Which type of rose should I buy?

Roses are sold by class, and the class is not a marketing label — it describes the plant's habit, when it flowers, whether it repeats, and where its flowers come from. That last point is the one that follows you around, because it determines the pruning for as long as you own the plant. Buying the wrong class is the reason people end up with a rose that flowers once in June at the top of a bare stick.

Step by step

1. Start with the position, not the picture.A 600mm-deep border in front of a house does not want a rambler that makes six metres of growth a year. Measure the space, note how much sun it gets, and shortlist only classes that fit. Roses want at least four or five hours of direct sun; almost none flower well in real shade.
2. Hybrid teas: one large flower per stem, on a stiff upright bush.The classic florist shape and the best cut flower. They are pruned hard every late winter, they need feeding, and they are the class most prone to black spot. They look bare and thorny for half the year, so they suit a dedicated rose bed better than a mixed border.
3. Floribundas: clusters of smaller flowers, repeating through the summer.More continuous colour than a hybrid tea and generally tougher. The best choice for a bed you want in flower from June to the first frosts. Pruned hard in late winter, like hybrid teas.
4. Shrub roses, including English and old garden roses: bigger, softer plants that mix with other planting.Many are scented; the modern English varieties repeat, most genuinely old roses flower once. They are pruned lightly — take out a quarter of the oldest stems at the base and tip the rest, rather than cutting them down. This is the class that suits a mixed border.
5. Climbers: stiff stems and repeat flowering, for a wall, a fence or a pillar.They are trained into a permanent framework of main stems, and each winter you shorten the side shoots that come off it. Most reach two to four metres, which is a size a house wall can carry without becoming a problem.
6. Ramblers: enormous, flexible, usually one huge flush in midsummer.They flower on wood made the previous year, so they are pruned after flowering, not in winter. Many make five metres or more. Superb over an arch, a pergola or into a tree; a mistake on a small wall or over a doorway you need to use.
7. Patio, miniature and ground-cover roses: small, repeat-flowering and low maintenance.Patio roses suit containers and the front of a border. Ground-cover types spread sideways and need little more than shortening back when they outgrow the space. Both are useful where a full-size bush would be too much plant.
8. Weight disease resistance heavily, and buy on it.Resistance varies enormously between varieties within every class, and it is the difference between a plant that looks well in August and one that is a bare stick covered in black spots. Reputable rose nurseries publish resistance information; take it seriously and treat it as more important than the exact shade of pink.
9. Check whether it repeats before you buy.Descriptions use "repeat flowering", "recurrent" or "perpetual" for roses that flower more than once, and "once flowering" or "summer flowering" for those that do not. A once-flowering rose in a small garden is a big plant earning its keep for three weeks a year.
10. Buy bare-root in the dormant season if the timing allows.Bare-root roses are cheaper, the choice of varieties is far wider, and they establish better than container plants. They are lifted and sold from about November to March. Container roses can go in at any time but need much more watering in their first summer.

Tips

• Scent varies more between varieties than between classes. If scent matters, buy from a nursery that describes it specifically, or smell the plant in a garden in June before committing.
• A rose sold as a "patio climber" or a "short climber" is genuinely useful on a fence panel, where a full climber would rapidly become too much to manage.
• Roses grown on their own roots rather than grafted onto a rootstock cannot produce rootstock suckers, which removes one of the commonest long-term nuisances.

Common mistakes

• Buying a rambler for a house wall — It makes several metres of flexible growth every year, flowers once, and cannot be kept small without cutting off the wood that would have flowered. Climbers exist for exactly this position.
• Choosing on flower colour alone — Habit, eventual size, repeat flowering and disease resistance all affect what the plant is like to live with far more than the colour does.
• Planting a rose in shade because the border needs filling — Roses are among the most light-hungry garden plants. In under four hours of sun they grow leggy, flower sparsely and get more disease.

Questions people ask