October – Hamilton Gardens
This month we feature the very last rose to be released by the late Sam McGredy who passed away on August 25th in Auckland. Discovered as a naturally occurring sport or mutation of the popular McGredy rose ‘Paddy Stephens’, it shares many of its attributes including fantastic disease tolerance, long stems ideal for picking and […]
May – Wedding Celebration
May is Royal Wedding month and what better way to celebrate than with a rose with a wedding theme ‘Wedding Celebration’ features large blooms of dark red, fully double with a pleasing perfume borne mostly solitary on long stems. A good variety for picking. Tall growing with glossy dark green foliage and has good health. […]
December – St Margaret’s Gold
Every now and again, a rose variety will produce a sport which is a naturally occurring change in a certain characteristic of the variety. Sports are often propagated and if worthy enough, become a new variety on the market. Probably the most common type of ‘sporting’ is a change in flower colour and ths month, […]
June – Platinum
70 years in business is a milestone worth celebrating and in 2017, Matthews Nurseries near Wanganui does just that. This month’s featured rose is a new release Hybrid Tea rose bred by Bob Matthews to mark this occasion. ‘Platinum’ has large cupped shaped blooms of soft pink, sweetly scented on long, strong stems ideal for […]
March – Magnifi-scent
Everyone loves fragrant roses and this month we feature a new release for winter 2017 that is bound to please the noses of everyone. ‘Magnifi-scent’ is a Hybrid Tea with blooms best described as ‘French Rose’. Not red, but not pink either but a great colour to mix with other roses and garden plants. Blooms […]
July – Glorious
Yellow is always a colour that brightens up any garden and for the middle of winter, our featured rose is one of the best new roses to come onto the market in recent years in New Zealand. ‘Glorious’ is well named with large, well formed blooms of clear yellow produced on strong stems. They last […]
January – Loving Memory
We start 2016 by featuring one of the most popular red roses grown in New Zealand today. ‘Loving Memory’ is a good garden rose and one often found exhibited at rose shows. The name also makes it a sought after rose to give when there is bereavement. ‘Loving Memory’ has large well formed lightly scented blooms […]
July – Solitaire
This month we feature one of the better yellow roses to be released in the last 30 years. For many years yellow roses were often weak growers but this rose was certainly not and by further work, has led to the development of more vigorous growing yellow flowering roses. ‘Solitaire’ is a Hybrid Tea bred […]
November – Waikato
It’s that time again when the roses start blooming in November for another season and various events are held up and down the country featuring roses. Two of the main events are the National Spring Rose Show and Convention which is this year being hosted in Hamilton and the Pacific Rose Bowl Festival which is […]
August – Big Purple
In roses, the colour purple is one of those colours that people either like or loathe having in their gardens. While there have been many heritage type and floribunda roses in the purple shades, there are very few large flowering Hybrid Teas. This month we feature ‘Big Purple’, one of the few real purple Hybrid […]