English Style Roses For Canadian Gardens
(Other than David Austins!)

The English style rose was made famous by the pioneering work of David Austin in England who, since the 1950s, worked to combine the beauty and romance of the cupped, multi-petaled forms and fragrance of old roses with the characteristics and performance of modern roses including a wider colour range, repeat-flowering, and disease resistance. While David Austin is the most famous breeder of English style roses, he is not the only one. Other breeders such as Kordes from Germany, Meilland from France, Weeks from the USA, and our own Brad Jalbert from Canada have bred amazing English style roses with incredible forms, colours, and fragrance that very much deserve to rub shoulders with David Austin roses in your garden!

You need only look at the beautiful photographs and to grow and smell your first English style rose to understand that these, like David Austins, are also something special in the rose world. They will quickly grow into magnificent shrubs and climbers that will transform your garden with their old world charm, fragrance, and performance.

And sometimes other breeders offer colours and forms that you can’t find from David Austin. For instance, David Austin didn’t like true red as a colour for his roses but Kordes offers the magnificent climber Florentina as well as the unique lavender coloured Quicksilver, a shade you also won’t find from David Austin. Kordes also offers the extremely heat tolerant Sunbelt series with peach Crazy Love and lavender Plum Perfect and the dwarf Veranda Cream and Veranda Lavender perfect for container growing.

From Meilland you get one of the most popular of all English style climbers: Eden often also referred to as Eden Rose and Eden Climber. It has beautiful bicolour white and pink flowers and is one of our best sellers of all time. Its siblings are Eden Red, another true red, as well as a gorgeous pink in Eden Pretty in Pink, and pure white in Eden White. Sweet Mademoiselle with its deep pink outer petals and apricot pink centres will wow anyone who loves David Austin’s Boscobel. Princesse Charlene de Monaco, Moonlight Romantica, and Yves Piaget are also stunners. And these are just some of Kordes’ many English style offerings.

Weeks Roses offers the glowing pink All Dressed Up and the very unique State of Grace with apricot gold centres and pink outer petals. Brad Jalbert has bred the amazing and distinctive peachy orange tones of Double Ambre and Peach Glory and the delicate pale pink Dylan Rose which might not be exactly in the English style but its lovely ruffles will delight anyone who loves these romantic old world forms. Brad’s roses will also perform remarkably in our West Coast climate and other cool summer climates offering great disease resistance and health.

Characteristics of English Roses:

• Form: English style roses tend to grow as shapely shrubs with a bushy mounding or arching growth habit. The climbers are strong and vigorous usually with flowering down to the base.
• Flowers: A wide range of colours with unique, cupped, old fashioned, multi-petaled, and often quartered blooms that change in colour beautifully as they age.
• Fragrance: Renowned for their strong and diverse fragrances including old rose, tea, myrrh, fruit, and musk.
• Repeat-flowering: Cultivars will repeat flower providing a long season of interest.
• Design Potential: Highly versatile for different garden styles and uses including mixed flower beds, traditional rose borders, fragrant hedges, large pots and containers, for the cutting garden, and for large landscape plantings.
• Health: All of these breeders also focus on vigour and garden performance with great disease resistance.

As with all roses, English style cultivars prefer full to part sun for best flowering and overall performance. Some are tolerant of and will bloom reasonably in part shade which could describe a location with 3-4 hours of sun per day, a spot with dappled light throughout the day, or a position against a north wall that is open above with bright reflected light. Tolerance of part shade is noted in each of their descriptions below. Roses also prefer rich soils with added compost and fertilizer and ample deep waterings, especially during summer dry spells.

English style roses are usually rated as hardy to zones 4 or 5, depending on the cultivar. For tricks on how to grow these roses in colder zones than their official rating, read our article on “How to Grow David Austin Roses in Zone 3”.

At Phoenix Perennials we offer one of Canada’s largest selections of David Austin and other English style roses each year for Canadian gardeners. We launch online pre-ordering as part of our Great Rose Pre-Order every fall or winter for the following spring with options for gardeners in Richmond, Greater Vancouver and beyond in British Columbia to pick-up your roses as potted plants at our Richmond, BC nursery or for bare root mail order shipping across Canada from March to early April as weather warms up in your region. You can also shop for roses in person at Phoenix Perennials through the spring, summer and fall.

If the Great Rose Pre-Order is currently running, you’ll find it in our Pre-Order Area. To be the first to know about the launch of the Great Rose Pre-Order and to receive articles on roses, subscribe to our Rose Alert.

Have fun perusing the many cultivars of non-Austin English style roses that we carry and selecting the perfect plants for your garden. Not all will be available each year but we’ll have most of them! (And to explore our David Austin selection, read our article on David Austin Roses for Canadian Gardens.)

English Style Roses by Kordes, Meilland, Weeks, and Jalbert

David Austin is the most famous breeder of English style roses but other top international breeders also produce roses in the English style. These roses are just as beautiful, fragrant, and disease resistant as David Austins. Also, some cultivars offer colours and habits not found in the David Austin cultivars. These roses are all magnificent.