Rosa banksiae
Lady Banks Rose
- Type
- Shrub
- Hardiness
- USDA Zones 7–9
- Sun
- Full Sun, Part Shade
- Soil
- Well-drained
- Mature size
- Height 20–40 Feet · Spread 10–20 Feet
- Growth rate
- Fast
- Seasonality
- Semi-Evergreen
This variety is no actively in production in our propagation house and may not return to our catalogue. We maintain this page purely for reference and archival purposes. If you would like to grow this plant, tell us. Your interest helps guide what we bring back.
For a larger installation or commercial project, write hello@woodlanders.net.
The single white Lady Banks rose is the wild original, the mother of the whole clan, and to many noses the most fragrant rose in the garden. This is the species itself, Rosa banksiae in the true, single-flowered form, a vigorous, all but thornless evergreen climber from the hills and gorges of central China, capable of thirty or forty feet where a wall or a big tree will hold the weight. In spring the long, smooth green canes disappear under great hanging sprays of small single white flowers, each with a boss of gold stamens and a clean, sweet, violet-like scent that carries across a garden.
Every double Lady Banks rose descends from this plant. The famous double white came west from a Canton garden in 1807 and the double yellow in 1824, but both are cultivated selections of this single wild form. Grown in Chinese gardens for centuries and named, like all the Banks roses, for Dorothea, Lady Banks, wife of the great botanist Sir Joseph Banks, the single form is the least common in the trade and the most powerfully scented of the three.
Like the doubles, the single is nearly thornless, the smooth canes safe to train over an arch, a gate, or a porch where people pass. Give full sun to ripen the wood for next spring's flowers, and almost any soil that drains; once established the plant is drought tolerant and shrugs off the blackspot and mildew that plague modern roses. Blooming once a year on old side-shoots, the rose wants no winter pruning, only a light thinning of the oldest wood after the flowers fade. Evergreen where winters stay mild, deciduous where they turn cold.
Give the single white Lady Banks room, more than seems reasonable, and something strong to climb: a pergola, a large arbor, a sturdy fence, or an old tree the rose can ramble through. Site the plant where the spring flood of bloom and the violet fragrance can be met up close, near a path, a porch, or a gate, and pair with other spring bloomers that share the moment. A great, old, generous rose for a warm-climate garden, and the fragrant wild source of every Lady Banks rose grown.
Single, white, violet-scented, spring