Ruby Romance Rose Bushes 'Ruby Romance' ruby red indeed, this plant hardly takes a breather between flushes. The mass of double blooms always looks cheerful over the healthy, glossy green foliage. Browse all of our Rose varieties. Features Colour: Ruby red. Shape: Double Scent: Light Flowering: Repeating Summer & Autumn Type: Patio Shrub Size: 40cm Growing Ruby Romance Roses To grow roses in pots, it's best to use good quality, peat free, soil-based compost. During the growing season, don't let their pots dry out, and give them a liquid feed about once per week to once per fortnight. Trim your patio roses only lightly for their first couple of years while they settle in, then prune them as you would a floribunda in early spring to keep them plump and bushy: remove twiggy growth, then prune the main stems by about a third, down to a suitable bud or lateral stem. At the same time as you prune a mature patio rose, it's good to pull them out every few years, refresh the compost, and put them back in the pot, or in a bigger one if you started off small. Repeating roses should be dead headed to keep them flowering strongly. Garden Design Ideas A flower bed of roses is a lacklustre sight in winter without any leaves or blooms in evidence which is the best time to establish roses in their bare root form. One imaginative solution is to under-plant roses with snowdrops of the Elwesii variety. But ensure that you prune the roses at Christmas time before the snowdrops begin to emerge. Liberally feed the snowdrops with chicken manure if you can, which is also beloved by roses. And, hey presto, you have winter interest in February just as the days are beginning to draw out. The snowdrops will die down in April as the roses are springing into life. A dash of red injects a note of drama into any garden small or large. If using in a border it's wise to repeat the roses creating a sense of rhythm in the design. The chances are that just one red rose plonked in will end up looking marooned. Why not try combining Ruby Romance with white flowered plants - a striking colour palette surprisingly not often seen? Team up with cosmos purity, white agapanthus, Arundo donax var versicolor, or Japanese anemones for good effect. Or go for an autumn hotter effect with eremerus, dahlias such as orange David Howard, the red Bishop of Landaff and the pretty pale lemon yellow Dahlia Glorie van Hemmstede and a sprinkling of verbena bonariensis. History & Trivia Red roses are of course, a Valentine’s cliché. They have another special significance in England dating from the 15th century War of the Roses, (who can remember that from their school days?). It was a conflict between the House of Lancaster, represented by a red rose, and the House of York represented by a white rose. The winners were the Lancastrians led by Henry VII who subsequently married Edward IV’s daughter Elizabeth of York uniting the two warring sides and creating the Tudor dynasty. Ruby Romance, sold as Medley Ruby, was bred in 2012 by Werner Noack in Germany, under the International rose registration code 'NOA140715'. Noack founded his nursery in 1953 and began breeding roses in 1957. He is particularly celebrated for creating roses that are resilient. Any time you see NOA in front of a rose breeder's derivation code you know you are in for a rose that is pretty hardy and bug tolerant. The breeder has a reputation for not used fungicides for decades.
