Rose 'Bonica' - Standard Rose Tree (Floribunda)
Standard Rose 'Bonica' represents one of the most celebrated and reliable roses in the world, now available in stunning tree form with a 90-120cm clear stem. This exceptional variety produces abundant clusters of soft shell-pink, semi-double blooms that create a spectacular weeping display of colour. Named World's Favorite Rose in 1997 and inducted into the Rose Hall of Fame 2003, 'Bonica' combines outstanding disease resistance, continuous flowering performance, and elegant standard form to create the perfect choice for formal gardens, focal points, and sophisticated garden displays.
Headlines
- Type: Hardy standard floribunda rose on 90-120cm stem
- Eventual Height: 1.6m (including stem and head)
- Eventual Spread: 80cm diameter head
- Flowering: June to November
- Hardiness: Hardy in the UK down to temperatures of -15 to -10 degrees Celcius (RHS hardiness rating H5)
- Growth Habit: Weeping standard with arching, cascading branches
- Colour: Bright, pale pink when they first open, later fade to near white
- Form: Semi-double blooms with 26 to 40 petals, each 5-7.5cm in diameter
- Fragrance: Sweet scent
Spectacular Flowers
The defining beauty of Standard 'Bonica' lies in its abundant cascading clusters of soft shell-pink blooms that create a magnificent weeping display. Buds are a rich, dark pink color. Flowers are bright, pale pink when they first open, and later fade to near white in warmer climates, creating an ever-changing tapestry of gentle colour throughout the blooming cycle.
Flowers come in clusters of five to fifteen, with each cluster containing multiple perfectly formed semi-double blooms. The large clusters of 2 1/2" soft candy-pink, fully double blooms are produced on arching canes, creating the spectacular weeping effect that makes standard roses so highly prized for formal garden displays.
Delightful Fragrance
'Bonica' offers fragrant flowers with a sweet fragrance that adds an extra dimension of charm to its already impressive garden presence. This lovely scent creates a gentle olfactory experience that enhances the romantic quality of this celebrated variety.
The sweet fragrance makes this standard rose perfect for positioning near seating areas, along pathways, or as focal points where the combination of cascading blooms and delightful scent can be fully appreciated throughout the extended flowering season.
Outstanding Garden Performance
This superb standard rose demonstrates exceptional garden performance with dark, glossy foliage that provides the perfect backdrop for the soft pink blooms. The variety exhibits vigorous, bushy plant with dark, leathery foliage that creates elegant arching branches cascading from the clear stem.
'Bonica' boasts excellent disease resistance and has been awarded the prestigious German ADR label for its excellent disease resistance. This robust constitution ensures reliable performance year after year with minimal intervention required, making it perfect for gardeners seeking both spectacular form and dependable results.
Continuous Flowering Performance
As a repeat-flowering standard, 'Bonica' provides blooms from late spring until frost, ensuring months of spectacular cascading colour. Its double, soft pink flowers, gathered in bunches, appear all summer long, with the standard form creating maximum visual impact throughout the growing period.
The variety produces flowers en-mass through the summer, with continuous blooming from late spring until the first frosts, ensuring gardeners enjoy consistent displays of the magnificent pink clusters for an exceptionally long period.
Growing Requirements
- Position: Full sun for best flowering, though can prosper in half-shade (minimum 5-6 hours of sunlight per day)
- Soil: Prefers moist fertile well-drained soil but will tolerate most soil types
- Care: Standard rose care applies - secure staking, regular watering during dry periods, and annual feeding. Avoid crowding and overhead watering to discourage diseases
- Support: Requires permanent staking due to standard form
The good rain- and heat resistance and adaptable nature make this variety suitable for a wide range of growing conditions whilst maintaining outstanding performance.
Garden Uses
Standard 'Bonica' offers exceptional versatility for various garden applications:
- Formal Gardens: Perfect as elegant focal points in formal layouts
- Specimen Planting: Outstanding as standalone features creating dramatic impact
- Pathway Marking: Ideal for marking entrances or important garden transitions
- Container Gardens: Excellent for use in containers on patios and terraces
- Small Gardens: Provides maximum impact without taking up ground space
- Rose Gardens: Essential for creating height variation in rose collections
- Cut Flower Gardens: Excellent for cut flower arrangements
Award-Winning Excellence
'Bonica' has earned multiple prestigious recognitions including All-America Rose Selections winner in 1987, World's Favorite Rose in 1997, and inducted into the Rose Hall of Fame 2003. The variety has also received the prestigious German ADR label for exceptional disease resistance.
