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Modern Garden Roses
What we currently call modern garden roses are the more modern roses (see list below) that appear in most rose gardens. These include the hybrid tea and hybrid tea climbers that are the most popular roses for modern gardens. The cold hardiness of many of these modern garden rose plants can be questioned and you’ll have to make decisions about how to treat them based on where you are gardening and how you want to overwinter your roses. For example, in a USDA zone 4, it will be very difficult to reliably overwinter a climbing hybrid tea rose. In a zone 5, you can use the hardier forms of those roses with a reasonable chance of success. This means you’ll have to use other species of the modern garden rose for climbing if you live in cold areas. Here is a snapshot of the modern garden rose class: Floribunda and Climbing Floribunda. It may be easier to tell you what a floribunda is if we compare it to the more popular hybrid tea. The hybrid tea rose is a large double flower produced in single stems or small groups of single flowers. In contrast, the floribunda produces its flowers in large, dense clusters (trusses) with many blooms opening in the truss or cluster at the same time. There is a LOT more variability in this modern garden rose class as well, with single, semi-double and full double flowers. Fewer of the floribunda roses carry that unique rose fragrance but they are usually more vigorous than the tea roses so you get a bigger flower show for as long a time. Grandiflora & Climbing Grandiflora so can you tell the difference between this rose and the floribunda? While it may be heresy in rose growing circles, the major difference is that these flowers are larger. That’s it. And yes, it can be tough to make the call. Hybrid Kordesii is a series of shrub roses developed by the German Kordes rose nursery that incorporates some R. rugosa characteristics, is generally a very hardy and disease resistant modern garden rose. Hybrid Musk roses grow in a “wilder” form than the Rugosa roses and may require some support but the major difference is in the fragrance. This rose has a musk fragrance (but is not related to R. moschata – the musk rose) Hybrid Rugosa Take a Rosa rugosa breed it with any other rose and if that rose is cold-hardy, has the crinkled leaves, and disease resistance of the species it is a Hybrid Rugosa. No matter how tall (small shrubs to climbers), the flower form (singles to doubles) or colour (name it), it is a H.R. modern garden rose. Hybrid Wichurana are roses that have the cane characteristics of R. Wichuriana – long tall but pliable canes that are ideal for training to supports. Generally they only bloom once. Hybrid Tea & Climbing Hybrid Tea From the first paragraph, remember that our hybrid tea rose is a large double flower produced in single stems or small groups of single flowers. This is the single most popular modern garden rose and more of these are sold than any other. Large-Flowered Climbing roses are not a species but rather formed by characteristics that include long arching canes so they can be tied against support to “climb”. There is a wide range of flower forms, colours and hardiness ratings. Miniature & Climbing Miniature these are exact duplicates of larger roses except they are small. Usually between 8 and 15 inches tall will get a rose classed as a miniature.
Mini-Flora is the recognition that there are an emerging group of roses that fit between miniature roses (too tall) and floribunda roses (but aren’t tall enough to be a real floribunda). Polyantha & Climbing Polyantha if you understand that the polyantha was one of the parents of the floribunda, you’ll understand that it is a heavy blooming plant. But it has small flowers. So, you’ll get lots of colour over a long bloom season but the individual flowers are small. (p.s. the other parent of the floribunda was the hybrid tea.) Shrub roses include plants that are sprawling and wild growing (shrub-like) and usually the Hybrid Kordesii, Hybrid Moyesii, Hybrid Musk, Hybrid Rugosa, and ? (the ? refers to any other rose that doesn’t quite fit anywhere else.) :-) This includes the English Roses or David Austin roses by the way. And those are the plants in the modern garden rose class. Click here for free newsletter to ask about modern garden roses
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