Rose 'Hot Chocolate' – The Award-Winning Novelty Floribunda with Unique Chocolate Brown Beauty
Rose 'Hot Chocolate' stands as one of the most unusual and captivating floribunda roses available, earning its reputation as 'Novelty Rose of the Year 2006' by the National Rose Society. This exceptional variety produces abundant clusters of uniquely coloured blooms that transform from rusty orange buds to warm, smoky chocolate brown flowers, creating a spectacular display of extraordinary colour. With its strong scent, excellent disease resistance, compact growth habit, and award-winning credentials, 'Hot Chocolate' represents the perfect choice for gardeners seeking both remarkable visual impact and reliable garden performance.
Headlines
- Type: Hardy floribunda rose
- Eventual Height: 1m
- Eventual Spread: 60cm
- Flowering: July to September
- Hardiness: Hardy in the UK down to temperatures of -20 to -15 degrees Celsius (RHS hardiness rating H6)
- Growth Habit: Compact, bushy, reasonably compact growth
- Colour: Rusty orange buds opening to warm smoky chocolate brown
- Form: Large clusters of full double blooms
- Size: Medium-sized blooms in trusses
- Petals: Full double formation
- Fragrance: Strong scent with good fragrance
Spectacular Flowers
The defining magic of 'Hot Chocolate' lies in its extraordinary colour transformation that showcases nature's artistry in the most unusual way. The pointed buds begin as rusty tan-orange and open to reveal warm, smoky chocolate brown blooms with rich velvety-brown tones, creating a colour combination that is truly unique in the rose world.
The full double blooms are produced in large clusters throughout the season, with each truss containing multiple perfectly formed flowers that exemplify the unusual beauty of this award-winning variety. The deep rich orange to chocolate brown colouration provides exceptional garden impact, particularly effective in 'hot' themed borders where the warm tones create sophisticated garden displays.
Delightful Fragrance
'Hot Chocolate' offers a strong scent that adds an extra dimension of appeal to its already extraordinary visual impact. This good fragrance creates a delightful olfactory experience that enhances the warm, inviting quality of this remarkable variety.
The strong fragrance makes this rose perfect for positions where both the unique chocolate colouration and delightful scent can be fully appreciated throughout the extended flowering season.
Outstanding Garden Performance
This superb floribunda demonstrates exceptional garden performance with handsome, glossy foliage and very dark green healthy foliage that provides the perfect backdrop for the chocolate brown blooms. The variety exhibits compact, bushy growth that creates excellent structure throughout the growing season.
'Hot Chocolate' boasts leathery foliage with good growth and excellent disease resistance, ensuring reliable performance year after year with minimal intervention required. This robust constitution makes it perfect for gardeners seeking both extraordinary beauty and dependable results.
Continuous Flowering Performance
As a repeat-flowering floribunda, 'Hot Chocolate' produces blooms continually throughout the season from July to September, ensuring months of spectacular chocolate colour and continuous garden impact. The variety flowers from late spring to fall with excellent repeat performance.
The blooms appear in trusses continuously throughout the season, producing consistent displays of the magnificent chocolate clusters that make this rose so highly valued by enthusiasts seeking something genuinely unique and conversation-starting.
Growing Requirements
- Position: Full sun for best colour development and flowering performance
- Soil: Well-draining, fertile soil - adaptable to various soil types
- Spacing: Allow 45-60cm spacing to accommodate the compact spread
- Care: Standard floribunda care applies - regular watering during dry periods and annual feeding with balanced rose fertiliser
- Containers: Suitable for growing in large pots on sunny patios due to compact size
The adaptable nature and excellent disease resistance make this variety suitable for a wide range of growing conditions whilst maintaining outstanding performance.
Garden Uses
'Hot Chocolate' offers exceptional versatility for various garden applications:
- Hot Themed Borders: Perfect for gardens with warm colour schemes
- Container Gardens: Ideal for large pots on patios and terraces due to compact size
- Mixed Borders: Provides extraordinary colour and structure in perennial plantings
- Specimen Plantings: Outstanding as focal points showcasing unique colour
- Cut Flower Gardens: Exceptional for unusual and conversation-starting arrangements
- Novelty Collections: Essential for collections of unique and rare roses
- Small Gardens: Perfect for smaller spaces requiring maximum visual impact
Award-Winning Excellence
'Hot Chocolate' was voted 'Novelty Rose of the Year 2006' by the National Rose Society, confirming its exceptional and unique characteristics. The variety bears the breeder code 'Wekpaltez' and is protected by Plant Breeders' Rights (PBR), ensuring its distinctive qualities.
This prestigious award validates the variety's outstanding uniqueness and garden performance, making it a trusted choice for gardeners seeking roses with proven novelty appeal and reliable characteristics.
Breeding Excellence
'Hot Chocolate' was bred by Tom Carruth and introduced by Weeks Wholesale Rose Grower, representing the finest tradition of American rose breeding focused on unique colour development and garden performance. The variety is also known by synonyms including 'Kiwi' and 'Nubya'.
This prestigious breeding background ensures both quality and distinctive characteristics that set this variety apart from conventional roses.
Perfect for Cutting
The strong, compact growth and large clusters make 'Hot Chocolate' exceptional for cut flower arrangements. The unique chocolate brown blooms combined with their strong scent create arrangements that provide extraordinary visual impact and delightful fragrance, perfect for dramatic indoor displays and special occasions.
Companion Planting
The warm chocolate brown blooms of 'Hot Chocolate' work beautifully in 'hot' themed borders alongside orange, yellow, and red companions that complement the warm tones. The handsome, glossy, very dark green foliage provides excellent contrast and seasonal interest, making it particularly effective against lighter backgrounds.
Care and Maintenance
'Hot Chocolate' is an easy-care variety with excellent disease resistance and leathery, healthy foliage. The compact, bushy growth and robust constitution mean minimal intervention is required, making it suitable for gardeners seeking unique roses with practical growing advantages.
Regular deadheading of spent bloom clusters encourages the continuous flowering habit throughout the extended season, whilst annual pruning maintains the compact form and encourages vigorous new growth for optimal colour development.
Why Choose 'Hot Chocolate'?
Rose 'Hot Chocolate' represents the perfect choice for gardeners seeking a truly extraordinary rose that offers something completely different from conventional varieties. Its combination of unique chocolate brown blooms, award-winning novelty status, strong fragrance, and compact growth habit make it both a stunning garden feature and practical growing choice.
Whether you're creating warm-themed borders, seeking an unforgettable novelty rose, or wanting a variety that embodies pure uniqueness and conversation-starting appeal, 'Hot Chocolate' delivers outstanding results. Its award-winning credentials, proven performance, and distinctive characteristics make it an essential choice for gardeners who appreciate roses that combine horticultural excellence with truly remarkable and unforgettable 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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