Larry Smith and the Riverside Gardens team talk all things pots, plants and pruning in their weekly gardening column.

With that slight increase in temperature and daylight hours, together with even a little bit of sunshine this week, the plants have decided spring is on its way.

The maples in our car park are budding up and roses in the Garden Centre are coming into leaf.

This also means that the bare-rooted season is coming to a close because as plants break their winter dormancy, they need to be back into the soil.

So, this is the last chance to take advantage of buying plants in their cheaper bare-rooted state.

This week we started potting the last of our bare-rooted bush and standard roses and once finished late next week, we will move on to the deciduous trees.

If you are looking to do an avenue plant-up or a group planting, it is a good time to get in now and with numbers running low on some of the trees I would not hesitate too long.

As we started potting the last of our roses this week, it was good to see that there is still a great selection of varieties that we will be growing on through the coming months, both in bush and standards.

Apart from the ever-popular ones like Double Delight (red and cream), Mr Lincoln (dark red), Remember Me (coppery gold), Just Joey (apricot), Queen Elizabeth (bright pink), Angel Face (rich mauve) and Friesia (bright yellow), there are some beautiful more recent varieties.

Ashram rose, available as a bush or standard, is a strong-growing hybrid tea rose with large old-gold, apricot-coloured flowers with a mild fruity fragrance that make a lovely cut flower.

Soul Sister is a floribunda rose with a flower reminiscent in colour to Julia’s Rose, but the bud starts out as a milky chocolate colour, opening to a latte coffee colour then fading through to a blended hint of lavender.

The flowers have a mild fragrance, and they repeat to flower very quickly.

Fearless is a hybrid tea rose that produces intense glowing orange flowers set against a deep green leathery foliage.

Their flowers have a light, sweet scent, and they will appear in multiple flushes throughout most of the year.

Their glossy foliage makes them very heat and disease resistant.

A rose with a clear pure white flower is Sugar Moon, and unlike most other white roses, it has a very strong perfume which is sweet and creamy.

The large buds on top of the long stems make ideal cut flowers that will hold well and open slowly.

Its glossy dark green foliage and strong fragrance make this one of my favourite white roses.

Another rose with a beautiful perfume is the rose Perfume Passion.

Its strong pink blooms are produced in abundance on top of long, almost thornless stems.

Its fragrance is sweet and intense and is well suited as a cut flower.

A very popular yellow rose is Soul Mate, which is a very strong, hardy floribunda rose with great disease resistance.

The flowers are a deep lemon yellow to golden butter in colour with a very strong spicy licorice fragrance that are an old-fashioned full flower style.

The foliage is super glossy, and they are compact in habit, giving a nice tidy bush with masses of flowers.

One of the most popular roses we sell in recent years is the Mother's Love rose.

With beautifully formed white to blushed pink double blooms that have an elegant, sweet rose fragrance, it is easy to see why.

The flowers can appear singularly or in large clusters.

Like a lot of the others mentioned, they are available in both bush and standard form.

Standard roses are mainly budded at 900mm high.

This is the traditional height for standards and is by far the most popular size and most suited to the home garden.

They can also be done as patio standards budded at 600mm high, which are mainly used in feature pots and tubs, and 1200mm high as maxi standards.

Maxi standards are useful if being planted in large open spaces with tall structures behind to give some proportion to the size of the area.

Over the 40 years we have been in the Garden Centre, roses have always held a place in home gardens, but over the past few years we have seen a marked increase in their popularity.

I think this is largely due to the fact that they are so hardy, and people have realised that there is not as much work in them as they thought.

So if you are thinking of incorporating roses into your garden, call in to the Garden Centre, and we will happily answer your questions and help choose the varieties that will best suit your needs.

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Monday, 18th May 2026

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