For this month, we feature a rose named to commemorate the victims of the 2011 Christchurch earthquake and which will be widely available in New Zealand this winter.
First of all, ‘Christchurch Remembers’ is red in colour – a bright scarlet red that darkens around the petal edges as they age. A floribunda, ‘Christchurch Remembers’ does have relatively large blooms for this type of rose but they are produced in clusters and last well on the plant or picked for a vase.
A bushy growing plant to a medium height with medium green glossy foliage, ‘Christchurch Remembers’ is a healthy variety that will fit into any garden situation and would also be great grown as a standard.
Bred by Rob Somerfield of Tauranga, this rose has already won both the Gold Star of the South Pacific at the NZRS trials in Palmerston North (2014) and the New Zealand Rose of the Year for 2016. It is a fitting tribute to the 185 people who lost their lives in one of New Zealand’s worst disasters.
