Heirloom Old Garden Roses, Types Of Old Roses

When adventurers and travellers brought species together that would never have met naturally, it resulted in a lot of change such as hybridization. Through the process of mutation, selection and crossing over, many beautiful old garden roses were born.

However, it was the China Rose, arriving around year 1789, that inspired the rose breeders, because it repeat flowered.

Rose breeders collected pollen and crossed species, leading to an explosion of the types of old roses, that we today call Heirloom Old Garden Roses, or Antique Roses.

Below is a list and some pictures with information about heirloom old garden roses

Types Of Old Garden Roses

Gallica Roses have become known as the finest of the Heirloom Old Garden Roses, and they flower once in summer with a long-lasting spectacular show of flowers.

These flowers are usually pink, red or purple and they have an intense fragrance. The plants generally have few thorns and very attractive dark green foilage.

It's one of the most delicious heirloom old garden roses you can find, with it's pink and white stripes and green foilage on a compact bush. It flowers with an abundance and puts on a powerful show in late spring or early summer. It is intensely fragant. Zones 4-10, height 3-4 feet.

Damask Roses

These roses probably originated from Damascus, hence it's name. There are two kinds of Damask Roses, Summer Damasks which flower only once in summmer, and Autumn Damasks, which were the only Heirloom Old Garden Roses of their time, to deliver a second flowering.

Damask Roses are intensely fragrant flowers and the colors are usually white, pink or red.

It is a tall dense shrub that puts on fantastic display of flowers for about 3-4 weeks in summer. The plant is literally covered with fragrant blooms for this time. Monsieur Alexander Hardy, rose breeder and Director of the Luxemburg Gardens in Paris, named this rose after his wife, who was Felicite Parmantier, before her marriage. You'll find a rose with that name in the Albas's. Zones 4-10

Centifolia (or Provence) Roses

Centifolia Roses, these one hundred petalled roses, also referred to as 'Cabbage Roses' were raised in the seventeenth Century by Dutch hybridists. These heirloom old garden roses can be seen in the great Dutch flower paintings of that period. They flower for a brief period in the summer. Packed with soft petals, Centifolias are very beautiful and considered to be the most intensely fragrant of all roses and are still cultivated in Provance for their perfume.

Moss Roses

The Moss Roses are really aberrant Centifolia Roses, which appeared in the mid-seventeenth Century. They produce a moss like growth on their flower stems, sepals and buds. The flowers are fragrant and mostly once-blooming.

Alba Roses

Alba is the Latin word for white, and this was the color of all the early Albas.These roses dates back to ancient Rome and the artists of the Renaissance loved to paint them.

Also known as the 'white roses', the Albas make elegant once-flowering shrubs. The flowers are generally white or very pale pink against blue-green leaves, which is an attractive contrast.

These heirloom old garden roses tend to be tall, strong and long-lived and are very disease resistant and cold hardy.

China Roses

In China and East Asia, this significant group of roses had developed in total isolation from the rest of the world. They flowered repeatedly throughout summer and autumn, not just in summer, like the rest of the roses in other parts of the world.

In the late eighteenth and nineteenth Centuries, four kinds in particular were brought to Europe, which resulted in the creation of the Modern Garden Roses.

Tea Roses

Tea Roses were developed from two tea-scented China Roses. A whole new repeat-flowering group of roses called Tea Roses was introduced with beautiful and graceful blooms.

They were grown mainly in France at first, since they are somewhat tender and unsuited to colder climates because of their ancestry. The name Tea, comes from the fact that roses were transported to Europe along with cargoes of tea by the ships of the East India Company.

The flowers are in the light yellow, pink or white range and their canes are almost thornless. Tea Roses, for the most part, resent hard pruning and it's better to just remove dead, spindly and criss-crossed wood, do frequent deadheading and prune lightly to shape.

Portland Roses

This repeat-flowering group of heirloom old garden roses, is the result of a Gallica, Damask, Centifolia and China cross. The group is named for the Duchess Of Portland. The flowers are very fragrant, usually pink, long-blooming and the plants are sturdy, compact and thickly foilaged. They are excellent for smaller gardens or in mass plantings.

Bourbon Roses

The Bourbon Roses were the first repeat-flowering roses to be created from the Chinas. This cross occured initially on the island of 'Ile de Bourbon' in The Indian Ocean, hence the name of the group.

Bourbon Roses are vigorous plants with charming heavenly old rose fragrant blooms that keeps on blooming all summer long if you remove spent blooms and fertilize frequently.

Many Bourbons are inclinded to climb but can be kept as bushes with some sort of support.

Hybrid Perpetual Roses

This repeat-flowering group was the result of hybridization and selection, mainly in the open field cultivation. Hybrid Perpetuals were the dominant class of roses in Victorian England, and they bear a close resemblance to Bourbons, from which they were derived. the fragrant flowers are usually pink or red (sometimes white) and bloom from spring through fall

Noisette Roses

This group of repeat-flowering Climbers was developed by Phillippe Noisette of Charleston, North Carolina. He introduced them in France when he moved there in 1817.

Noisettes are large, climbing plants with clusters of fragrant flowers the color of yellow, creamy white, ivory creamy apricot, creamy pink.

All of them are extremely beautiful and many are intensely fragrant. Noisettes thrives in sunny and warm climates, and are very popular in the southeastern part of United States. They are cold tender and should best be grown in warm climates. Zones 7-11

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