Roses for kids?

Roses can be for curious little mind. I finally found a kids-friendly rose and a garden-worthy at the same time. This rose is thorn-less but not in anyway less in other attributes. In fact, it surpasses many of my expectations in terms of growth/vigor, number of blooms, beauty, fragrant and bloom durability. I have grown many roses but this came to me, as almost perfect so far.

If you have kids at home but fancy growing roses, here is the rose I recommend. This rose deserves a place in my garden and I think deserves to be in yours too.

Thorn-less?

Yes, thorn-less. In Malaysia, there are not many roses that are thorn-less. You can probably count them with one hand. But what we have here is worth to talk about.

This rose however, is not completely thorn-free. The stems are smooth and free from thorns but small pricks do appear on the underside of its leaf margins. No worry though! They are not something that would hurt small fingers as the pricks are quite small and soft.

What I like about this rose

This rose as mature tree will grow to 3-4 ft tall which makes it perfect for simple borders and hedges.

I have grown this rose from a little seedling for about 3 months now. At this moment it has grown to be about 1 ft tall and started flowering profusely. Previously, it had given me 3-4 blooms per cycle but in the last cycle, it has more than 10 blooms.

This rose, in my opinion, is an easy growing variety and a fast grower. You'll have an easy time growing it as it grows very fast becoming a strong tree pretty quickly.

I could not reiterate more on what a strong tree can do for you. It means more flowers, more resistant to diseases and better withstanding any unfavorable garden conditions. So, if a rose can grow fast, less work it is for you.

What I like about the blooms

The blooms are about 2.5 - 3 inches across, a reasonably good size. The blooms came in clusters of 4-5 blooms, a trait of a floribunda.

Nice to see, nice to touch and nice to smell

When this rose was flowering, I was lured by its fragrance to be out in the garden to sniff closer.

Never I thought that any of my roses would smell that strong and from only a 3 months-old rose.

Having many blooms per tree brought the best in this rose as it overpowered the smell of some of my other roses (given the right temperature of the day).

The blooms release sweet citrus fragrant to the air.

What's more, it's sun-friendly

The blooms are sun-friendly too. I found no burn marks on petals on very hot sunny days. A characteristic much needed when growing roses in the tropic.

The only small set back is the blooms get little heavy with water after rain (given small stems and soft flower necks) but they only suffer little damage.

Without any rain protection, the blooms seemed to last for a week +  in my garden .

Blooms after heavy rain

New growth

I wanted to see the rose's new growths and how they behave so I let the flowers over spent. New shoots grew from the first leave nodes just below the flower necks. The grew vigorously in only a matter of days.

Here is a picture of a mature tree. The pictures are courtesy of my friend, Fadzlin Hayati and the rose is her neighbour's, Kak Ita. The rose has been with her for more than 3 years now.

Last month, it grew lots of buds. It was said there were about 30 buds per stem and this tree has plentiful of  stems on it! 

I have not gotten the picture of it blooming full, so that would have to be in another post.

So how is it for a kids-friendly rose? Not bad huh?

Copyright of Rough Rosa