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Rose Advice and Inspiration

Planting and Care instructions for Mark of Excellence Roses own-root roses

The single most important thing you can do for the health and vigor of your rose is to plant it in good soil. Pruning, fertilizing, spraying, deadheading…all these things have less effect on your rose than planting in good soil. So give your rose...

Choosing and buying a rose

As much as we would like for you to buy our roses simply based on our website pictures and information, we recommend that you first see the rose plant you want to buy growing in your locale. For those of you close to Salem, OR, we...

Rose Types (Classes)

No other flowering plant has a wider arrange of sizes, shapes and colors than the rose. To make some sense out of this, roses are divided into certain types or classes. Rose classification is often confusing and miscommunicated at the...

Rose Names

Many roses, especially the old garden roses, are known by many different names. At Mark of Excellence Roses, we try to give you the Approved Exhibition Name of the American Rose Society as the primary name of the rose variety...

Height/Spread

The size of the rose plant given as the height and spread of the plant should be taken only as general guidelines. Roses can differ in their size based on how they have been planted and cared for as well as the climate conditions...

Fragrance

We have attempted to give you an idea of the fragrance of the rose you are buying. However, fragrance is subjective and where one person will tell you a particular rose has an intense fragrance, another person will tell you that they...

Disease Resistance

Roses are rated as either disease resistant, very disease resistant or not disease resistant at all. Within these three categories, there are various levels of disease resistance and this, of course, varies with your climatic and growing...

Hardiness

The hardiness ratings of each rose refer to the USDA plant hardiness zone where the rose should grow well and survive through the winter. Roses rated at a higher hardiness zone can still be grown in lower zones given proper and adequate...

RIR Rating

Every year, the American Rose Society publishes a pamphlet ranking more than 3,000 varieties of roses. The pamphlet is available to all ARS members or by purchasing a pamphlet from the ARS for $5.00 from their website...

Garden Usage

We have attempted to give you some indication of the uses that each variety is good for so that you can determine how you want to grow your new rose...