Peter Mayle has really large flowers! So does Buxom Beauty, Valencia, Chicago Peace. But Peter Mayle is the largest here...and has a fabulous fragrance. It's a tall plant.

Carol

Oh I forgot Miss All American Beauty!

You can’t even see the pencil I’m holding! It’s almost totally covered. Tiny eraser showing on the bottom right of the bloom.

And a better size scale for Yves Piaget (with a pencil), compared to the first one I posted above.

Cori Ann - my Yves Piaget never look that nice. Yours is gorgeous!!! What do you think of your Miss All American Beauty? - fragrance, bloomability?

Carol

John F Kennedy has approx 6in blooms :) mine were always quite large and I bought them as bare roots and they had tons of blooms in the first year

Thanks Carol. MAAB has HUGE blooms, so it makes sense that it takes a lot of energy to bloom like that (worth waiting for repeat, but it’s not fast... maybe not good for shorter/colder seasons?) Good fragrance though.

Cori Ann - maybe I should try it! I don't mind waiting a while for the big blooms...because they tend to last a lot longer. :)

Carol

Color Magic has particularly large flowers. Maybe not bigger than Yves Piaget though.

Wow thank you so much for the names, suggestions photos, Yves Piaget has very interesting flowers, i will search for it in the local nurseries - Miss All American Beauty is also on my list, i checked it and saw they mostly sell it here under the name Maria Callas which i wanted last year already :)

And all the others... I have to say that i'm quite stupid, when i see some varieties (other plants also) i always start to think "ohh where can i make some MOOORE SPACE for more flowers" and can end up with 10 more roses during the season and starting the big game again "do our dogs really need this space for running around barking at everyone or should i just make a shorter fence and plant a new rose bed".... LOL :D

I must find a proper, original Peace stock again - the one that i bought 2 yeaars ago is nice, blooms a lot but the flowers are definitely not Peace flowers (still nice though)

Also bought Mr Lincoln - first year bloomed a lot, started as a very small plant and still small, and the flowers are... You know when you buy a certain variety coz you want that variety, and you start to notice that they sold you something else probably... Very upsetting feeling.

I'm not good friends with the DavisAustin rose hybrids yet as they don't perform in this weather that well, but haven't had them for years and years so i might try a few types (15 years ago i adored the english rose bloom form, for some reason it changed back to the hybrid tea bloom form again). They still don't really like the striking sun in the hungarian summer with 30-38 C degress sometimes (85-100 F), then in 1 day changes back to cool, cloudy and rainy then in one week sunny and dry again... The hybrid tea roses honestly do much better in this weather.

Anyway, i really thank you so much for your suggestions, would love to hear about more :)

Peter

Peter, I think most of us here are trying to fit in 10 more roses somewhere in our already crowded yards! I’m also on the look out for huge bloomed varieties myself, these are my favs:

RED:

Veterans Honor: Not only huge, but lasts 2 to 3 times longer than the average rose, and keeps its rich color to the end, therefore making its impact , whether on the bush or in the vase, extra big.

WHITE:

Pope John Paul II is a big full bloom that is especially generous and easy to grow

YELLOW:

Oregold

PINK:

Maria Callas, Parole, Bewitched

APRICOT:

Medallion is the biggest rose I grow, easily 7-8” in spring and fall

Just Joey can get to 6” and has especially nice color and unique form

ORANGE:

Dolly Parton is huge and beacon bright

LAVENDER:

Neptune is the only lavender I think of as huge, full and having heavy substance.

MULTICOLOR

Peace is not only huge, but especially full. Same for its sport Chicago Peace.

Double Delight can be huge at times.

Neil Diamond is consistently big, even in the hottest summer.

Color Magic

Peter I don’t like a lot of Austin roses in my yard too, so we have that in common. I like that MAAB is sold under Maria Callas there. She was a beautiful opera singer.

Yves Piaget is a gorgeous bloom, but seems to be a funky bush with weird anglular growth. I solved that by putting it in a circular trellis, like a tall peony cage. So far that seems to make it grow how I want it.

All the large blooms I showed photos of above also have great fragrance and withstand very strong/dry summer heat. Not sure how they do with cold winters or humidity and ample wetness though.

