Name: Rosa ‘Meijocos’ aka Coral Drift rose
Type of Plant: This is a low-growing shrub rose that repeat flowers reliably and is very disease resistant. It is hardy in zones 4-10 and grows best in full sun.
Why I love this: When I get a new plant to test I’ll place it in my trial garden and ignore it for a year or two, just to see what happens. This is how I grew several roses in the Drift series and they passed my testing with flying colors! Coral, pink and red colors to be specific. Although in years when the spring weather is cool and damp these will get some blackspot (just like every other rose I have grown) they grow out of it well and don’t completely defoliate in response.
A Word to the Wise: All roses repeat flower better when deadheaded, but like many shrub roses these will flower again even if you don’t take off the old bloom. I try to shear mine shortly after the first flowering fades, however, just to speed things along.
Prune these plants in April by removing deadwood and crossed branches first, and then doing just a bit of touch-up clipping after that – remember that the lower you cut a rose down in the spring, the fewer flowers you’ll have in the summer.
These roses stay quite low. Although they are often labeled “ground cover roses” take that with a grain of salt…when I think of ground covers I think of plants that smother weeds so that I don’t have to get in and work around them. Roses don’t do that, and they are thorny to boot! Grow them for their flowers and as a low, colorful shrub, not for a ground cover.
