The perfect roses for your South Bay garden

The thorny issue of roses… what to buy and when and where to plant.

South Coast Botanic Garden Superintendent Tanya Finney and Senior Arboretum Gardener Reiko Uchida tackle the thorny issue of roses… what to buy and when and where to plant.

The South Coast Botanic Garden’s central featured rose garden is currently undergoing a major renovation. Many of the strongest performing roses in the South Bay area will be featured in the newly renovated garden, scheduled to reopen later this year. Tanya and Reiko recommend a handful of bushes they love based on how they grow in the garden.

All of these roses repeat-bloom throughout the season—often into December—and grow best in full sun in our cool, coastal climate. The South Coast Botanic Garden follows organic gardening practices and keeps their roses healthy by building the soil with organic fertilizers and mulch, and with annual pruning. Here are their picks:

Fame!

This grandiflora rose is a bright hot pink! This grows into a large, bushy rose with beautiful, huge flowers.

Walking on Sunshine and Julia Child

When looking for a yellow rose, these two floribunda roses are sure to please. Both grow into rounded shrubs about 3 to 4 feet high and would be beautiful in a border planting. Blooming from spring to fall, these are covered in bright yellow, fragrant flowers throughout the seasons.

Mr. Lincoln

We love this hybrid tea rose for the same reasons that it won the All-American Rose Selections honors in 1965. This is a classic, long-stemmed red rose and is perfect for a bouquet. The bushes grow to an impressive 6 to 8 feet tall, so you’ll need room for this one.

Memorial Day

Another strong performer in our garden, this rose is a hybrid tea with the fragrance and large blooms of an old-fashioned rose. The large, pink flowers on this rose remind us of peonies with their abundant cut petals.

Rainbow Knockout

This delicate, five-petal rose is the perfect land- scape shrub. The dark green foliage covers these compact shrubs that grow to about 3 feet tall, and they are sprinkled with single pink flowers throughout the seasons