Roses for the White Garden

Jun 3, 2006

There are so many white roses just perfect for the white garden or moon garden. How can you pick just one?! Here are a few suggested white roses for your flower garden.

Every flower garden needs at least one rose, preferably more, and the all white flower garden or moon garden is no exception. There are many whites among the many miniature roses, climbers, low maintenance landscape roses, and hybrid teas as well as old garden roses and even grafted tree form roses. You are bound to find at least one white flowered rose that is perfect for your white garden. If you are limited to just one, try to select a rose with a good fragrance.

Please do not think this list of roses is a definitive one, it is a personal list of some of the white roses I happen to like. I hope you will like them, certainly, but there are as many opinions about roses as there are people who grow them! When you select your rose(s) look for a color you like, appropriate winter hardiness if that is an issue, disease resistance, a size you have room for, foliage color, overall appearance of the plant, and of course fragrance.

One of my personal favorite roses is the easy care floribunda "White Iceberg" and its newer climbing form, "Climbing White Iceberg". You can even find Iceberg grafted and shaped as a tree rose or standard. This floribunda blooms and blooms; the flowers are usually described as creamy white but to me they always look clean white. Fragrant.

An antique rose from the 1850's, "Sombreuil" is still popular and one of the hardiest climbing teas. It is grown as a climber or pillar rose or can be trained along a fence. The flat white blooms (may flush with pink) are small but fragrant and so very double -- with well over 100 petals -- that they look almost ruffled. It repeats several times a season.

Another climber with white blooms is "White Dawn", bred from the very popular "New Dawn" crossed with "Lily Pons." White Dawn has slightly fragrant, pure white blooms.

And don't miss "Madame Alfred Carriere", a very old noisette (1879) capable of covering a building or climbing a tree. It is shown in the photo above with multiple plants being trained along a series of arches to form a rose tunnel. As a bonus, this is one of the few nearly thornless roses.

The copyright of the article Roses for the White Garden in Flower Gardens is owned by Barbara M. Martin. Permission to republish Roses for the White Garden in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.