Noack's Flower Carpet Roses

Flower Carpet roses are probably the most widely grown set of roses in New Zealand. The original bright pink variety (shunned by rose connoisseurs) is vibrant in colour and fills in the rose-flowering gap in my garden.

Over the years different colours of Flower Carpet rose have appeared in the nurseries. I grow nearly all of the available varieties. I like the white rose, and grow this at edges of the garden. The apple blossom pink is modest in growth, and grows with accompanying catmint in the house patio garden. Over the water race I grow a pale yellow shrub, and the single velvet red variety. My latest purchases include a coral variety, whose flower colour is more pink than the name suggests.

No Pruning or Spraying Required!

When the first, bright pink Flower Carpet rose was advertised in New Zealand it captured the imagination of all - particularly non-gardeners, and those who were rose-wimps. It announced itself as a ground-cover rose which flowered continuously for ten months of the year and was non-pruning - only needing a light annual clipping with shears.

Apparently it also was a non-spray rose. You can imagine how many shrubs were sold!

The city councils started mass planting Flower Carpet roses on traffic islands, and in heavily polluted city areas. I imagine there was a time when every home which had a rose had a bright pink Flower Carpet rose.

A Country Garden Rose

But I think that the bright (possibly garish) pink flowers look fabulous in a big country garden, with sweeping green lawns and beautiful foliage nearby (for example, the Moosey Garden). All my Flower Carpet roses begin their flowering season late, and they are often the last to finish, often still blooming well into July. That's winter!

The red variety of Flower Carpet rose is almost a single, and really eye-catching. I've seen it used mass planted underneath an archway of the similar-flowered climbing red rose Parkdirektor Riggers. Now there's a co-ordinated rose thought!

My big rose book says that the Flower Carpet roses have rambler blood, and are bred by Noack of Germany. It's funny thinking of a rose having blood - it's usually gardener's blood that I associate with roses. Hmm... So-called 'ground-cover' roses still need weeding underneath, and even when I wear gloves, I get scratched...