier, keeps some disease at bay which in this hot humid weather can be a problem. So my next choice is a reflection of my love of sort of two-tone flowers or flowers that start off one colour and fade to another. This particular rose here is called Secret and as you can see when it just opens it's just lightly tinged with pink and the pinkness gets deeper with age. So from a relatively young flower like this when we get onto the aged flowers the pinkness is really quite stark. So I quite like that effect and there's something in between there where it's really quite deeper and more pronounced but still showing that two-tone effect. So this is the Rose Secret and I just love the colour change effect in it. And last but not least I'm going to end with a Knockout Rose. Now Knockout Roses celebrated their 25th anniversary last year so they've been around now for 26 years and we now have quite a selection of colours and this one in particular Orange Glow is one of the more recent introductions. They are a marvellous rose for easy care, repeat blooming, disease resistance, they even tolerate part shade better than most roses and looking at these you know what is there to criticise? They're popular for a reason because they do well for most people and I just think this is a really really pretty rose that you could line a bed with, you could have low growing boxwood in front and you can see how with these conifers as a backdrop to use something like that as a contrast it makes for an easy care beautiful garden setting. So that's my personal pick for roses there are plenty of other gorgeous ones I'm standing looking at them behind my cameraman here so and there's so many I could say oh this is gorgeous you know there's the Scarlet Drift Rose which is the most vivid scarlet and drift roses are fantastic but I'm only showcasing five so I'm going to stop for now. Come along and see us we've got still a fabulous selection of roses available and there's bound to be something for every taste. Signing off from Chelmsford this is Catherine I'd see you again soon.