A New Contender in the Rose World

Overcoming many challenges that other roses face, The Grand Champion Rose (Rosa x 'Meimacota') is a true winner in the garden. Sumptuous double-red flowers are produced in abundance from late spring 'til late summer on sturdy plants. But in addition to the beauty of its flowers, The Grand Champion Rose possesses another stellar quality '– it's resilient to the diseases that plague other roses!

Over the Finish Line
The Grand Champion Rose's winning combination of beauty and toughness is magnified by even more qualities, including:

• Fragrant flowers. The traditional rose fragrance has been bred out of many modern-day roses, in lieu of creating beautiful, long-lasting flowers. But The Grand Champion Rose has delightfully fragrant blossoms that perfume the air in your garden or in your home as cut flowers.

• Thick growth. You'll enjoy dense foliage on The Grand Champion Rose. As a deciduous shrub, the leaves will not persist throughout winter, but during the growing season this plant fills in flower beds and borders with its lush growth.

• Drought tolerance. It's quite uncommon to find a drought-tolerant rose, but The Grand Champion takes home the trophy for its efficient use of water.

Designing a Colorful Landscape
Annual flowers definitely add a color pop to any landscape, but they have to be replaced every year '– at the expenditure of both time and money. Plant The Grand Champion Rose and you'll have color all season long from a perennial plant that performs year after year! It's classified as a "shrub rose," which means that it produces dense growth on plants that are typically as wide as they are tall. This makes The Grand Champion Rose a lovely choice for creating a flowering hedge by using multiple plants spaced in a row. It also creates billowy mounds of color when planted as a single specimen plant, and it's a perfect cottage-garden plant.

A Low-Maintenance Rose
You won't have to fuss over The Grand Champion Rose. It sails through cold winters, hot summers, humid conditions, and short periods of drought like the champ it's bred to be!

Provide plants with these few essentials, and you'll enjoy beautiful flowers year after year:
• Sun. Full sun; and the more, the better. Plants have thicker growth, more flowers, and higher disease resistance in sunny conditions.

• Soil. The Grand Champion is adaptable to a variety of soil types, but it must have good drainage. Planting in raised beds is a good strategy for sites with compacted soil.

• Water. You'll want to keep newly transplanted shrubs well-watered during their first year to help them build strong root systems. After they're firmly established, 1 inch of water per week will keep them healthy. Roses grow very well when you apply a 2- to 3-inch layer of mulch around the plants, which helps keep the soil moist.

• Fertilizer. To reach maximum bloom potential, fertilize The Grand Champion Rose with a fertilizer that's specifically formulated for roses, and follow all label recommendations. Typically, you'll fertilize as soon as the leaves open in spring with repeat applications during the growing season. These plants also respond favorably to a topdressing of well-aged, composted cow manure in spring.

• Pruning. Once each year, typically in February, you can cut plants back to half their height to prompt new growth and produce lots of flowers!

For immediate blooms, plant well-developed 3 gallon rose bushes. They've been grown up to a year longer than most plants, so they'll give you huge blankets of blooms the next growing season. Perfect for impatient gardeners!