Italian Ice Oso Easy® Landscape Rose

Roses might not be the first thing that comes to mind when you are looking for low-care shrubs to fill your beds with color for months, but that is only because you haven’t met the Oso Easy® range of landscape roses. Leave those fancy ‘hybrid tea’ roses for the florists and start treating roses are ordinary garden shrubs. They can be as easy to grow as other common plants, but with blooms for months instead of weeks. Forget about spraying, and choose disease-resistant varieties like these, and you will soon see why they are winning ‘5-star’ reviews from everyone who grows them. If you like bright, cheerful color, then start with the multi-toned Italian Ice® Oso Easy® Landscape Rose. Its tones of cream, yellow and pink will turn your garden into a party.

The Italian Ice Oso Easy Landscape Rose quickly becomes a broad spreading bush up to 30 inches across and tall – perfect for the foreground of your beds or for planting on slopes. It has been bred to resist that nasty black-spot rose disease, so it will be lush, leafy and full, from spring to fall. The glossy, dark-green leaves are 4 inches long, divided into 5 or 7 leaflets, and they are closely packed on the stems, keeping this plant always dense and bushy. Every stem is tipped with one, two or three blooms in a cluster, and with new shoots produced continuously, new flower clusters are always forming. It is normal for a single bush to have over 150 blooms in a season, so get ready for a colorful summer when you choose this plant.

What wonderful blooms they are, on the Italian Ice Oso Easy Landscape Rose. A full 2 ½ inches across, with 25 to 30 petals and sweet, enticing fragrance, they begin creamy yellow, and as the petals spread the outer ones become flushed with pink, while the center deepens to a rich lemon yellow. With flowers are different stages constantly opening all across the plant, it is a rhapsody of tones, much brighter and more varied than flowers of a single color could ever be. As fast as a bloom fades it is replaced by more, and the color parade is endless.

Plant the Italian Ice Rose wherever you need color in your garden. Use a plant to fill those awkward empty spots that are so common at the front of a bed. Plant it in groups of 3, 5 or more to make a colorful tapestry in your beds. Use it as a bold edging, or plant beside a path or driveway, where it will spill over and soften the hard edges. Cascade it down a slope, or at the top of a wall for a brilliant feature. Wherever you grow it, this rose makes a beautiful landscape simple, and it is so easy to grow you will see exactly why it has that name. For group planting space 18 to 24 inches apart in each direction.

Grow the Italian Ice Landscape Rose in full sun for the most flowers. Roses love sun and this one is no exception. This rose is hardy even in zone 4, without needing winter protection, making it a great choice for easy landscaping in colder zones. It also thrives in hotter areas, so it can be grown across almost all the country. The soil should be rich and not too dry, but this easy rose doesn’t need the fussing that many other roses do. It is ideal for heavier clay soils, and lighter soils should have plenty of moisture-holding rich materials added, like garden compost or well-rotted manures. Use a blended rose fertilizer for best results – slow-release formulations only need one application a year in spring. This rose has been carefully bred to be resistant to the most serious of rose diseases, and black spot, which causes the leaves to yellow and fall in summer, will never be a problem. Insect pests are rare on such a vigorous plant, and growing this plant is no harder than growing any regular garden shrub. Once a year, in spring, prune your landscape rose by removing any weak or damaged stems, and trimming the remaining stems back by one-third. This simple job will keep your plants compact and growing well.

Christopher Warner is the kind of person everyone admires – a highly successful self-made plant breeder working from his own one-man nursery in Newport, Shropshire, England. He gave up his job as a schoolteacher to pursue his dream, and his success has been extraordinary. A double-winner of Rose of the Year, he is scrupulous in making his roses disease resistant, testing them for 5 years before releasing them. He has single-handed created most of the Oso Easy® Landscape Rose collection for Spring Meadow Nursery Inc. of Grand Haven, Michigan. They have released his remarkable roses as part of their Proven Winners® ColorChoice® range of flowering shrubs. Christopher Warner took an older variety of low-growing rose with mottled orange and yellow petals, called ‘Pandemonium’ and crossed it with an unreleased plant called ‘Scrivbell’. Among the seedlings he found one that after testing was resistant to black spot disease, hardy, and a prolific, colorful bloomer. He patented it in 2016 with the name `Chewnicebell`, and it is made available with the registered trademark name of Italian Ice®. These fabulous new roses really are “Oh, so easy!”, so if roses have tested your patience and ability before, then you owe it to yourself to try these landscape roses – and the Italian Ice® variety is a great place to start. Everyone is clamoring for easy-to-grow landscape roses, so order now, because these plants are flying out the door.