Rosa 'William Morris' - English Rose

The English rose 'William Morris', like the varieties 'Geoff Hamilton' and 'A Shropshire Lad', is a very vigorous rose with an arching habit and glossy foliage, which can create a beautiful backdrop in the garden. The romanticism of its flowering is matched only by its generosity. From summer to autumn, it produces delicious apricot pink flowers, shining in classic double rosette form, exuding a powerful fragrance of tea rose, quite indescribable. Remarkably healthy, it has the advantage of tolerating competition from other plants' roots.

When pruned, this rose will form a large bush measuring 1.5 m (5ft) in height and 1.2 m (4ft) in width. Its growth is rapid and vigorous, as is often the case with roses from the Leander group, and its thorny stems are covered with disease-resistant foliage. The rose-orange buds on this large and recurrent bush are accompanied by slightly incurved rosette-shaped flowers, 9 cm (4in) wide. They are a more intense apricot pink in the centre and a pinkish flesh colour towards the outer part of the corolla. They exude a delightful fragrance, somewhat evoking banana but remaining in the tradition of tea roses.

Of exemplary vigour, even in rocky soils if they are sufficiently deep, the rose 'William Morris' 'Auswill' forms a large bush that will be magnificent at the back of borders or the base of evergreen trees such as the holm oak or Portuguese laurel. It can also be mixed with flowering shrubs (lilacs, spireas, deutzias, mock oranges, kolwitzias) in the back of the garden. In mixed borders, it will accompany perennial plants, to which it will bring exuberance and fragrance, as well as delicate annuals and even grasses, whose tufted foliage will hide its base, which tends to become bare. It can easily be trained as a climber on a small arch, a pergola, or above an entrance or gate alongside a clematis. 

Obtained by David Austin in 1998. English rose from the Leander group.