St. Ethelburga Rose Bushes

St. Ethelburga Rose Shrub Rose. 4 Litre Pots.

A darling pink shrub rose with cream outer petals and a strong scent. The cupped, double flowers are very full and repeat all through June to November. Mid-green, semi-glossy foliage. Bushy to around 120cm x 90cm.

Browse our other shrub roses, or all our rose varieties.

Features:

• Type: Shrub
• Colour: Light pink
• Flower shape: Double, full, cupped
• Scent: Strong
• Bushy to 120cm x 90cm
• Repeats in flushes June-November
• Disease resistance: Good

Growing St. Ethelburga Roses

Good, well drained soil in a sheltered, sunny spot is ideal, but it will tolerate some shade well.

In Your Garden Design

A lovely old-fashioned, deliciously scented pink rose that would look good planted en masse in a border or offset by Ivor’s cerise rose. It is wonderfully in pots or it can also be used to make a compact hedge.

How to plant Modern Shrub Roses

You can order bareroot roses for delivery from November to March. Containerised plants are available year round. 

Soak your roses' roots or pots for a little while before planting. This is an opportunity to prune the stems down to six to ten inches, and inspect the roots to trim off damaged ones.

Choose a spot with reasonable light: semi-shade will do, but full shade will not. Prepare the soil by breaking it up with a fork while removing roots, stones, etc.

• On dry, sandy and chalky soil, dig a big hole, then backfill it with a soil mix improved with three quarters organic material, including compost and manure for fertility, and leafmould for water retention.
• On good garden soil, adding some organic material is beneficial, especially manure. Dig a shallow hole, deep enough to allow the graft/union to settle right at soil level, and wider than the roots.
• On really heavy clay, which rose roots love, you do not need to improve the soil by digging stuff into it; use organic material as a mulch on top of the soil afterwards.

Spread some Rootgrow mycorrhizal fungi around the bottom of the hole,  where it will make contact with the roots.

Arrange a mound on the floor of the hole to set your rose's roots on, so they spread out, and the graft-union is slightly above soil level. Backfill the hole with the planting mix, firming it down as you go, at first with your hand to fix the rose in place, and then with your heel to firm it. Dust some bonemeal on the surface and water in thoroughly. In the process, the soil will settle down so that the graft is clear of the soil. 

How to prepare and plant a bareroot rose Video.

Mulch well in spring, and keep well watered during dry periods for the first year. Deadhead repeating roses to encourage continuous flowering. 

Newly planted roses shouldn't need much rose food, maybe a dash on poor dry soils. When they are settled in the second year onwards, feed them during the growing season with homemade compost teas and foraged sea weed, or some of our Biofertiliser rose food.

Mature shrub roses need gentle pruning compared to floribundas and hybrid teas. Prune to tidy the shape in winter. First remove the usual dead, diseased and badly positioned wood, ideally cutting out whole shoots back to a main stem, or outward facing bud. Then remove the wispiest stems, and some of the oldest wood from the centre. 

Did You Know?

Bred by Amanda Beales (1967-2013) in 2003. The Worshipful Company of Gardeners requested a rose named for the church of St Ethelburga-the-Virgin in Bishopsgate, which was damaged by an IRA bomb in 1993.

Saint Ethelburga of Barking, Æthelburh in Old English, was a remarkable 7th-century woman who, following in her supportive brother's footsteps (St Earconwald, Bishop of London), became a founding abbess over the nuns of the Barking monastery in London, where "she showed herself in all respects worthy of her brother the bishop, by her own holy life and by her regular and pious care of those under her rule, as was also manifested by heavenly miracles." She died in either 675 or 688, and her feast day is the 11th of October.

She did live at around the same time as another St. Ethelburga, a Kentish princess from Lyming when she married King Edwin of Northumbria, and he was not yet a Christian at the time of the marriage. There is a possibility that St. Ethelburga of Barking received Edwin's romantic attention before that marriage, and as a statement of her faith, refused his hand and became a nun. However, that is the sort of sly embellishment that, while plausible at first glance given that everyone lived reasonably close to each other in South East England during the same century, is improbable given that St. Ethelburga of Barking was most likely much too young to have been getting married when dashing prince Edwin was on the market, and may not even have been born in time at all!