'Happy Retirement' Rose Bushes​

'Happy Retirement' Roses

Happy Retirement is one of those gorgeous, trouble-free specimens you'll always be pleased you made room for in the garden. The pretty clusters of soft-pink flowers are held on sturdy stems and open from pointed dark pink buds. Being a repeat-flowering rose, it will bring colour from June or July right through until September or later. The flowers are lightly scented, and the foliage is remarkable, too, a healthy glossy green. Browse our entire collection of Floribunda roses here.

It has the coveted RHS Award of Garden Merit, so it's been tried and tested; it really is remarkably disease-resistant. It makes a stunning hedge, growing to around 1.2m in height and with an attractive habit.

How to plant in the garden

Grow Happy Retirement as a hedge in a sunny spot, or plant it towards the back of a mixed border. Classic cottage garden plants, roses (especially of the soft-pink variety) associate well with blue or purple hardy geraniums, catmint (nepeta), lavender, salvia, alchemilla mollis, stachys, verbascum, campanulas and delphiniums – to name just a handful of favourites. The last three will provide tall vertical accents to contrast with the rounded shape of the rose, while alchemilla, stachys and geraniums make wonderful underplanting specimens.

Features

• Height: up to 1.2m
• Colour: pale pink with a golden centre
• Shape: semi-double
• Scent: light
• Flowering: continuous, July to September
• Group: bush
• RHS Award of Garden Merit
• Foliage: deciduous, glossy and attractive

Better than a carriage clock

If you're giving this rose as a retirement gift, we're pretty sure it'll give a lot more pleasure than a clock or a vase, flowering year after year with a profusion of soft-pink blooms.

How to plant Happy Retirement 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. 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.

Prune in late winter to an open shape. Top dress in spring with well-rotted manure.