Floribunda Rose 'Marmalade Skies'

This is one of my very favorite roses. When I bought my first it was described as a "blooming machine" and indeed it is. The color is b...Read Moreright and vibrant, the bush gets covered with flowers, and the rebloom is quite fast. The fragrance is faint. It seems to be reasonably resistant to the various rose diseases, though like nearly all roses, it needs spraying for black spot. It is a quite short bush, staying under three feet tall in my garden.

Besides being beautiful in the garden, this one also makes a good cut flower later in the summer when the stems get a bit longer. The finest bouquet I ever assembled was composed of layers of this rose and "Honey Perfume." It nearly always blooms in clusters, so if you use it as a cut flower, you will be using a cluster of these, not a single bloom. As a cut flower it is not long-lasting, though.

Its one weakness in my garden is that it is more tender than some other floribundas. I have had three Marmalade Skies in the last ten years; one was lost to a winter, and the other two have little left alive after a NE Wisconsin (zone 5) winter, even when boxed up and buried in ground. Every spring I feel a little trepidation when unburying the two remaining roses of this type, because I really like them, and this variety is getting harder to find.

A great rose: it gets a strong thumbs up.

When I had the worst problems this spring (spider mites galore coupled with a bad case of blackspot most every where after a full day of ...Read Moreover 80 degree Texas rain) this plant was one of three that managed to look great. It had a little black spots here and there, but mostly it was still clean. Spider mites did get on it, but much less than other plants and the leaves stayed green and healthy looking regardless of the spider mites. It never suffers from die back due to snap freezes and the colors (bush & flower) are really wonderful. If by chance it gets some defoliation, the new leaves pop out super fast and clean as a whistle. It doesn't mind an out of season hair cut either. Keeps a nice compact shape even though it gets a little over shadowing from a huge sage bush on the other side of the picket fence. It blooms good, although I do tend to remove spend blooms pretty regular. If I didn't I would probably get less blooms. I also suspect that if that tall sage bush wasn't throwing shade toward it I would probably get more blooms than I currently do. As with most roses, placement is important. The blooms are very pretty. Not heavily petaled, about 20+ but soft ruffling large petals giving you a 3" flower that never lays flat making it look like it has more petals than it does. Also has a little staying power. I can count on at least a few flowers and usually more than that even in the high heat. I really like this bush. I would like to grow "livin' easy" so that I could compare the two.

The color is very bright. I have it planted in front of a pomegranate tree with two other roses, 'Sonia' and 'Hot Cocoa'. When the rose...Read Mores and pomegranate are all in bloom, the area just glows.

This rose perform very well. Beautiful bright blooms and nice shrub habit. Doesn't get too tall! No problems with it whatsoever.