'Royal City Rose' is a cross between 'Pretty Lady' and 'Living Easy', two floribundas highly rated for their free flowering, disease resistance, and strong roots. 'Royal City' shares these traits, producing peachy-apricot hued blooms on a shrub that has amazing vigour and disease resistance. The whole story of how 'Royal City Rose' came to be can be found at GardenWise Online.

'Royal City Rose' grows to about 3 feet rounded and flowers from late spring until frost. She is highly resistant to disease, extremely winter hardy, grows with incredible vigour on her own roots and will tolerate some shade better than most roses. Three hours of direct morning sun or better is all you need to enjoy her glorious roses. This rose can be pruned with hedge clippers if needed or in typical rose fashion each spring. ‘Royal City Rose’ produces masses of new shoots each season, which will help to make her a very long lived shrub rose. She withstood temperatures of -17ºC in the field during the winter of 2009-2010. Photo: Nick Balachanoff.

'Royal City Rose' has an interesting lineage. Her mother, 'Pretty Lady', is a floribunda from England known for high resistance to black spot and fungal diseases, winter hardiness, free flowering, and strong roots. Her colour is a pretty soft pink but it lacks impact. Enter 'Living Easy,' a rose I consider to be the finest floribunda ever introduced. 'Living Easy' has outstanding foliage, flower power and resistance to disease, and again produces a massive root system capable of supporting all this growth. 'Living Easy' also has large double flowers in brilliant shades of apricot, peach and salmon with hints of yellow. 'Pretty Lady' proved to be a reluctant mother with only a handful of seeds germinating from the dozens of flowers pollinated. As they say, it only takes one—and what a beautiful baby she is! Photo: Nick Balachanoff.

In field tests, the young plants were planted at the end of one rose field with orders that no pesticide of any kind was to touch her foliage. I then planted some very disease-prone roses next to her in the same row. I wanted to know how well she would withstand poor neighbours! My baby grew with the most amazing vigour I’ve ever seen in the rose field, completely outgrowing and out-flowering any other rose in the field. The disease-prone indicator plants next to her quickly became infected with black spot and other rose diseases, but Jalapri (the future 'Royal City Rose') didn’t show a spot on her foliage from spring until hard frost!

Claude Ledoux, Horticulture Manager for the City of New Westminster, approached me in the summer of 1998 asking about the possibility of having a rose named for their fair city for its upcoming 150th birthday. He said that the chosen rose had to be trouble free, winter hardy, and one that an average gardener could enjoy with minimal fuss. A tall order! He also said he wanted a pretty colour, nice classic rose shape bud, and he wanted it scented! I almost chased the guy out of my greenhouse.  Geesh, what was he asking for, some miracle rose? But he got his wish. I presented the rose to Claude (left) and Mayor Wayne Wright of New Westminster (right) in time for the city's 150th anniversary.

Royal City Rose

The City of New Westminster offered 150 rose vouchers, in honour of its 150th Anniversary, to New Westminster residents only on April 7, 2009. The plants were released in June of that year, potted, leafed out, and in bud. The initial 150 roses sold out within 48 hours! 'Royal City Rose' is now available for purchase from Select Roses, and is undergoing trials with a large rose marketing company to determine its value for wide-scale production. Photo: Nick Balachanoff.