Birthday Girl Rose Bushes

Birthday Girl Rose

Birthday Girl is a pretty, delicate affair, full of cheery colour and glossy good looks. Introduced in the late 80s, she's remained steadily popular for her ability to flower profusely all summer and autumn up to the first frosts, as well as for her good disease resistance and fabulous shiny foliage. 

Each rose looks like a prize-winning watercolour: a semi-double flower with rich pink edges that blend gently towards the centre first to pale pink, and then into a lovely deep cream colour. A little like those old-fashioned rhubarb and custard sweets from the jar. When fully open, the flowers reveal golden stamens at the centre, and there are lots of them, held in typical floribunda fashion on upward-facing clusters. All in all, she's one of the best floribundas you can buy.

Birthday Girl Roses In Your Garden

Being small and well-behaved, she makes a delightful low hedge: around the veg patch, maybe, or surrounding a patio, bringing scent and colour all summer long. She's well suited to any kind of informal cottage garden planting scheme, combining well with a whole range of perennials such as lavender, nepeta, delphiniums, cosmos and hardy geraniums.

She will do well in a roomy pot, given plenty of water and the occasional feed; maybe pop her by the front door to greet you as you come home. 

Features:

• Height: to 80cm
• Spread: to 80cm
• Colour: soft yellow with cerise edges
• Shape of flower: semi-double
• Size of flower: medium
• Scent: light scent
• Flowering: repeat through summer
• Group: Floribunda rose
• Glossy foliage

Did You Know?

Birthday Girl, also sometimes listed as Cocorico® or The Karnival, was introduced by Meiland rose breeders of France, in 1989. She has won gold awards in rose shows at Bagatelle, Monza, Rome, Saverne, and Baden-Baden.

How to plant Birthday Girl Roses

Choose a spot with as much light as possible. Dig a hole sufficiently deep to allow the rose to be planted with the graft union at soil level and with plenty of room for its roots which should be spread out. Improve the soil from the hole by removing roots, weeds, large stones and other rubbish and mixing in about 25% by volume of well-rotted compost or manure.

Position your rose so its roots are spread out, wet them and sprinkle them with Rootgrow mycorrhizal fungi. If planting pot grown roses, gently loosen some roots out of the ball before planting.

Then backfill the hole with mixed soil and compost, firming it gently as you go. Keep the union at the level of the surrounding soil. Water in thoroughly.

Read more about how to plant roses here. Water Birthday Girl well until established. Prune in late spring/early winter and feed twice ideally, first in spring then later in summer.

Feed and mulch with well rotted manure in spring every year and keep well watered during dry periods for the first year.

Floribundas are pruned in late winter, when the strongest shoots can be cut back to an outward facing bud 30-40 cms above soil level and the weakest shoots are removed altogether. It should be deadheaded throughout the summer to encourage continuous flowering.