Amber is the latest color in Tesselaar Plant's Flower Carpet Next Generation series to win the coveted designation as an All Deutschland Rose (ADR). Previous winners have been Flower Carpet Original Pink, White, Yellow and Scarlet. The ADR trials, held in Germany, are considered the world’s toughest test for rose performance and disease resistance.
“Flower Carpet Amber is a golden opportunity for all kinds of flower bed designs,” said the judges of the famous three-year trials, in which roses must prove themselves without the help of chemicals. “This ground cover, or low-growing shrub rose, from the Flower Carpet group is ideally suited for plantings covering a larger area, but is also an eye-catcher in smaller flower beds.”
The play of colors in Amber’s semi-double blossoms, the judges added, is anything but bland: “It ranges from bright orange buds to creamy-orange, efflorescent blossoms to soft shades of pink as they fade. Very floriferous from early summer until late autumn, Amber makes a great accompaniment for blue-blossomed perennial shrubs.”
The judges also praised Amber for its beautiful, fresh-green, glossy and healthy foliage. “If you love variety,” the judges concluded, “this rose is just right for you.”
“What can I say? We’re ecstatic that yet another Flower Carpet rose has won a coveted ADR designation," said Anthony Tesselaar, founder of Tesselaar Plants. "Ever since we introduced the Flower Carpet series as the world’s first easy-care shrub rose in 1992, we’ve been focused on continuing to bring to market the highest-quality innovative roses we can find. And now with the Next Generation line, with even better disease resistance and heat- and humidity-tolerance, we just keep upping the ante.”
First to win the ADR award was Flower Carpet Pink, in 1990. The pink-bloomed, self-cleaning, disease- and drought-resistant ground cover rose (var. ‘Noatraum’) by German rose hybridizer Werner Noack achieved the highest ADR score ever for natural disease resistance. In fact, it was the only rose that year out of 43 to obtain ADR approval (all others failed even to qualify).
After 15 years of breeding improvements led to the Next Generation line, the line’s bright-red Scarlet won another ADR designation in 2006.
Like its predecessors, Amber requires no deadheading or pruning, is water-wise, pest and disease resistant and tolerant of drought, heat and humidity. But it also happens to be a fashionable color – the same as Mimosa, the amber-peachy-yellow shade selected at the Pantone Color Research Institute’s 2009 color of the year and a hot color at the 2009 California Pack Trials.
Available nationwide beginning in 2009, Amber matures to a three-foot high bush covered with bloom all season long, blooming virtually nonstop late spring through late fall. This popular Flower Carpet Rose features a light, sweet fragrance.
“Most roses bred for strength and performance have to sacrifice traits like fragrance somewhere along the way,” says Anthony Tesselaar. “So a beautiful light scent in addition to all these qualities – to us, it’s just like icing on the cake.”