These international awards confirm the variety's outstanding combination of flower quality, disease resistance, and garden performance, making it one of the most trusted roses available.
Breeding Heritage
Bred by Marie-Louise Meilland in France in 1982, 'Bonica' represents the finest tradition of French rose breeding from the world-renowned Meilland family. The variety bears the breeder code MEIdomonac, confirming its authentic Meilland heritage and ensuring both quality and reliability.
Perfect for Cutting
The arching canes and abundant clusters make Standard 'Bonica' exceptional for cut flower arrangements. The large double fragrant pink flowers in clusters create arrangements that provide both visual impact and sweet fragrance, perfect for indoor enjoyment and special occasions.
Companion Planting
The soft pink blooms of Standard 'Bonica' work beautifully with silver foliage plants that complement the gentle colour tones, whilst white or purple companions create striking contrasts. The dark, glossy foliage provides excellent structure as an elevated feature above lower plantings.
Care and Maintenance
Standard 'Bonica' requires standard tree rose care with particular attention to secure staking and support. The easy to grow, disease resistant nature means minimal intervention is required for pest and disease management.
Prune in late winter to remove damaged and diseased canes and to control the size, whilst regular deadheading encourages continued flowering. The standard will also produce orange rose hips in the fall if flowers are left unpruned.
Why Choose Standard 'Bonica'?
Standard Rose 'Bonica' represents the perfect choice for gardeners seeking the ultimate combination of award-winning excellence and elegant tree form. Its status as the World's Favorite Rose combined with spectacular cascading blooms, exceptional disease resistance, and continuous flowering performance makes it both a stunning garden feature and practical growing choice.
Whether you're creating formal garden focal points, seeking maximum impact in small spaces, or wanting a standard rose with proven reliability, 'Bonica' delivers outstanding results. Its multiple awards, proven performance, and elegant form make it an essential choice for gardeners who appreciate roses that combine horticultural excellence with sophisticated garden presence and lasting beauty.
Reasons to Buy Roses from Jacksons Nurseries
(1) ‘Excellent’ on Trustpilot
Buy with confidence from the only online rose grower rated ‘Excellent’ 4.9* on Trustpilot. We have been a trusted supplier of roses for 3 generations. We take pride in growing our own roses in the field before potting them up, allowing for meticulous quality control to sale.
(2) Best Prices Guaranteed – Direct from the Grower
Save £££s by buying direct from a grower you can trust. We’ve already price checked all of our roses against competitors so you don’t have to. We are so confident we offer the best value, if you find a rose of the same type and grade elsewhere, we’ll beat it by 10%.
(3) 12 Month Plants Guarantee
We offer a 12 month guarantee on every plant that you buy from us that we have classified as Fully Hardy. If a plant you've bought from us fails in the first year, we will either replace it or refund you. See our satisfaction guarantee page for more details and conditions.
(4) Third generation family-owned nursery specialising in roses
Jackson’s Nurseries is a 3rd generation family owned business which has been growing roses for over 60 years. Roses have always been our specialty, as you can see from the colourful array of blooms in the background to the old family photo below. Today, we offer over 200 different varieties of floribundas, hybrid teas, patio, shrub and David Austin roses. Our roses are initially grown in the field before being potted up for website dispatch.
(5) Grown at altitude to produce strong, healthy plants
Our North Staffordshire nursery is situated at 250 metres above sea level, producing strong, hardy plants that will thrive in your garden. Our nursery sits on clay, so you can be sure our roses can handle heavy soil too.
(6) Help & Advice and Aftercare
We are help to help you with any help and advice you need in choosing, planting and growing your roses before, during and after your purchase from us. The help and advice section of our website has extensive information, see below some examples of articles you may find useful:
- Different types of roses and what they each mean
- Guide to climbing roses
- Guide to floribunda roses
- Guide to hybrid tea roses
- How to plant a climbing rose
- How to grow hybrid tea roses
How our roses are supplied through the seasons
All our roses are cultivated in an open field and are carefully dug up when the weather is optimal, typically in October or November. While other nurseries supply roses bare root, once our field-grown roses have been potted up we supply them freshly potted. This better protects the roots and helps keep them moist in transit, ensuring your roses arrive as healthy as when they left our nursery. So don’t be alarmed if the compost comes away from the roots when you remove them from the pot.
