Roses, Roses

When it comes to stunning flowers, it’s hard to beat a rose. Their blooms are filled with colour, vibrancy, allure and of course fragrance.

And when it comes to finding the absolute best place in Australia to show off the queen of flowers, Adelaide just has to be its capital.

What makes Adelaide, Australia’s rose capital, well there are a few things, first the weather – roses love long hot summers and cold wet winters, that’s a tick, they like clay soil, that’s a tick, they also like places where they can be really show off, and Adelaide has certainly given roses plenty of opportunity to do that

Head down any street and you’re sure to find at least one rose in most gardens. Head down other streets and you’ll find gardens that have gone totally rose crazy.

Not only are our home gardens rose friendly, so are some of our streets

If anyone ever thought roses were a delicate plant then think again. These roses are putting up with thousands and thousands of cars and trucks passing by this roundabout on the corner of Glynburn & Greenhill roads every day. They are literally stuck on an island surrounded by bitumen, which is baking hot in summer and they still punch out a great display. Amazing.

Roses really add a splash of colour to the Adelaide’s landscape.

Hutt Street is one of Adelaide’s premier streets and while the plane trees dominate this landscape, there’s one thing that helps this road zing and that’s the roses.

If you have a garden with a fair bit of shade and want to grow roses then here’s your answer. This rose is aptly named Shady Lady and, as you can see here, it’s not getting much sun under these plane trees yet, it’s flowering its head off. Give Shady Lady about 3 hours of sunlight a day and you’ve got yourself a fair bit of specky colour.

Adelaide enjoys a winter wonderland every flowering season thanks to this rose – in fact Adelaide gardens have a love affair with this variety. I’m talking about Iceberg.

There would be very few street, roads, avenues, cul-de-sacs and lanes where you wouldn’t find an Iceberg rose growing. And the reason for that, is it’s easy to grow and simply flowers its head off.

If you don’t know a lot about roses, there’s probably a rose name, apart from Iceberg, that you’d be familiar with and that’s the Peace rose. This is rose royalty.

Peace and was voted the world’s favourite rose by the World Federation of Rose Societies. It beautifully formed blooms of yellow and pink have graced gardens the world over since its release in the United States on the 29th of April 1945, the day Berlin fell.

Adelaide has its very own rose, fittingly named – City of Adelaide. Easy to grow with clusters of semi-double, rich salmon pink blooms each with a slight fragrance and growing to around 1.2 metres high, every Adelaide garden should have one.

If you’re looking for blooming sensations, Seduction with its cream and pastel pink edged flowers is a beauty as is Simply Magic’s strawberry pink trusses that smother the bush. Both are great in large beds or in a pot.

If fragrance is your thing then the bright and beautiful Fiona’s Wish has a heavenly scent as does the rich red and deeply perfumed Sir Donald Bradman rose.

With shrinking gardens, climbing roses are having a renaissance – and one of the very best to grow is Pierre de Ronsard, even the name alone sounds romantic.

Add the old world charm of these nodding, full petalled blooms and you have an absolute showstopper.

For award winning pedigree, here are some roses that have won Gold at the Australian national rose trials located in the Adelaide Botanic Gardens.

This is Fire & Ice, and while it looks like Double Delight, a rose you may be familiar with, the garden performance on this is brilliant. A great option for those wanting a two tones.

Next is Knock Out. And doesn’t it look a knock out! This is practically indestructible. Bred for high disease resistance and everblooming, honestly it never knows when to stop flowering. You’ll be trimming off blooms at pruning time.

The same goes for another member of the Knock Out family. Double Knock Out has all the same characteristics as Knock Out only with more petals in the bloom.

How about this for a rose bloom. Granted, it’s not your typical romantic, rounded shape, instead this looks like a paper folded rose doesn’t it? And that’s the reason it is called Origami – great name.

Are roses a winner around Adelaide – you bet they are! If you are itching to get some planted in your garden and add more colour to our fair city, head to your local garden centre or rose specialist.

With so many blooming plants around, Adelaide is definitely one city you can stop… and smell the roses.