All About Garden Roses

Jun 11
3 min read

We have been dazzled by the depth of fragrance Garden Roses often bring to the shop!

Some are deeply floral, and we swear others emit notes of citrus, fruit, and honey.

This first flush of Garden Roses in June is the biggest, with hundreds of stems coming through the shop.

Smaller flushes will follow throughout the rest of the summer season.

Garden roses are known for their showy blooms and sweet scents. Their ruffled petals are available in a variety of colors — blush, pink, plum, ivory, peach, apricot, mustard, and coral. We have some specialty favorites too, like Koko Loko and Distant Drums.

An Abundance of Roses Blooming at NewMont Farm

The Collective garden roses are mostly grown by NewMont Farm in Fort Lupton & SheGrows in Arvada. Thanks to their different microclimates and the use of high tunnels, the harvests at each farm are slightly staggered. This means that the overall harvest window for these specialty blooms can be a little longer.

Garden roses are sold in 5-stem bunches.

Occasionally you'll also see branching single stem options.

These flowers are tough to ship, so we hope you'll take advantage of these abundant local options!

Buckets of SheGrows roses arriving at CFC

Hybrid vs Garden Varieties

You'll notice that at the Collective, we qualify roses as either Hybrid or Garden. While we use the term "Garden Rose" to encompass all varieties, there are subtle differences among them. The most notable differences are in shape, stem length, and longevity.

Hybrid Roses typically have longer single stems, a longer vase life, and possibly less fragrance than their Garden counterparts. While these roses can be said to look a bit more like the roses you're used to seeing, you'll find that they bring a lot more fragrance and romance.

Garden Roses are known for their strong fragrances and quintessential romantic sensation with their multi-petaled cup shape. Garden Roses often have shorter, branching stems due to their more shrubby growth habitat.

Peach Apricot Garden Rose & Peach Hybrid Rose

F U N F A C T : Hybrid rose cultivation can be traced to the end of the 19th century, when Chinese repeat-blooming varieties were cultivated with European varieties, creating longer stem lengths, larger blooms, and longer bloom times. This cultivation process continued through the years, resulting in the modern rose of the floral industry. Garden roses are also subject to much cultivation, but the specification "Garden" refers to roses bred for landscape and aesthetic purposes as opposed to the cut floral industry. Garden roses can be roses classified before the hybridization process as well as modern hybrid varieties.

Vase Life

If you've ever worked with garden roses, you know that these are a specialty flower.

They are here for a fragrant, stunning time, but not for long.

You'll have the most success if you plan to use them for short-lived applications like events and photoshoots. One sniff and you'll instantly know, these are no standard roses. They're in a league of their own and really act like a different flower. If you do want to use them for shop arrangements, look for the Hybrid varieties.

In 2025, we conducted a vase life test, and the garden roses surprised us - lasting longer than expected!

Click here for the results of our vase life test!