Here are the most stunning and carefree roses for your garden.
Nothing lends a more magical, romantic feel to your garden than roses tumbling over stone walls or filling your landscape beds with brilliant color and fragrance. Unfortunately, roses sometimes get a bad rap. People say: They’re fussy. They get diseases. They’re difficult to grow.
But that’s simply not true! Many roses, especially newer hybrids, are some of the easiest, most reliable, long-blooming flowers you can grow. It’s all about choosing the right variety. “There’s a rose for every garden, though not every rose is right for every garden,” says Stephen Scanniello, curator of the Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden at New York Botanical Garden and rosarian at the Helen S. Kaman Rose Garden at Elizabeth Park in West Hartford, Connecticut. “You have to find the roses that work for you.”
"Roses are much hardier than people think," says Danielle Dall’Armi Hahn, author of The Color of Roses: A Curated Spectrum of 300 Blooms. "They're also drought-tolerant once established."
When choosing a planting site in your garden, make sure it receives full sun, or six to eight hours of direct sunlight per day. Many roses grow equally well in garden beds and containers. Also make sure you select a variety that can survive winters in your USDA Hardiness zone (find yours here). Finally, do not water your roses at night, which increases the likelihood of spreading foliar diseases, says Scanniello.
Roses typically are classified according to their growth habit and flower form. Common categories you’ll see in descriptions include:
- Hybrid tea roses have large, single flowers on long stems perfect for cutting.
- Floribunda have small flowers in clusters or sprays; they’re often fragrant.
- Grandiflora boast large flowers, often in clusters on long stems.
- Climbing roses have long flexible canes you can train over a trellis or fence.
- Heritage roses (also called antique, heirloom or Old Garden) have big, lush blooms; they bloom once in early summer; they are not as disease-resistant as many newer roses.
- Shrub roses grow about 3 feet tall and wide with single or double flowers, blooming continuously from summer to fall.
- Miniature roses are petite roses with small leaves, blooms and thorns; they work well in containers.
We've chosen the best roses you can grow, based on their beauty, reliability, and trials in our own gardens with recommendations from Scanniello and Dall'Armi Hahn.
Pull on your gardening gloves and start planting. Here, the best roses to grow in your garden:
This brand new hybrid tea rose has old-fashioned charm and great raspberry and lemon fragrance. "You could walk away and leave this one, and it would perform well," says Scanniello. It has excellent disease resistance. It's a beautiful cutting rose and perfect addition to a classic English garden design.
The golden blooms and licorice-scented fragrance make this floribunda rose a must-have. It was chosen by Julia Child herself for its rich butter-gold color and delicious scent. It's one of Dall'Armi Hahn's top picks.
This gorgeous mini climber has deep red flowers with loads of repeat blooms throughout the season. It will reach heights of 6 to 8 feet tall. It's very cold hardy and has a lovely, light scent, says Scanniello.
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This sturdy climbing rose is a vigorous grower that will reach heights of 8 to 12 feet and 4 to 6 feet wide. It has glossy green foliage and electric pink blooms in early summer. It's a great choice for cold climates and needs no coddling to get through the rough winters. It also boasts excellent disease resistance.
Deep red roses make this a striking plant when massed. It has excellent disease resistance and a beautiful bushy, rounded form. It would look amazing in a Mediterranean-style garden.
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Lovely clusters of lilac-blue flowers with a light, old-fashioned scent bloom all summer long on this mini climber. It's disease resistant and cold hardy with a neat, tidy habit that eventually reaches 8 feet tall.
The Knockout series of roses was introduced about 20 years ago, bred for disease resistance, flower power, and low maintenance. They're now available in an array of colors ranging from pure white to the original classic magenta.
This double, bubble-gum pink variety is especially appealing in mass plantings. "These are very good roses which break down that wall and show gardeners that it's not too difficult to grow these plants," says Scanniello.
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Clusters of beautiful white flowers adorn this hardy climber. It reaches 6 to 12 feet in height. It's another of Dall' Armi Hahn's choices.
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This miniature Knockout rose is just as hardy and disease-resistant as other Knockout roses, but in a petite form. Maxing out at 18 inches tall, these are excellent choices for patio containers, says Scanniello.
This hybrid tea is a wonderful addition to your garden with its fragrant cupped blooms. The blush color is stunning in bouquets. It's another of Dall' Armi Hahn's top picks.
Tons of blooms, gorgeous, long-lasting color and a petite form that reaches 3 feet tall and 3 feet wide make this the ideal rose for small garden settings. It's bulletproof with great disease resistance.
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This floribunda rose has a dense form with red blooms with a velvety appearance. It's stunning when massed as a border or in landscape beds. And it's as tough as, well, a brick house!
This climber boasts saturated color with continuous blooms. It's an eye-catching addition to the garden and is one of Scanniello's top recommendations for climbers.
This rose has bright pink blooms in clusters, and it's super cold-hardy to zone 3 winters. It's also a good repeat bloomer.
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Quietness has a classic beauty with huge blooms up to 4 inches across. It has a delicious fragrance and makes a wonderful rose for a cutting garden, says Scanniello.
This lovely creamy-white rose has a delicate fragrance. Its huge blooms are eye-catching and offer beautiful contrast to its dark green foliage. It reaches a compact 24 inches, so it's perfect for small gardens, it's disease resistant, and it doesn't need to be deadheaded to keep blooming.
Arricca Elin SanSone
Arricca Elin SanSone has written about health and lifestyle topics for Prevention, Country Living, Woman's Day, and more. She’s passionate about gardening, baking, reading, and spending time with the people and dogs she loves.
