Survey: shrub roses drive the rose market
17 Jun, 2010 LDB SolutionsTraditional rose varieties pitted against new varieties requiring less work and inputs.
Easy-care shrub roses are now taking a greater share of the market than fussier traditional rose varieties, say garden retailers across the country who responded to a recent survey.
And now, with “green” and “environmentally sustainable” products at a premium, garden experts are forecasting an even bigger run on shrub roses. According to Tesselaar Plants, they require less water and fewer chemicals.
Easy-care shrub roses are now the rule, not the exception. In fact, About.com Gardening Guide Marie Iannotti cited “disease-resistant roses” in her Dec. 27, 2009, post “The Best Gardening Trends of the 2000s.”
“Disease-resistant plants, in general, have been good news for gardeners,” read her post. “But when the prima donnas of the garden, roses, start to flaunt their ease of growing, you know things have changed.”
If you still think roses are fussy and time-consuming, she continued, you’re definitely growing the wrong ones.
And the color selection, varieties and quality keep getting better.
Tesselaar's Flower Carpet Amber, one of three new Next Generation Flower Carpet roses recently won the designation as an All Deutschland Rose. All three Next Generation Colors, Amber, Scarlet and Pink Supreme, also outperformed three out of four home testers’ other roses, in addition to other perennials and shrubs, in a nationwide survey conducted to find out how they survived in last summer’s weather extremes. They also performed the best of all roses tested between 2006 and 2009 at Cornell University, according to the company.
“They’re inherently eco-friendly because they’re drought-tolerant and disease- and pest-resistant,” says Anthony Tesselaar, cofounder and president of Tesslaar Plants. “That means they don’t need all the water and chemical sprays required by traditional roses."
A 2009 study by brand-marketing firm BBMG, he points out, revealed that a majority of consumers believe they “can make a positive difference by purchasing products from socially or environmentally responsible companies.”
According to the study, 67% of consumers said they would buy socially or environmentally responsible products, even in a difficult economy.
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