Old Garden roses are the predecessors of today’s roses. Some date back to the time of the Roman Empire when they were revered for their beauty and fragrance. Rose perfume was coveted by the very rich. Old garden roses have a delicate beauty and wonderful perfume not often found in modern hybrid tea roses.

They are a diverse group from the stately albas with wonderful fragrance and great winter hardiness to the tender and lovely tea roses best suited for warm climates. Old Garden Roses comprise a multifaceted group that in general are easy to grow, disease-resistant and winter-hardy with most providing fragrance for the garden and home.

 

• Alba: These are some of the oldest garden roses, probably brought to Great Britain by the Romans. The shrubs flower once yearly in the spring with blossoms of white or pale pink

• Bourbon: were the roses of Victorian England. They produce exquisite, large, full old rose blooms of many colors set upon strong, vigorous growing bushes.

• Centifolias: raised in the seventeenth century in the Netherlands, are named for their "one hundred" petals; they are often called "cabbage" roses due to the globular shape of the flowers.

• China Rose:China roses are rather small bushy plants ideal for small spots in the garden and excellent for use in large pots or barrels on the patio where they are always in bloom.

• Damasks: The flowers typically have a more loose petal formation than gallicas, as well as a stronger, tangy fragrance.

• Galicas: Gallicas flower once in the summer over low shrubs rarely over 4' tall. Unlike most other once-blooming Old Garden Roses, the gallica class includes shades of red, maroon and deep purplish crimson.

• Hybrid Perpetuals: A wonderful group of roses which were greatly popular in the later 1800's, at the time of Queen Victoria, most of which produce very large to huge, fully double blooms with great fragrance.

• Moss Roses: The roses of Victorian England. Moss Roses are actually Centifolia Roses and Damasks that have developed a distinctive fragrant moss-like growth on the sepals, adding great elegance to the flowers.

• Noisettes

• Poliyanthas: A group of compact rose bushes (larger than Miniatures) with small blooms. They are extremely heavy bloomers with flowers similar to ramblers.

• Portlands:The Portland roses were long thought to be the first group of crosses between China roses and European roses; recent DNA analysis at the University of Lyons, however, has demonstrated that the original Portland Rose has no Chinese ancestry, but rather represents an autumn damask/gallica lineage.They were named after the Duchess of Portland