What Is the Largest Type of Rosebush?

Climbing Roses

• China introduced the Lady Banks Rose to England in 1807. Once-blooming in spring, Lady Banks is available in white or yellow and is nearly thorn-free. The white variety is violet-scented. Lady Banks is a rose for low-frost climates. Climbing Cecile Brunner is a light pink polyantha rose that has small blossoms with a spicy-sweet fragrance. It can grow to 30 feet tall with a width of up to 20 feet.

Grandiflora and Hybrid Tea Roses

• Crossing hybrid tea roses with floribundas created grandiflora roses. Queen Elizabeth is among the most widely grown rose in the world, producing pink roses on large, vigorous, freestanding shrubs growing to 10 feet tall. The classically formed hybrid tea roses named Mr. Lincoln are fragrant, deep velvety red. Mr. Lincoln is a vigorous grower to 7 feet tall on a freestanding, upright shrub. Hybrid tea Frederic Mistral reaches 6 feet high on a wide, upright bush, the large pale pink roses offering an intensely strong old-rose scent.

Old Garden Roses

• Mademoiselle Claire Jacquier is a light-yellow flowering Noisette rose that will grow more than 30 feet high and 10 feet wide. The flowers, which bloom once in spring with an occasional repeat, are strongly fragrant on a nearly thornless plant. Felicite Perpetue is a Hybrid Sempervirens, growing to 20 feet high and producing fully double, fragrant light pink flowers once each spring. Zephirine Drouhin is a bourbon rose with double, dark pink, raspberry-scented flowers. It can be grown as a freestanding shrub to 8 feet tall and wide. Madame Isaac Pereire is deep-pink flowering bourbon introduced in France in 1861. The fragrant roses bloom in flushes through the season on a bush up to 8 feet tall.

Modern Shrub Roses

• While rosebushes are technically all shrubs, in modern usage the term applies to how the bush is used in the landscape. Modern shrub roses are versatile, free-flowering plants. Some varieties get large enough to be trained as climbers. Pleine De Grace reaches as much as 10 feet tall as a freestanding, once-blooming shrub with fragrant, single white flowers. David Austin's English shrub rose Abraham Darby is a vigorous grower to 8 feet tall, with richly fragrant, large, fully double flowers of pink to copper. Graham Thomas will reach 12 feet with fragrant, deep, bright yellow blooms.