Red Drift® Rose - Tree Form

The Drift roses are wonderful ground-cover roses, in bloom continuously, cold hardy, disease resistant and low-maintenance. They are so beautiful we decided to have them turned into rose trees, by mounting them on a sturdy trunk. That way they make the perfect specimens for beds, and their spreading form makes them semi-weeping too, so they look simply gorgeous. The Red Drift Rose has beautiful miniature deep-red roses in sprays, and it makes an especially impressive tree that looks fantastic anywhere in the garden. Plant it to give height in small beds, without needing a lot of width, and plant flowers beneath it for lots of summer color. A pair on either side of a door is lovely, and they are perfect for marking the corners of a terrace or lawn area. They are wonderful in planter boxes too, and with its continuous blooming you will enjoy months and months of color and beauty.

The Red Drift Rose Tree has a strong, upright trunk about 3 feet tall, topped with a rounded crown of branches that is about 18 inches tall and over 24 inches wide. The branches spread outwards and arch downwards, making a graceful display. The dark-green leaves are lush and healthy all season, and they don’t start yellowing and falling in summer, because this rose has been carefully bred to make it resistant to not just one, but all three of the major rose diseases – Black Spot, Mildew and Rust. This means you won’t need to spray them at all, yet they will look great with minimal care.

The flowers of the Red Drift Rose Tree are produced in large clusters, each with up to 15 blooms in it. New stems are produced continuously, and the flowers last for 2 or 3 weeks from bud to petal-drop, so constantly blooming is guaranteed. The flowers are a rich, deep-red, with about 14 petals in each 1½ inch bloom. The look is exactly like a miniature double red rose, until they open fully, when a charming center of yellow appears. As the flowers fade the petals drop, and no seeds and rose-hips are made, so the new growth hides the withered stalks. They simply disappear and only the most fastidious gardener would bother to dead-head – it just isn’t necessary. That’s one less gardening job to do, and another reason why this rose is so easy to care for.

The Red Drift Rose Tree should be grown in full sun, in rich soil. Add plenty of organic material when planting, and mulch with more. Roses prefer heavier soils, and thrive in clay, but they also grow well in most soils, and even in sandy soil if they are well mulched and regularly watered. Like other rose trees, this tree needs no special winter protection in zones 7 to 11, and it can be grown in a planter and left outdoors all winter in zones 8 to 11. In zones 4, 5 and 6, once the leaves have fallen and colder weather is coming, some winter protection is needed. Dig a shallow trench at one side of the plant, remove the stake, cut through the roots on the opposite side with a spade, and lay the rose down in the trench. If your rose is in a planter, remove it completely, with the root ball in one piece, and lay it in a trench in your garden. Fill the trench with peat moss and cover it with a protective garden blanket. Once the ground thaws in spring, remove the blanket, stand the rose up, firm down the root ball, and replace the stake. Repot trees in planters with fresh soil, without disturbing the roots too much. In all zones some pruning in spring, as new buds begin to swell, is beneficial. Trim back about one-third to one-half of the stronger branches, and remove weak, twiggy or broken stems completely. Cut back to just above an outward-facing bud. Mulch over the roots, avoiding the stem, each spring, with rich organic material like compost or rotted manure. Use a rose fertilizer regularly, as directed on the packet, using granular fertilizers for trees in the garden and liquid formulations for trees in planter boxes.

The Red Drift Rose Tree was created in 2005 by Alain Meilland. He is the current head of the important French rose-breeding family of Meilland, which gave the world the famous ‘Peace’ rose after WWII. He wanted to create new varieties that would bloom continuously and be disease resistant, so that everyone could enjoy roses in their gardens. He carried out detailed breeding with 4 different roses. One was a seedling he had already bred. Another was a classic miniature re-blooming pink rose called ‘The Fairy’. The others were ‘’Kormax’, a low-growing red rose, and ‘Ralph’s Creeper’, another spreading rose, with orange-red flowers. Among the seedlings was one with red flowers, that he named ‘Meigalpio’. He patented that rose, and he made it the red rose for his Drift® Series of ground-cover roses. Once grafted onto a sturdy stem of a special rose used only for stems, it became the Red Drift® Rose Tree. If you love roses you will adore this one – but so do our other customers, so order now, while we still have plants we can supply you.