10 Best Roses With Single Flowers

If you want beautiful, perfect Roses this summer (when it eventually does come around!) then now is the time to start spoiling your plants and feed them with hearty manures, composts and rose food.

If, however, you have not already got some well established rose plants in your garden, then now is the time to start thinking about them if you want a garden in full bloom this summer.

Here, Barbara Lea Taylor writes about her top 10 single flowered roses in NZ Gardener magazine...a few suggestions to get your started!

1. 'Complicata': This is a shrub rose that has delightfully big wide-open blooms, pink with pale centres and golden stamens. These plants need little care, just remove the dead wood.

2. 'Dupontii': Barbara's number 2 rose is a hybrid species with white symmetrical flowers that have a faint blush towards the edges and golden stamens. This bush likes climbing and will flower from late spring right through until December.

3. 'Golden Wings': A classic yellow rose with big pale gold flowers and maroon stamens...a very strong rose that will go on blooming.

4. 'Altissimo': Barbara describes this as a "city slicker with attitude". It has blood red petals, dark shiny leaves and long stems which make it a lot easier to pick if you can stand the thorns! A very dramatic flower that would look stunning against a black picket fence.

5. 'Mutabilis': This is a China rose that changes its colour as the day progresses, opening as a soft honey colour and deepening to rose and then to flame in the sun. It can grow as a hedge and will also climb if given the right tools.

6. 'Alba': According to Barbara, this plant could be the most beautiful Rugosa. It has flowers that are similar to the hibiscus, perfectly white and with golden stamens. Flowering from spring and through autumn, and in the latter months, its leaves turn yellow and it has big red hips.

7. Rosa mulliganii: A rose that is eager to climb, it will easily cover a tree or shed with big scented sprays of white flowers that come once in late spring.

8. 'Ballerina': Barbara writes that this is very easy to care for and is naturally low growing and spreading although it could potentially be trained to be a climber. It has big heads made up of tiny pink single flowers that have a pale centre.

9. 'Cocktail': This is a vigorous climber that has glossy leaves and bright red geranium-like flowers with yellow centres. Perfect for a dull spot in your garden.

10. 'Yesterday': An endearing rose, it has won many awards, mainly because it is so pretty with sprays of small flowers in violet shades with darker buds. Barbara suggests matching it with silvery-leaved perennials.