You may remember – or still have at home – those old-fashioned music boxes, which play enchanting tunes, often with a twirling ballerina as well. Now, with the Music Box Easy Elegance® Rose, you can capture that classic charm, with a swirl of pink and creamy-yellow just like that ballerina’s dress. But this is no old rose, that only blooms briefly and then loses its leaves to disease, needing constant chemical treatments and care. Thanks to the genius and skill of today’s rose breeders, we have all that beauty, like a classic rose, on a bush that blooms steadily for months and months, with resistance to disease, hardiness, and vigor. It makes a leafy bush with rich-green glossy leaves (that stay that way) as a backdrop to the flowers, and the blooms even have the delicious scent that makes every rose perfect.

Growing the Music Box Easy Elegance® Rose

Size and Appearance

The Music Box Rose is an upright, bushy rose, growing 3 to 5 feet tall, depending on your growing zone, season and pruning. It forms a dense bush with many stems coming from the base, and this bush has been grown on its own roots, not using old-fashioned grafting techniques. This means it cannot produce those annoying suckers from the roots, that sap the strength from the real bush and turn it into a thorny monster. You can be 100% sure that every single stem that grows really is this special rose. The leaves are divided into 5 leaflets, and they are glossy, and a rich, dark-green. Since this bush has been bred to be disease-resistant, those leaves will hold their rich green all season, unblemished and never yellowing and falling off in summer.

The flowers are carried in clusters at the end of all the new branches, and new branches form all season long. Each bloom is 2 inches across, packed with 30 to 40 petals, with a graceful, classic, tea-rose form. The flowers are creamy yellow in bud, opening soft, butter yellow, with pink edges on the petals. They have a delicious sweet rose scent. As the flowers open fully and age – they last a full week on the bush or in a vase – that pink edge spreads across the petals, turning them first into yellow and pink swirls, and finally fully-pink. The petals drop cleanly, with no necessity to dead-head.

Using Music Box Easy Elegance® Rose in Your Garden

This elegant bush is perfect for the garden and as a cutting rose. Cut a whole stem once all the buds are showing color and let them open in sequence in a vase for a long show of charm in your home. Grow a bush in a smaller shrub bed for summer-long color, or in groups in larger beds. Plant one where a path changes direction, or as an edging along a driveway. This is also a great container rose in warmer zones, decorating a patio or standing by a doorway.

Hardiness

The Music Box Rose is hardy from zone 5 to zone 9, and in zone 4 with the standard winter protection for rose bushes. It blooms well in hot zones and is more likely to reach its maximum height in areas with milder winters.

Sun Exposure and Soil Conditions

Full sun is best for growing all roses, and the Music Box Rose is no exception. It grows best in heavier, richer soils, like loam and clay, but they should be well-drained, so avoid areas that flood during rain. Sandy soils should be enriched with plenty of organic material, like garden compost or organic supplements, and watered regularly.

Maintenance and Pruning

Each spring, cover the root zone with a layer of rich organic material, and use rose fertilizers, especially if growing in poorer soils and in containers. This rose has been carefully bred by experts to resist the two most troublesome rose diseases – black spot and powdery mildew. These cause yellowing, spots, moldy growth and leaf-drop. Since this rose is resistant you can forget about spraying with nasty chemicals – a big relief. If you do see a few pests like greenflies, a simple and harmless soap spray will quickly eliminate them.

In spring, some simple pruning will give great results, and the best-looking and blooming bush. Remove any broken or dead branches, and branches more than 3 years old. Cut back the remaining ones by about one-third, just above an outward-facing bud. In cold areas what for new buds to swell and cut back to the first healthy bud.

History and Origin of Music Box Easy Elegance® Rose

Ping Lim of Yamhill, Oregon, is the leader of a new generation of rose breeders committed to developing roses that combine the beauty and charm of classic roses with ease of care and disease-resistance. Most of his roses are the result of breeding between hybrid-tea roses, with florist-quality blooms, and shrub roses, which are easy to grow, but have simpler blooms. We don’t know the exact parentage of the rose he called ‘BAIbox’, which he released in 2012, while he was head breeder at Bailey Nurseries. This rose was at first released by Edmunds’ Roses in Wisconsin with the name Music Box, and then added to Bailey Nurseries Easy Elegance® collection.

Buying Music Box Easy Elegance® Rose at The Tree Center

We love the charm of this rose, with its changing flower coloring and its classic beauty. It would be ideal as a gift for anyone, and we know how popular these Easy Elegance roses are with our customers. Order your Music Box Rose now, because we won’t have them around for long – they are just too good.