The roses can remain in their pots over the winter, as long as they are properly watered and fed, but it's best to plant them out as soon as possible. If you do plant them straight away make sure the planting mix is prepared first, hold the root close to the top of the hole as you tip the pot upside down and try to keep as much compost as possible from falling away. They will already be pruned, so no additional pruning is needed except for trimming any dead tips. Regular pruning can start in late winter, the year after planting.
Rose Types
Hybrid Tea Roses (HT)
Hybrid Tea roses are probably the most popular group of roses, available in both bush and standard form they have long flower stems and shapely blooms. Blooms are typically medium to large in size, with many petals which form a distinct central cone.
Floribunda Roses (FL)
Floribunda roses bears its flowers in clusters or trusses, with several blooms open at time in each truss. A popular choice the Floribunda rose group is unrivalled for colour, reliability and longevity as a bedding display however the flower form in generally inferior to the Hybrid Tea.
Patio Roses (PATIO)
Patio roses were introduced in the 1980’s and the group now contains several popular varieties. Generally low-growing roses that were once grouped with the Floribuna group but have now been put in their own group of compact versions. Usually growing about 50cm high they make excellent plants for patio containers or at the front of borders.
Climbing Roses (CLM)
Climbing roses as the name suggests are the perfect choice for covering a wall or screen. Often grouped together with Ramblers, Climbers tend to have stiffer stems, larger flowers but smaller trusses than Ramblers.
Rambling Roses (RAM)
Rambling roses are often grouped with Climbing Roses but the ramblers tend to have a more pliable stems that can be used to run along the soil to use as groundcover or can be used to make weeping standards.
Miniature Roses (MINI)
Miniature roses have increased in popularity in recent years due to their versatility, even grown indoors as temporary pot plants that grow to a maximum height of 40cm. An ideal choice for planting in tubs, edging beds and rockeries.
English Roses (ENG)
Often referred to as Austin or David Austin Roses, English roses are hybrids of old English roses and more modern varieties bread by David Austin to provide the best of both, mixing old rose shapes and scents with more modern colour range, compact habits and repeat flowering.
Planting Advice
Roses like a generous root space, so dig a deep hole approximately twice as wide as the current root system, preferably adding composted organic matter to the soil. Never plant into frozen soil – in winter, await a frost-free period. Carefully remove the pot and gently tease the roots apart to spread them around the hole. Position the plant so that the ‘bud point’ (the place where the shoots emerge from, where the cultivated rose was grafted onto the rootstock) is at soil level. Replace the soil, firming it down gently, then water copiously. Ideally, a general purpose fertiliser should be applied to the surrounding soil as a top dressing. We also highly recommend the use of Rose Rootgrow, which provides a friendly fungus that prevents ‘rose replant syndrome’.
Buying our Roses
Pot Size
Most of our roses are supplied in a 4 litre pot although this may vary slightly depending on rose variety. If the size of pot differes significatly from 4 litres then we will make this clear somewhere on the product page.
Seasonality
Our roses are grown outdoors and as such are subject to seasonal changes. As we sell potted stock throughout the year your rose may not arrive and look like you expect it to. If you are uncertain how your rose will arrive (especially if buying for a gift) then we suggest you contact us prior to making a purchase.
Freshly Potted
Each year a new batch of roses is potted up ready for the following season. Once potted (usually November/December time) they go on sale as 'Freshly Potted'. If you purchase a freshly potted rose and plant it soon after you will find that when removing the rose from the pot there will be a lot of loose soil as the roots will not have had time to grow and bind the compost.
Pruned/Cut Back
In autumn the majority of our roses have finished flowering and begin to look untidy, at this point we prune them quite hard in preparation for the following season. We continue to sell roses throughout the year, when a rose has been pruned in such a way we will identify it has being so. If you are not sure what to expect then please ask prior to making a purchase. Some garden centres/supermarkets sell stock that has been grown abroad or in poly-tunnels so they look 'picture perfect' out of season, while this is ideal for a gift they are short lived once planted.
Aftercare
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