I like big blooms too. :-)

Yes Cori Ann, winter can be a problem especially if not in a shaded place, and there must be a lot of sun in the summer to help plants grow well :)

I also love the older cultivars, I bought a plant of Guinée from DA roses, in the hot summer months it grew to 6-7 feet, with flowers from time to time. And those flowers... Very interesting, not the prettiest form but a heavy velvety texture, around 5-6" on very long stems. and that scent... The whole plant is something special, I'm curious about this first real season how it will bloom.

Yves Piaget must be a very nice bush when established, I like that colour a lot :)

David Austin's Lichfield Angel- 5 inches sometimes 6

Mr Lincoln. Around 6 inches

'Medallion' and 'Just Joey', here.

Perfume Delight gets pretty big and smells heavenly. I will measure my next blooms.

Sultry - I know! PD's fragrance is top notch!!

Carol

Perfume Delight's fragrance takes you to another world.

Some huge blooms: Peace, First Prize, Miss all American Beauty, Dolly Parton, Peter Mayle, Buxom Beauty, Oklahoma.

dan8 - I have a lot of those...Peter Mayle, Buxom Beauty, and I'm getting Dolly Parton. :)

Carol

I'll throw in a third vote for Just Joey. One of those varieties I especially look forward to seeing each year.

I found Just Joey to be on the short side growing in a pot here. It never got over 12 inches, and I had it for 5 years. I finally gave up on it. But that may be a plus for someone in zone 9 :)

Carol

Medallion and Peace are my absolutely biggest blooms. Easily as big as my hand, palms, fingers, outstretched.

Just a small voice with a reality check: if you must have massive blooms with minimum effort, move to the Pacific Northwest or Ireland or England. The slow maturation of buds in cooler weather makes for larger blooms on almost all roses.

If you want your already roses to have larger blooms, as soon as side buds, below the main bud, appear, disbud to force all growth into the main bud.

Genetically, see what grows biggest in botanical gardens near you.

Some examples: Medallion filled a bed of roses near the entry of the former Houston Botanical Gardens and in late May and June they were all massive blooms. On my hillside in Tennessee same bloom time, they were 2/3 the size with a good fertilizer schedule.

If you can grow roses on R. Fortuniana rootstock, it will generally push larger blooms.

The biggest Mr. Lincoln I've ever seen was on a bagged plant, and that bloom came off of the biggest cane. And subsequent blooms were never that large, but my soils weren't comparable to the growing fields of Wasco or north Texas.

Yves Piaget was huge in the Montreal Botanical Garden where winter protection was blankets custom fit to each bed.

In Texas Carl Pool Bloom fertilizer was often used to increase flowering and it worked well up here as well. I used it to force my small (at that time) rose beds to produce enough roses to do a bridal bouquet, two brides maids' bouquets, twelve corsages, a wedding cake topper and several more decorations from only 36 two year old rose bushes.

Haha, thank you, no intentions to move anywhere especially to those much more wet places I can't stand :)

Of course roses behave almost the same way as hibiscuses for example, the hotter and sunnier the beach smaller the blooms :)

But I think we agree that certain cultivars behave similar way everywhere, a Peace bloom will be (almost) always bigger than a Rose De Rescht bloom :)

I just wanted some experienced rose friends' opinion on this (and unfortunately I spent the whole season till November on a Greek island that literally no rose collections so I thought will be easier to make online orders according to these suggestions :) )

I would throw out another vote for Just Joey. My very first bloom on a tiny new gallon pot measured a bit over 7 inches across, couldn't believe it! I went and bought a bunch more so will be thrilled if the overall plant stays small like Carol's but with huge blooms.

Memorial Day didn't get this large immediately, but quite often do now. I gave them away but Buxom Beauty had pretty big blooms too.

Peter,

What are your Spring and Fall temperatures? I get my biggest blooms in Fall through Winter. I have 26C - 10C Fall weather (80F-50F), and 10C - 4C degree winters (50F - 40F). By the time my roses bloom in late Spring/early Summer, it's already too hot for big blooms on some rose varieties. Like Stillanntn said, the slow maturation produces bigger blooms, so if you have a season where there is cool, but not freezing weather, you can still get maximum bloom size during that time.

