David Austin bare root roses 1 year update – Reddit Post

This is a quick update to the bareroot roses I planted in spring 2023. original post

Photos in this order: Charlotte Brontë , Kew Gardens, Sally Holmes, Eustacia Vye

The first year all roses flowered, though it was just two to five flowers over the season, and I don’t recall that we got multiple flushes. The Kew Gardens rose actually struggled a lot in full sun and I had to cover it with shade in the summer. All roses were trimmed in the winter to reduce the number of canes and the height by 50 percent ish. All roses grew into respectable sizes, roughly waist height with one or two canes that were closer to 5-6 feet.

This spring all roses exploded in both height and number of flowers. There were multiple canes loaded with three to five flowers each for Eustacia Vye and C. Brontë. Kew Gardens and Sally Holmes looked more like hydrangeas than roses from the number of blooms.

However, the number and size of blooms decreased noticeably with each flush for all roses except Sally Holmes, which is going strong even now. This may be because of competition from other flowers planted nearby, and from the black spots that the roses unfortunately developed.

The rose bushes are the height and width of large adult males, and Sally Holmes has actually been trimmed down a couple of times because I was running out of space.