Complete your customers’ gardens this summer with a beautiful rose, one of the most popular garden plants and the Horticultural Trades Association’s (HTA) Plant of the Month for June 2015.
There is a rose for every garden situation, from Hybrid Teas to miniatures, climbers to floribundas, the choice is endless. They can be large or small, contemporary or traditional and boast both fragrance and colour.
As a perfect addition to any garden environment and being relatively easy to grow, the rose is an ideal plant to support the Love the Plot You’ve Got, the industry wide campaign to get people to make the most of their outdoor space. There are varieties for planting in flower beds, borders and planters as well as for walls and pergolas.
Chris Collins broadcaster, former Blue Peter Gardener and Love the Plot You’ve Got champion says, “I suppose the choice of a Rose as a favourite may be considered an obvious one when gardeners talk about plants. The English garden is incomplete without one or possibly many. These plants really just give and give and with minimum fuss. They are a must have in any horticultural situation and would make Plant of the Month for me all year round”.
Recommended RHS AGM varieties include:Rosa ‘Zéphirine Drouhin’, Rosa ‘Nevada’, Rosa Golden Wedding ‘Arokris’ and Rosa Rugosa ‘Alba’.
Those looking for companion plants to complement the rose in the garden are recommended to try:
- Lilium regale hybrids – a perennial to 2m in height, with large fragrant, trumpet-shaped white flowers that are yellow in the centre and flushed with purple on the outside.
- Nepeta ‘Six Hills Giant’ – perennial forming a clump of aromatic, grey-green leaves, with lavender-blue flowers in spikes.
- Lavender ‘Munstead’ – a compact variety of English lavender with masses of dark purple-blue flower spikes. Its fragrant stems are ideal for cutting or drying, and the nectar-rich flowers are particularly attractive to bees.
- Philadelphus ‘Beauclerk’ – a deciduous shrub, with ovate leaves and short racemes of fragrant, single white flowers, with a purplish zone near the centre.
Nominated and agreed upon by British growers and retailers, the HTA’s Plant of the Month campaign highlights the plants that are widely available and looking especially good each month.
For more details, please visit www.the-hta.org.uk/plantofthemonth
