Dearest Floribunda Rose Bushes

Rosa Dearest Floribunda Rose

Dearest roses sporting clusters of exquisite flowers that appear in flushes the season. As a floribunda rose it has everything. Each flower has thirty petals in a whorl of softly, interconnecting layers; not so tightly packed as the cabbage roses but with enough presence to look full and generous. The glossy dark leaves add to the effect and are toothed and ovate in form. Dearest also has a remarkably spicy and strong scent for a relatively modern rose of such beauty and grows in a neat and tidy way to give you a good shape that is easy to prune.

See our full range of Floribunda roses.

Gorgeous for summer and autumn

A great merit of the Dearest Rose is that it goes on and on flowering in waves the summer and autumn so that you have continuous interest in your border through the shoulder season. This makes it ideal as a cutting flower or in the herbaceous border contrasted with the vertical splendour of lilies like Lilium regale or blending in with peonies like Paeonia 'Shirley Temple'. As with many roses, Dearest goes well with an underplanting of lavender like Hidcote or cotton lavender, Santolina chamaecyparissus. Its soft pink complements purples and silvers - those woolly leaved rabbit ears Stachys byzantina look enchanting - or plant it in groups of three or five for a floriferous display for months.

Features of Rosa Dearest Floribunda Rose

• Height: 60-90 cm 
• Colour: salmon pink to pale pink
• Shape of flower: camellia like, round, double to semi double
• Size of flower: up to 8 cm
• Spread: 80 cm
• Scent: spicy and strong
• Flowering: May to October
• Group: Floribunda
• Foliage: Glossy, dark green

Factettes

Alexander Dickson of the eponymous rose breeders bred this rose in 1960 and named it in honour of his wife Maud, not because he was planning to make it the most expensive rose ever, ever.....

Floribunda means many flowered in Latin and was the result of crossing hybrid tea and polyantha roses so that you got the beauty and size of the hybrid tea with the promiscuity of the polyantha. The Dane, Dines Poulson, bred the first of the type in 1907.

How to plant Dearest floribunda roses

You can order bareroot roses at any time and plant them from November to April, or container roses are available all year round.

Choose a spot in the border with good light. Dig a hole large enough so your rose will be planted with the graft union at soil level and with plenty of room for its roots around the sides. Improve the soil from the hole by removing weeds, large stones, rubbish and roots and adding a shovel full of compost or rotted manure. Sprinkle Rootgrow mycorrhizal fungi in the bottom of the hole so it will make contact with the roots. Potted roses should have some roots gently teased out of the rootball before planting.

Position your Absolutely Fabulous rose so its roots are spread out and backfill the hole with soil, firming it gently as you go. Water in thoroughly.

Feed and mulch with well rotted manure in spring every year and keep well watered during dry periods for the first year.

Floribundas are pruned in late winter, when the strongest shoots can be cut back to an outward facing bud 30-40 cms above soil level and the weakest shoots are removed altogether. Absolutely Fabulous should be deadheaded throughout the summer to encourage continuous flowering.