I think you've got the right idea starting with hybrid teas. They do the best for me during my hot summers and the blooms grow large even in heat.

MAD,

well really depends on the weather. Our winters are like normally between +2 and -10 C (35 and 15 F) , with occasional downs of -15 -20 -23 C (5, -4, -10 F) but that lowest is normally only a few days every winter (or last year for 3 weeks of 0, -5 F every night).

Spring is around 10-25 C (50-77 F), so hybrid roses, especially HTs start to flower in the very end of May, mainly in June.

Summers are versatile with an "average" of 27-31 C (80-88F), sometimes rainy and cool and windy, sometimes hot for days even weeks of 36-41 C (95-105 F).

Autumns are like spring, the freezing degrees start in November normally, Octobers are quite warm like a nice spring day.

Here the main thing is the sunshine - when its sunny in summer, every roses are better in winter as well as the wood can harden more. Like my Double Delight, it had a nice sheltered place but only limited sunlight during the day, closer to a small pear tree etc, it had like 6 flowers in 3 years? Didn'T even grow at all... Then i moved it to a totally sunny and quite windy, cold place, and it just thrives, LOOOVES the sun, with striking coloured big flowers.

(On the other hand at its old place there's my Maigold climbing rose, abundant, like 15 ft tall? With thousands of flowers, honestly divine.)

Unfortunately in the last 5 years i only enjoy them on the pictures and videos from my parents as i work 1000 miles away for 6-7 months. But that's life :)

I happened to come across a blurry picture my of Yves Piaget. I too, get constantly large blooms on this one. Lisa

Roses · More Info

Lisa - holy crap!!!!! That's astoundingly huge and gorgeous!!!! Oh wow!!!!

Carol

Land o' Goshen, as my grandma would have said--that's just not real, Lisa. I've seen your photo once before, and thought I've got to grow old Yves and see if I can get some big blooms like that. What do you think of YP's reported strange plant shape? Does he have good repeat?

Peter, since you're in Europe, you can probably buy Augusta Luise. She has large, exquisite blooms with some neat coloration. Diane

Diane - love your AL!!!! Does it have fragrance?? It's soooooo gorgeous!

Carol

AL is strongly scented, Carol. Thanks. Diane

If I ever see it offerred here...it's mine!!! Bwahahaha!!! :)

Carol

Lisa, what the heck are you feeding that rose? Holy moly put that one on my list. Gorgeous

Wow that Augusta Luise is beautiful, I really like the colour also :)

I will check the sellers nearby ;-)

Peter

Yes, Lisa - my Yves Piaget is not doing half as well as yours. I'm going to be changing it's soil this summer...maybe that will help.

Carol

And of course I went right to the website looking to be able to order YP And it appears to be sold out maybe next year I could get an early start and get it ordered

Yves Piaget does have an awkward growing habit. It’s rather empty inside. I usually throw a handful of annual seeds in with it, and that helps. I have heard that this rose likes heat. I use something called Gro-Power for Roses. I think it’s mainly available on the west coast, but I’m not sure about that. I’ve always loved the stuff, and buy it locally by the 20lb bag. I think it’s got good stuff in it for the soil, too. It might actually help make bigger blooms, because I had someone over on the Antique forum tell me my Baronne Prevost blooms were far larger than normal. Yves is known for big blooms though, Gro-Power or not:) Lisa

Diane, your picture of Augusta Luise is gorgeous!

Lisa ...sure seems to work!!! I won't try to get it though, because potted plants seem to need soluble fertilizers.

Carol

I need to study up on that, Carol. I have some potted roses that don’t bloom as well as they should. I think I need to look into soluble fertilizers for them. I’ve mainly been just throwing them a handful of compost once in a while, but I don’t that’s cutting it. What do you recommend? Lisa

Speaking of fertilizers, one of the forum members mentioned Carl Pool fertilizer, Gro-Power for Roses on another thread. This is an acclaimed fertilizer from Texas. It's for sale on Amazon and is quite expensive. It's soluble, I think (will check) and contains a huge amount of phosphorus (P), which supposedly helps roses bloom in abundance. I've heard there isn't scientific evidence for that, though. I was going to ask if anyone had used the stuff, but I don't want to hijack this thread. I'd like to try it on a few roses, but don't want to add unnecessary phosphorus to the soil (it can be a pollutant).....I agree that roses in containers need soluble fertilizer. Diane

