A Rose To Know. Kathleen Harrop.

Back in the early 1990s Wayside Gardens put a climbing Bourbon Rose by the name of Zepherine Drouhin on the cover of its catalogue.  From that moment on Zepherine has consistently been one of the more popular Old Garden Climbing Roses around.  The fact that its also thornless certainly also helped it achieve that status.

Oh, I've grown it over the years - and never really fallen in love with it.  The blooms are a little too hot pink for my taste and for me it blackspots consistently.  Even if I leave it alone to let it try to build its own immunities, come summer I can still count on its foliage looking like the face of a coal miner just finishing a 12 hour shift.

Kathleen Harrop is a sport of Zepherine Drouhin.  What is a sport?  Simple.  Every now and then a rose throws off a cane bearing a different colored bloom or a different growth habit.  If one is observant, you take propagation material from the cane and see if the sport remains consistent as you continue to propagate it.  If you propagate a few generations and it does, then indeed you have a stable sport.

I planted my first Kathleen Harrop at our farm some 15 years ago.  I've never regretted it.  The blooms are a softer pink, it is also thornless but best of all it rarely gets disease for me.  I grow her as a large free standing shrub and year in and year out she covers herself with undulations of shell pink, fragrant blooms.  A real standout in our garden.  Why not give her a home in your garden.

Here is some more information;

Bourbon, light pink, Zone 6 - Introduced in 1919 by Dickson, Colin - Growth Size & Characteristics are: large shrub (5'+), short climber (under 10'), fragrant, repeat flowering, thornless.

Pruning technique.  Depending on if you want to grow her as a shrub or a climber we have two videos on our You Tube Channel for you to look at.

1. As a Shrub.  Pruning Roses That Grow From The Base 
2. As a Climber.  Pruning and Controlling A Climbing Rose 

You can purchase Kathleen Harrop from these fine Independent Rose Nurseries.
Rogue Valley Roses - United States
Peter Beales Roses - United Kingdom
Vintage Gardens - United States
Northland Rosarium - United States
Pickering Nurseries - Canada