Roses from
Proven Winners^® ColorChoice^® Shrubs

There are thousands of varieties of roses on the market, and going to the garden center to pick one for your garden or as a gift can feel pretty overwhelming. Each one seems prettier than the last, so how to choose? Make that decision simple by selecting the roses in the white containers – Proven Winners roses.

Twenty-one distinctive varieties of superior roses

Every plant in the Proven Winners ColorChoice brand is thoroughly trialed and tested to ensure your success, and our roses undergo a particularly grueling trialing process.

We start with hundreds of new roses submitted from breeders around the world. Each one has aesthetic promise, but we take a performance-first approach: we only want roses that bloom all season without deadheading, resist powdery mildew and black spot, and grow vigorously to outpace insect damage. The process takes at least seven, and typically closer to ten, years.

In the first year, we cull every plant that shows any signs of disease. If they make it through this first stage, we’ll begin testing for outdoor performance in both a rigorous field setting and in a more residential setting. Once they make it through this phase, we test appearance. Are the blooms a pure, rich color? Are they lush and beautiful? Finally, if they are determined to be substantially better than anything else on the market, they will be introduced and find their way to your local garden center. It takes a critical eye and a team of professional plant breeders, growers, and horticulturists, but the results speak for themselves.

Roses in the various stages of trialing

Explore the Possibilities

To date, twenty-one distinctive varieties have met our standards and can be found only in the white Proven Winners ColorChoice container.

Edible Roses

Garden Roses

Edible Roses

Garden Roses

Landscape Roses

Mini Climbers

Want to add these varieties to your retail garden center? Click below to find a wholesaler.

How to Grow Proven Winners^® ColorChoice^® Roses

Getting the best flowering and disease resistance from our roses is easy, but you will want to follow some simple guidelines to get them off to the best start and keep them happy and healthy.

Soil

Vigorous shrub roses like we offer are not terribly picky about soil. The most important feature is that it be well-drained, never soggy, muddy, or holding standing water. A 2-3”/5-7cm layer of shredded bark mulch over the roots is recommended all year round.

Water

Regular water results in the best bloom, and is particularly important when your new rose is getting established. Roses can be drought tolerant, but blooming may be impaired in severe situations. It will return to normal when conditions improve.
When you water your roses, avoid wetting the foliage, instead directing all of the water to the root zone. Foliage that is frequently wet fosters the development of disease. Even though our roses are tested to resist these diseases, both you and they will be happiest if conditions that favor disease development are avoided.

Fertilizer

Proven Winners roses don’t require anything special. When you first get a new rose, it will be amply fertilized by the grower prior to sale and won’t need anything additional that season. The following year, you can apply a granular (not liquid) rose fertilizer in late winter/early spring. That can be applied monthly through late July if desired, but this isn’t strictly necessary.

Light

Like all roses, full sun – at least six hours of bright light each day – is imperative. It doesn’t need to be all in one go, it can be a total of six hours of bright light through the day.

Pruning

Shrub roses like ours do not need the fussy, careful pruning that most people associate with growing roses. It is a good idea to whack them back in early spring, just as the new growth is beginning to emerge, as this ensures the growth for the season comes from the thicker buds lower down on the stems. You can use hand pruners, loppers, or even sharp hedge trimmers, cutting the plant back by half to two-thirds.

Other Tips

Deadheading – removing the spent flowers – is not required for the plants to continue blooming.
Roses may stop blooming if they get severely stressed from heat or drought but will resume blooming as soon as conditions improve.
All Proven Winners roses are own-root. In other words, they are not grafted. This means that they do not need any special care for winter, nor any special attention when they are pruned.
Many of our roses will form red fruits, known as hips. These can be left in place for winter color, and birds will eventually eat them – they are a good source of vitamin C for their winter diets.

Explore Roses Video Series

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