Lisa - I recommend (StrawChicago recommends this) fertilizing with every watering..with a dose that is 1/4 strong as recommended on the bottle. The fertilizer used most often in the container forum is "Foliage-Pro 9-3-6 liquid fertilizer. It has all the essential elements in a favorable ratio, and even includes Ca and Mg, which is unusual in soluble fertilizers. Miracle-Gro granular all-purpose fertilizer in 24-8-16 or liquid 12-4-8 are both close seconds and completely soluble, though they do lack Ca and Mg, which you can supply by incorporating lime or by including gypsum and Epsom salts in your fertilizer supplementation program." The soil should be 5:1:1 (5-1-1 is 71% PBF, 14% peat, 14% pearlite (each part is 1/7th of the mix, or 14.285%). PBF is pine bark fines. Peat is sphagnum peat moss.

These two threads are mine from Container Growing in Houzz

https://www.gardenweb.com/discussions/5153317/newbie-at-using-soil-less-potting-soil-roses?n=13

https://www.gardenweb.com/discussions/5159030/what-about-this-blend-of-soil-for-pots?n=27

Carol

Oops--the Gro Power is the fertilizer you use, Lisa. I meant just Carl Pool Fertilizer. I ran the two names together. Diane

As I've learned quite a lot of plants don't really like high phosphorus in the soil so a while ago I started to use granulated chicken and cow guano (I'm bad with English expressions sorry, I'm sure you know what I mean ;-) ) mixed in the soil only in spring, then I only use leaf fertilizers only during the season, from Scotts, the Agroleaf product family, I use them every week. Spring the one high with N (first number) for growth, then June July the one high with P hosphorus (the second number) for more summer flowers, then August September the one high with K - potassium (the 3rd number) to get the wood harder for the winter cold.

Seems to work well, everything is nice and green, no yellow on the leaves, the hybrid teas are flowering constantly through the whole summer.

My potted plants get a mixture of liquid Miracle grow and fish fertalizer, sometimes Super Thrive or kelp is added. I guess we all have our own recipes.

Thank you for the info! I’m hoping to find the easiest meathod. Is there no time time release fertilizer that is soluble? Lisa

Beats me...I'm new at trying this. You could go to the Container Forum and ask some questions. :)

Carol

I took this picture a few years back. This was before my McCartney Rose reverted back to Dr. Huey. It and Perfume Delight were the same color, both had wonderful fragrance, both beautiful blooms, but the difference in the bloom size was obvious. The McCartney Rose is the huge one on the left.

Beautiful picture, Sarah Ann! Your photo reminded me of another rose with big beautiful blooms, (maybe it’s already been mentioned). What about “Chartreuse de Parme”? Mine is still young, and I can’t locate any pictures of her first blooms, but they were impressive already. She reportedly has very large blooms, is very fragrant, and her color is somewhat similar to Yves Piaget(mauve/pink). Hopefully, mine will really take off soon, since I planted it into the ground over the winter.

I left for my mom’s house right after I posted my comment/question asking if there was a time release granular fertilizer that is soluble, and I couldn’t get the thought out of my head, that perhaps that’s an oxymoron. I know so little about container fertilizer(or fertilizers in general) that it may have been a foolish question:) I just know myself. I can’t see spraying fertilizer on the leaves regularly, and even mixing and watering it in every week or two isn’t going to happen on a regular basis. When I’m unwell, just watering my pots is enough of a struggle. I tend to have more problems with my MS during the summer heat, so I just know I won’t keep up with weekly fertilizing. I think your suggestion of asking on the container gardening forum is a good one, Carol. I should ask there, and explain what exactly I’m looking for. Thank you:)

Peter, we know exactly what you mean by “guano”. In this case we would call it “manure”. :) Check out “Chartreuse de Parme”, by Delbard. I think you’ll like it, and it’s very highly rated in all categories. Lisa

Sara Ann - both are beautiful! I love that color! They look enough alike to be the same rose. :)

Lisa - yes, MS would make most things difficult. :( Let us know what they advise you on the container forum. :)

Carol