Rosa 'Munstead Wood'
Rosa ‘Princess Alexandra of Kent’
Rosa 'Sir John Betjeman'
Rosa 'Wisley 2008'
Rosa 'Young Lycidas'
David Austin Roses will debut five new English Rose varieties for American gardens in the spring of 2010. Each features the richly hued old-fashioned flowers Austin is known for. Their bushy shrubs are bred for the garden and are suited to growing in garden beds and borders, in large pots, and grouped in the landscape.
The five new English roses include
-- The velvety crimson English rose, Rosa ‘Munstead Wood’
-- Rosa ‘Princess Alexandra of Kent’ with unusually large pink deeply cupped roses
-- Rosa ‘Sir John Betjeman’ with colorful neat, bright pink rosettes
-- Rosa ‘Wisley 2008’, with semi-cupped, soft pink roses of exceptional grace and fragrance
-- And Rosa ‘Young Lycidas’, with a rich color blend of purplish magenta-pink-red, a first for Austin’s English Roses.
Among the new introductions, three recently won international awards. At ‘Concors Internacional de Roses’ in Barcelona, ‘Wisley 2008’ won Best Rose for Landscaping, while ‘Young Lycidas’ was awarded the top prize for fragrance. ‘Munstead Wood’ was named “Flower of the Year” by the style-setting French magazine, Rustica.
“This year we celebrate the 40th anniversary of the first repeat-flowering David Austin varieties,” said David JC Austin, son of breeder David Austin and managing director of David Austin Roses, in Albrighton, Wolverhampton in the Shropshire area of England. “We’re a family-owned company with a long heritage of breeding and growing roses. Our objective has always remained the same: to combine the best of the old with the best of the new, to create roses that will provide the greatest possible pleasure for the gardener.”