Warm Wishes Hybrid Tea Rose Bushes

Warm Wishes Hybrid Tea Roses

Warm Wishes is a modern hybrid tea rose that doesn't trade scent for flower power. The perfume is superbly rich and fruity, and the flowers open from luscious orange buds to reveal a double bloom, elegant and satiny with a neatly formed high centre, held in both single flowers and clusters. Have a look at our other Hybrid Tea roses to choose from.

It's pretty weather-proof, and the flowers last well, both on the shrub and in arrangements brought indoors. It's a healthy and vigorous shrub, with deep green semi-glossy foliage and commendable disease resistance, and it produces pretty hips in late autumn.

What to wish for in the garden

It has the RHS Award of Garden Merit, so you can be confident it'll do well in most soils, given a decent sunny spot and soil that's on the rich side. Mulch in spring with manure or garden compost to help things along.

Although a vigorous grower, she's compact, so does well in a large container; always remember to water and feed when you have roses in pots, or the compost will soon run out of nutrients. Roses are hungry feeders.

Plant Warm Wishes in a sunny spot, although she'll deal with west or east facing sites well, too. Prune in February or March, removing any dead, diseased or damaged branches, then taking back the stems to 30-40cm about ground level to an open shape.

She's lovely as a low hedge, grown en masse, either to line a path with colour and scent or to define a boundary, or in a mixed border underplanted with classic rose partners. Think hardy geraniums and nepeta, with spring bulbs to extend the season of interest, and easygoing, low-growing allies like Alchemilla mollis.

For a garden with a neat, formal look, create a low hedge around a massed planting of Warm Wishes with box or Japanese holly.

In short

• Height: 80cm
• Spread: 80cm
• Colour: apricot and peach
• Shape of flower: double
• Size of flower: large
• Scent: strong and fruity
• Flowering: repeat
• Group: hybrid tea
• RHS Award of Garden Merit

A gift of a name

Warm Wishes was introduced by UK rose breeder Gareth Fryer in 1994.

How to plant Warm Wishes Roses

Choose a spot with as much light as possible. Dig a hole sufficiently deep to allow the rose to be planted with the graft union at soil level and with plenty of room for its roots which should be spread out. Improve the soil from the hole by removing roots, weeds, large stones and other rubbish and mixing in about 25% by volume of well-rotted compost or manure. Position your rose so its roots are spread out, wet them and sprinkle them with Rootgrow mycorrhizal fungi. If planting pot grown roses gently loosen some roots out of the ball before planting. Then backfill the hole with mixed soil and compost, firming it gently as you go. Keep the union at the level of the surrounding soil. Water in thoroughly. 

Water Warm Wishes well until established. Prune in late spring/early winter and feed twice ideally, first in spring then later in summer.