Glorious rose gardens to be inspired by from the pages of House & Garden
The queen of flowers, the rose is romantic and beautiful and floods the air with hearty scent, so no wonder that entire gardens are dedicated to it. The first record of roses growing in a garden is in ancient Greece in the 5th century BC; the Romans were rose-obsessed and grew them abundantly in their city gardens; and, in both Christian monasteries and Islamic gardens, roses were tended within a garden layout that was intended to represent paradise.
Our love affair with roses has never faded and two of Britain's most treasured gardens are dominated by them: Sissinghurst in Kent (planted in the 1930s) and Mottisfont in Hampshire (created in the 1970s). In these two iconic walled rosaries, an abundance of deliciously scented old roses thrives amongst a colourful tapestry of perennials and biennials. As well as reducing rose sickness, growing alongside other plants looks pretty and aids wildlife.
In modern rose-garden design, catering for pollinators, birds, and other garden fauna is the new focus. Roses bred for health are planted to prevent the need for chemicals, which harm insects and, in turn, reduce the birds' food supply. And flower shape is crucial. Whether it's old ramblers or new varieties (such as The King's Rose), the roses employed have single or semi-double blooms that allow bees and hoverflies to access nectar, and many also bear hips that feed birds.
This wildlife care can be seen in established rose gardens, such as Hever Castle in Kent, where – amongst the 5,000 roses in the Rose Garden – umpteen nectar-accessible 'Rambling Rector' roses are trained against the walls and hum with bees, as well as in newer rosariums, such as the Wildlife Garden at the Peter Beales Rose Gardens in Norfolk. There, bee-friendly species roses and cultivars (such as 'Wickwar') grow in hedges and scramble up trees. And, at Easton in Lincolnshire, the Rose Meadows are an exciting mix of roses growing on blacksmith-made frames amid long billowing grasses and meadow flowers, which supports a wealth of insects and creates a contemporary, refreshing style of rose garden.
Eva Nemeth1/7If you like climbing roses, this walled garden in Dorset is the place to look for inspiration, as every vertical surface is covered in them. White Rosa ‘Wedding Day’ and pink R. ‘May Queen’ frame the gateway into the topiary garden, while self-seeded erigeron and white valerian soften the steps and the pots below are planted with claret geraniums set off by purple heliotrope and verbena.
Jason Ingram2/7In rejuvenating Sir Frank Lowe's riverside garden, Jo Thompson has introduced a wealth of flowers rich in colour and scent, inspired by the Arts and Crafts connections of this west London house. Roses are pivotal to the new design and Jo has brought them into each bed in mixed plantings, using mainly David Austin varieties that are disease-resistant and repeat flowering. 'Roses bring such a fantastic range of colour into a garden,' she says. 'I think of each one as having a personality of its own, and they all create different shapes and forms that add to the theatre of the place.'
Sandwiched between the strong architecture of the house and the river, with its big sky views, the garden needed to be bold and strong to hold its own, so Jo has used roses such as 'Munstead Wood' with its incredibly rich, deep red blooms, or vibrant orange ‘Lady of Shalott’. Here The rich tones of irises 'Benton Menace and 'Benton Evora' are echoed by foxgloves and alliums in the plantings next to the pergola, where a rampant white banksian rose creates a glorious display.
Eva Nemeth3/7Jo Thompson’s Glasshouse Garden at the 2025 Chelsea Flower Show was a real crowd-pleaser, with a rich and colourful planting palette and roses galore - a garden you can imagine around your own home.The colours were strong and bold, with deep red Rosa ‘Wild Rover’ and vibrant pink Rosa ‘Emma Bridgewater’ anchoring smaller-flowered plants such as Nicotiana ‘Tinkerbell’, Pimpinella major ‘Rosea’ and the unusual, delicate Delphinium x ruysii ‘Pink Sensation’.
Andrew Montgomery4/7Julian and Isabel Bannerman are well known for their romantic garden style, and their own garden at Ashington Manor in Somerset is full of enchanting spaces. Hundreds of roses are woven into the infrastructure of the garden, nowhere more so than in the rose garden, of course, where they are trained over archways as well as planted in beds. Here white R. 'The Garland' and pink R. ‘Perennial Blue’ on the rose garden entry arch are flanked by pale pink R. ‘Pantin-Latour’ and magenta. R. ‘Tour de Malakoff’.
Richard Bloom5/7A garden in the ruins of a house once associated with the pre-Raphaelites and Edward Burne-Jones' ‘Legend of the Briar Rose’ paintings is clearly the place for roses. At Biddulph Old Hall in Staffordshire, the owners have created a white garden in this part of the ruins, planted with scented pale roses, such as ‘Blanche Double de Coubert’ and ‘Madame Legras de Saint Germain’, set among honeysuckle and arum and Madonna lilies.
Rachel Warne6/7Filled with peonies, foxgloves and a mass of roses, the romantic walled garden of this Spitalfields townhouse was sensitively created by young designer Miria Harris for Ben Adler and his late wife Pat Llewellyn. Despite being a stone’s throw from the bustle of Brick Lane in London’s East End, the garden has an extraordinary tranquillity, with an array of fragrant roses in bloom for much of the year. As Miria explains, 'often first and last to flower is Rosa ‘Boscobel’ and we have masses more, including ‘Little White Pet’, ‘Gertrude Jekyll’, ‘American Pillar’ and ‘Cardinal de Richelieu’. They are chosen for fragrance and colour, which ranges from white and soft pink to deepest burgundy.’ The raised beds help to soften the impact of the walls around the garden, as do the wonderfully gnarled espaliered pear trees, which give the sense that the garden has been there forever.
Andrew Montgomery7/7For a romantic cottage garden look, shrub roses make the perfect addition to a border. Here in the Hampshire garden of landscape architects Kim Wilkie and Pip Morrison, pale pink rose ‘Souvenir de St Anne’s’ anchors the bed among a profusion of other flowers, including magenta Dahlia ‘Admiral Rawlings’ and Phlox paniculata‘Doghouse Pink’.
