Glossary

• Hybrid Tea: Formal Plantings and picking.

• Floribunda:Colourful Massed Bedding Displays.

• Climbers, Old Fashioned Climbers, Patio Climbers: Cover walls or cascade from trees.

• Shrublets: Smaller flowers and plants approx 1m x 1m. Ideal for landscaping. Easy Care.

• Shrubs: Larger bushes, gap fillers, hedges, back of borders.

• Miniature/Patio: Great in containers or tubs, plenty of colour all summer.

• Weepers: Add extra height, structure.

• Standard Roses 1.8 m: Similiar to weepers but can be trained onto 2nd floor decks.

• Old fashioned & David Austin English: General garden situations, mixed borders.

Hybrid Tea -Usually taller in height, can be used in a formal or informal rose garden. For best results these should be dead headed in summer and pruned in winter to maximise blooming.

Floribunda - This means an abundance of flowers hence on one stem you can average 10 to 12 flowers, some flowers are hybrid tea shape and form, smaller in size but most of the floribundas are of looser more open petalled form and are also good for floral work. Floribundas are ideal for borders and hedges. These can be pruned as for hybrid teas or trimmed with hedge shears.

Climbers - Modern climbers can have hybrid tea type flowers with fragrance or floribunda type blooms, both ideal for picking. Having a frame to climb on maximizes the display they give and some varieties excel with training in the fan shape against a wall. Climbers need two or three seasons to establish, and every second or third winter there may be one old stem to prune out from the base when you can see the new cane growing up (usually reddish purple and soft, the new cane will take one season to harden up and climb). The usual dead heading winter and summer will enhance growth and flowering. 

Essential Climbers: Birthday Present, Dublin Bay, Iceberg, Compassion, City of Sails, Top Brass, Westerland, Madam Alfred Carriere, Cecile Brunner.

Patio Climbers - Patios are smaller in leaf, flower and bush size from the hybrid tea and floribunda but are not the true miniature forms of being little. These roses are great for pots, patios, garden, and the climbing range of patios are ideal for small gardens, again the flowers can be picked and you have varieties with the formal hybrid tea form, and the blousy floribunda bunches. Not many of these are fragrant.

Shrublets - A versatile range of roses usually 1m x 1m are easy care as they will carry on flowering whether they are pruned or not. A trim with the hedge shears will do. 

Shrubs: Taller (1.2m and over) repeat flowering bushes, great gap fillers, hedges. 

Miniature/Patio - These roses are great for pots, patios, garden, and look good at ground level or as a mini standard. 

Weepers - Whether 450mm, 800mm, or 1.8m add a touch to any garden. Seafoam, Phantom, and Crimson Shower are good old favourites. 

Old fashioned - These are any roses pre 1940. The types of roses include climber, ramblers, hybrid tea, centifolias, rugosas, moss, bourbon, hybrid musks which all have their own characteristics of flower sizes, shapes and fragrances, plant growth that spreads, some have beautiful hips and thorns, some are recurrent (repeat flower) and others flower only once over summer, or perpetually. 

David Austin English - These have been bred from old fashioned roses and modern roses to create repeat flowering, fragrant, arching roses or upright roses. Some grow very tall and bushy. A few varieties are smaller in size. Matthews have grown the full range to enable you to select only the varieties that consistently perform well for home gardeners. Matthews are the only nursery in NZ to have virus free Austin Roses. 

Award Winners: Roses are trialed in rose gardens around the world and over a period of three years of judging by breeders and public alike, some have the honour of winning awards for fragrance, flower, health etc.