Roses are on-trend once again. Here’s how to help them flourish in your garden

There’s no pinning a good rose down – everything from romance to racing carnivals is associated with them. They can be wild and blousy, or they can be upright and regimented. Some roses crinkle, and others look crisp. Many make a show of their scent.

While the thousands of roses strewn around horseracing tracks this month were universally flawless – the product of meticulous care and tireless monitoring – most of us keep far looser standards at home and still get brilliant blooms.

In fact, sometimes, the most atmospheric roses are the ones teetering right on the edge of being out of control. Take the wild-looking Mutabilis, the rose I covet the most at present. My mother grows it butting up against salvias and forget-me-nots in a bed where – for the best part – it largely looks after itself.

In their book Secrets from the Flower Farm, Rebecca Starling and Christine McCabe detail the “serious rose revival” in floristry.Credit: Christopher Morrison

When they emerge, the flowers of this vigorous bush from China are the palest of apricots, but they gradually take on more coppery hues, eventually morphing into a rich, vivid pink. Better still, the petals can look ever so sweetly crumpled.

Rugosa roses also have a beguilingly wayward touch, with the added bonus that they are supremely easy to care for and, in another big win, often flaunt large beguiling hips after the flowers. Roses are plants that can just keep giving.

In the vase as well, floristry is heading for a “serious rose revival”, say Rebecca Starling and Christine McCabe in their new book Secrets from the Flower Farm: Growing abundant flowers in unpredictable conditions.

The roses that Starling, who has a flower farm on the coast of South Australia, and McCabe, an author and travel writer, like best are locally grown, climate resilient ones, especially Floribundas and hybrid teas with a high petal count and enticing fragrance. Not for them the sort of “sad, scentless hothouse” blooms imported from faraway places, doused in chemicals and repeatedly dehydrated and rehydrated.

Floribunda roses are some of Starling and McCabe’s favourites.Credit: Christopher Morrison

When it comes to growing the flowers, Starling and McCabe encourage an ecologically sensitive approach so that, even when the flower is cut and brought indoors, you can sense the hand of nature.

They suggest seeking local advice on the roses that will best suit your climate, which not only paves the way for more sturdy growth but also means your plants are less likely to be ravaged by pests and diseases. Not even the biggest, most ruffled and most romantic of blooms are worth months of sickly looking foliage.

Aphids, thrips, mites and black spot are just some of the ills that can bedevil roses. To help keep them at bay, Starling and McCabe also encourage the use of companion plants.

“Good riddance to the traditional and drearily municipal ‘rose bed’ featuring nothing but roses emerging from a sea of mulch. Such a waste of space,” they write.

Flowering perennials, annuals and bulbs woven around roses not only reduce the reliance on chemical intervention but also make for more lively looking beds.

This is true whether you grow in a cool or a warmer climate, including in Sydney, where roses can be challenging due to the humidity.

When it comes to cut roses, Starling and McCabe like a high petal count.Credit: Christopher Morrison

It’s worth taking note of the strategies put in place to ensure success at the 18-year-old Palace Rose Garden at Sydney’s Botanic Garden – the ninth at the institution, which is an indication of how tricky things can get there. These include the introduction of companions around the roses to attract beneficial insects and to generally increase biodiversity, the removal of hedges to improve airflow and the selection of modern cultivars that have been bred for disease resistance.

The importance of careful selection is also highlighted at Melbourne’s Royal Botanic Gardens, which houses a Climate Ready Rose Collection displaying those species and cultivars that may tolerate future climate change.

The idea is to inspire visitors to select roses based on their resilience rather than on how their flowers look. Alongside tough stalwarts, such as Mutabilis and the vigorous climbing Crepescule, this collection features less common fare, Rosa sericea, omeiensis Astrosanguinea with theatrical red thorns and the even stranger Rosa x odorata Viridiflora, which sports green “flowers” or, strictly speaking, bracts.

The ideal time for planting is in winter, when you can choose from a wide range of bare-rooted offerings, but it is possible to acquire potted specimens all year.

Choose a sunny spot with well-drained soil plied with compost. Keep your rose well-watered, at least until it gets established. Pruning will then be the biggest job, but other than that, just enjoy the show.

Secrets from the Flower Farm: Growing abundant flowers in unpredictable conditions (Thames & Hudson) by Christine McCabe and Rebecca Starling is out now.

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