This month, we feature one of the best new roses to come on the market in recent years – a great all round rose that will be popular for many years to follow.
Absolutely Fabulous is a brilliant butter yellow floribunda with the blooms having an old fashioned rose appearance. Delightfully fragrant too with a scent described as ‘strong liquorice candy and spice’. Excellent in the garden, the compact bush habit makes this an idea rose for mass planting or on its own with other roses. It also makes a great standard to bring the colour and fragrance closer to eye level. Exceptionally healthy, like some many of the newer roses released today.
Bred by Tom Carruth in the US who described it as ‘one of the finest roses of my career in rose breeding’, Absolutely Fabulous has won awards around the world including the Gold Star of the South Pacific here in New Zealand last year. It also features on the cover of the 2012 Rose Review -your guide to the new roses being sold in New Zealand.
DOes ayone know where I can get this as a standard rose please? I live in Whakatane Bay of Plenty
Try Wairere Nursery near Hamilton who do mail order http://www.wairere.co.nz
I have grown it for the first time this year, as a substitute for Graham Thomas, which despite all care and prevention regimens, succumbed to rust. Has anyone else found that? My local nurseryman tells me his Graham Thomas did too, and recommended Ab Fab as a substitute, albeit shorter. I love the flower, which is marginally smaller than G.Thomas; the perfume is not marked for me. It’s eventual size I don’t know yet, but it seems a beautifully healthy bush.