All about roses: Types, bloom times, and care tips

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SALT LAKE CITY — Roses are amazingly popular in Utah. Local horticulturists receive many questions about rose care compared to other plants. They are also among the most popular plants at local garden centers in the spring.

Listen to Taun and Maria discuss knock out roses and if they’re a good fit for your yard.

Several rose classes are available with varying growth and flower characteristics. The most familiar are the hybrid tea roses, the long-stemmed roses used in bouquets. More of these are sold locally than all other types.

Most tea roses perform well along the Wasatch Front, but consider the more durable varieties such as Peace, Opening Night, and Grateful Heart for colder areas.

Grandiflora roses are popular and similar to hybrid teas but have two or three slightly smaller flowers per stem.

Other rose classes

Other standard rose classes include floribunda, miniature, groundcover, climbing, and bush. Floribunda roses are bred to have beautiful, profuse, hybrid tea-like flowers that cover the entire shrub.

Miniature roses grow to 12 inches tall and a few feet wide. They seem less hardy in arid Utah and may require some protection in summer and winter.

Groundcover roses sprawl several feet in all directions and grow 24 inches tall.

Climbing roses also sprawl and do not adhere to walls or structures without selective pruning and training to fill a trellis.

Modern bush roses have been gaining popularity. They are used as borders and hedges, are disease-resistant, relatively cold hardy, and free-blooming. The Knockout series is especially popular. Light trimming through the growing season keeps them blooming profusely.

Another type of rose that is becoming more popular is the David Austin roses. They are modern hybrids bred to mimic heirloom English roses famous for their large, ruffly, fragrant blooms. David Austin roses repeat bloom, have an attractive fragrance, and are more cold hardy and disease-resistant than the Old English roses.

When do they bloom?

All roses in northern Utah bloom from late May to mid-June, and modern hybrids, which account for almost 100% of what is planted over the last 50 years, continue to bloom more sporadically throughout the growing season.

Deadheading hybrid-tea, grandiflora, and floribunda types cause them to bloom more profusely during the hotter months. Similarly, giving bush roses light haircuts after blooming does the same.

Pruning tips

Regarding maintenance, prune roses between mid-March and early April, where warmer areas dictate earlier pruning. Hybrid-tea roses should be pruned, leaving three to four more vigorous canes cut to knee height. There are many good fact sheets on pruning the other rose types.

In older neighborhoods and on homesteads, many heirloom roses are planted that bloom only once a year, such as Austrian copper and Persian yellow. These are the famous yellow and red rose combinations purposely planted intertwined to look like the same shrub has both flower colors (red and yellow).

Prune these and other heirloom roses as soon as they are done blooming in June because the flower buds for the next year are formed shortly after they are done blooming. Pruning later in the summer or early spring removes most of the flower buds.

All the roses mentioned are available at local retailers or online. Order early, because most roses sell out by mid-June. There are already some bare root plants available in local box stores.

Read more from the KSL Greenhouse show:

• Dormant sprays: What they do and when to apply them
• UDAF offering grants to help create a more pollinator-friendly environment
• Container gardening: A space-efficient way to grow

KSL Greenhouse is live Saturdays from 8 a.m. to 11 a.m. Follow the show on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. You can also find more gardening info on our linktr.ee.