'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'll 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 b 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.