ROSES IN POTS

When you want colourful containers without chores, forget high-maintenance bedding plants, and go for the easy alternative. Roses.

But since hybrid teas and floribundas don’t like living long-term in pots, the breeders have come up with something especially for the job; patio roses. They are naturally bushy and compact - just the right size for tubs - and they flower just as prolifically as bedding plants, from June to October. But they are much less work, and far better value.

Patio roses last roughly ten years. They live happily in the same pots for several years before they need repotting, and you can leave them outside through even hard winters - but they cost the same as one set of summer bedding, so you’ll be quids-in.

There are many varieties, varying from 12 in to 24 in high, in most of the popular rose colours - reds, apricots, yellows and white plus shades of pink from soft through salmon to shocking. ‘Flower Power’ is a very good salmon-pink, free flowering with a rich spicy perfume, and ‘Queen Mother’ is another favourite, a pale pink semi-double with slightly frilled petals and a light classy fragrance.

Garden centres usually stock a range of popular varieties, while specialist rose nurseries such as David Austin list several pages of them in their catalogues. Sometimes patio roses are grafted onto single upright stems to make short standards, and when a compact ground cover rose such as pink ‘Flower Carpet’, ‘White Flower Carpet’ or pearly-pink ‘Nozomi’ is grafted this way the end result is a weeping standard that looks like a waterfall of flowers. It looks stunning, flanked by a couple of short bushy patio roses.

But you can go smaller still. If you want something for a balcony or roof garden, then try miniature roses in a trough or window box.  If you’ve been given small potted roses as indoor plants, these will almost certainly be miniatures and while they are not indoor plants neither are they up to the rough and tumble of the open garden – but in containers they are in their element. They’ll flower their socks off for most of the summer and, if there’s room, they ‘go’ very well with a collection of the larger patio roses.

If you’re sold on the scheme, start a potted rose garden now. Repot patio roses into15-inch tubs; they like rich pickings, so use John Innes 3 and add a teaspoonful of slow release fertiliser granules to each container. If you choose miniature roses, use the same planting mixture and space the plants six inches apart in a trough or windowbox to make a close-packed ‘hedge’, or plant a group of three or five in a 15-inch tub.

Potted roses need watering, but not as often as a jam-packed tub of bedding plants, and they’ll still need feeding regularly during the growing season - use a liquid or soluble rose or tomato feed once or twice a week, for a stunning display that stays looking, well, rosy.

Neither patio roses nor miniatures need pruning as such; simply deadhead them regularly all summer, and at the start of the growing season go round tidying up the shapes of patio varieties. In the case of miniatures, which scarcely make any new growth, merely snip off any tips that have died back.

If you’re turning over a new leaf, on the patio, start now with roses. They’ll certainly grow on you.