Roses

Zone: 3 to 8

Full Sun

Bloom Time: Spring to Fall (depending on the variety)

Height: 3′ to 12′ (depending on the variety

Roses are the standard that everyone thinks of when you mention plants with beautiful fragrant flowers. And if you get the right variety, they live up to the hype!

If you are looking for the rose to have a scent, be careful which kind you buy, since many of the newer ones do not have any scent at all.

Roses also have a reputation for being hard to grow. I actually haven’t found that to be true…the trick is to make sure that you get roses that are bred for your growing conditions, and don’t plant them right next to other roses. A lot of roses are susceptible to diseases like Black Spot and Mildew, which (in most cases) doesn’t kill the plant but does make them look pretty sickly by the end of the summer. (Here in South Carolina where it is very humid in the summer, black spot is pretty much a given!) Not planting roses right next to each other helps this in 2 ways…first, the roses are less likely to get diseased if they aren’t “catching” it from another rose, and second, if the leaves do start to fall off because of black spot, the other plants help to hide the bare-looking rose bush.

One other hint: My absolute favorite climbing rose is Zepherine Drouin (in the pictures below)…it has beautiful pink flowers, a nice scent and it has NO thorns!

That makes it perfect for growing over an arbor leading to the front door. You can smell it when you walk out the door and don’t have to worry about getting pricked as you walk by.