Roses need no introduction, only better company than the fussy, disease-prone hybrids that gave them a reputation for hard work. The roses gathered here lean toward the durable and the fragrant: old garden roses, species roses, and modern shrubs selected for vigor and health in a hot, humid climate. Grown on their own roots and left largely to their own devices, they flower freely and forgive the gardener who forgets them.

In the landscape roses are far more versatile than the formal rose bed suggests. Shrub roses fold into a mixed border; climbers clothe a wall, arch, or fence; and the toughest make informal flowering hedges. Chosen for the site and left to grow into their natural shape, they give months of bloom, often a real perfume, and, on many, a crop of colorful autumn hips.

We grow roses that earn their place without chemicals, because a garden should give pleasure, not a maintenance headache. Healthy, single, and semi-double roses open their centers to bees and other pollinators; the hips that follow feed birds into winter; and a well-chosen, disease-resistant rose thrives on ordinary care for many years. This is the romance of the rose without the fuss.

Give them full sun, good air movement, and rich, well-drained soil, and choose disease-resistant kinds so spraying is never the price of bloom. Train the climbers with help from our Vines collection, and set the shrubs among our Herbaceous Perennials and Sun Lovers.