Mandarin Sunblaze® Miniature Rose

For brightness and cheer in the garden, nothing beats orange. It stands out against green leaves, and blends perfectly with yellow and blue flowers. You can bring a most beautiful shade of orange to your garden from May to October by planting the wonderful Mandarin Sunblaze® Rose. With its 2½ inch blooms it has remarkably large flowers for a bush that is only 18 inches tall, and it will have a powerful presence in your garden. What glorious blooms they are – full, very double and vibrant orange suffused with richer orange-red tones, and with lighter golds at its heart. They are equally beautiful on the bush or cut for table decoration around your home, and with its continuous blooming they aren’t going to run out. These lovely miniature roses are an under-used class of rose that we are highlighting for their usefulness and novelty. Perfect in smaller gardens and planters, they bring a special look to your garden that you will love.

Growing the Mandarin Sunblaze® Rose

Size and Appearance

The Mandarin Sunblaze Rose is a small, bushy, deciduous shrub that grows 12 to 18 inches tall in a single season. It vigorously produces a profusion of upright green stems, covered in rich green leaves, with tiny thorns along them. The leaves are made up of 3, 5 or 7 small leaflets, arranged in pairs along the mid-rib and ending in a single one. They are very glossy, mid-green and oval, with a serrated edge. Because this rose is disease resistant, especially to Black Spot, the leaves stay healthy and green, never falling in the summer, so your bush always looks great – without spraying.

The flowers begin to develop almost as soon as the new spring growth sprouts out. At the end of every stem a cluster of up to 5 buds forms, and these open progressively, each bloom lasting a week to 10 days. The pointed buds give us a first hint of orange as they swell, opening to an exceptionally large bloom for a miniature rose. Each one is very full and cup-shaped, 2½ inches across, made up of about 65 petals, creating a very dense and striking bloom. The petals are rich orange, with yellow-orange on their underside. Across the whole bloom there is a striking over-shade of deeper orange-red, which makes the color very rich and powerful. Darker orange-red predominates as the flower ages. After a week to 10 days of blooming the petals fall to the ground, leaving the plant clean. No rose hips develop, so the flower stems simply shrivel up and they don’t even need to be trimmed if you don’t want to.

Using the Mandarin Sunblaze® Rose in Your Garden

The scale of this rose is perfect for the front of your beds, or for planting as a border along a pathway. Plant a cluster at the top of a flight of stairs, or beside a gate. Use it in the foreground of a bed, singly or in groups of 3, 5, or more for bold splashes of color month after month. With its perfect rose form it is excellent in containers and planter boxes too, as well as in a pot you can stand on an outdoor table. Grow it on a balcony even if you don’t have a garden, and dream of a life of roses.

Hardiness

The Mandarin Sunblaze Rose is completely hardy without winter protection in zone 5. It can be grown with protection in zone 4. Plants in containers are winter-hardy to zone 6. This rose also grows well in warmer zones, all the way through zone 9.

Sun Exposure and Soil Conditions

Full sun is the right location for the Mandarin Sunblaze Rose. Shade will reduce the quantity of blooms significantly. Grow it in any rich, well-drained soil, including clay soils, and either acidic and alkaline conditions. Light, dry, sandy soils are not so suitable, and they should be enriched with organic material and watered regularly.

Maintenance and Pruning

Annual mulch, applied in fall or spring, of rich material such as garden compost or rotted manure will give good results. Cover the root zone but not the stems or foliage. The use of a fertilizer for roses is valuable too, especially when growing this plant in a container. For container growing, choose a large pot, with drainage holes, and plant in a soil made from 25% by volume of garden soil, and 75% outdoor potting soil. Regular use of liquid rose food will give outstanding results for plants in containers.

Dead heading is not really needed, as the flower stems just wither, but you can remove them at the first true leaf if you wish to. Annual pruning in spring is advisable. Do this once you see the buds beginning to swell, and remove dead, weak and damaged stems cleanly. Remove about one-third of the length of the remaining stems, cutting just above a healthy, vigorous bud.

History and Origin of the Mandarin Sunblaze® Rose

Star Roses and Plants created their Sunblaze® collection of roses with plants exclusively bred by the famous French breeder Alain Meilland. He is the 6th generation of his family to be involved with roses, and the family has enjoyed an international reputation for many decades. He began by crossing a miniature orange rose from the Sunblaze collection called Apricot (‘Savamark’) with the Teddy Bear™ rose (‘Savabear’), which has russet orange flowers. He then pollinated one of the seedlings with pollen from one of his own orange hybrid-tea roses called Léonidas (`Meicofum`). Among the seedlings was a unique rose with large flowers on a small bush. He named it ‘Meiderin’ and patented it in 2002. In the Sunblaze collection it is known as Mandarin.

Buying the Mandarin Sunblaze® Rose at The Tree Center

We think this rose – with such strikingly large blooms on such a compact bush – is a certain winner for the garden or for containers. We know it will be a big favorite, so order now while our stock of healthy young plants remains available.