Rose 'It's a Wonderful Life' ('Dictwix') - Floribunda Rose
A spectacular and award-winning floribunda rose that produces magnificent displays of large, fully double blooms in beautiful blends of pink, orange, and peach tones, combining light fragrance with exceptional disease resistance and continuous flowering performance throughout the season, making it the perfect choice for gardeners seeking a proven winner with outstanding beauty and reliability that truly lives up to its heartwarming name.
Headlines
- Plant Type: Hardy deciduous floribunda rose
- Eventual Height: 1.6m
- Eventual Spread: 80cm
- Flowering Period: July to September (repeat flowering until first frosts)
- Flower Colour: Blends of pink, orange, and peach
- Hardiness: Hardy in the UK down to temperatures of -20 to -15 degrees Celcius (RHS hardiness rating H6)
- Growth Habit: Upright, bushy, robust
- Flower Type: Large, fully double, clustered blooms (up to 10cm across)
- Fragrance: Light, pleasant scent
- Introduced: 2022 by Colin Dickson
- Awards: Rose of the Year 2022
Overview
Rose 'It's a Wonderful Life' ('Dictwix') is a truly exceptional floribunda rose that has earned the prestigious title of Rose of the Year 2022, demonstrating its outstanding merit and garden performance. This remarkable variety produces magnificent large, fully double blooms in beautiful blends of pink, orange, and peach tones that create a warm, joyful display throughout the growing season. The most impressive feature is its proven reliability and exceptional disease resistance, which was thoroughly tested during two years of rigorous trials and assessments by specialist teams. With its upright, bushy growth habit and lustrous green foliage, this rose represents outstanding value for gardeners seeking an award-winning variety that combines spectacular beauty with dependable performance and continuous flowering from early summer through to the first frosts.
Key Characteristics
The outstanding appeal of 'It's a Wonderful Life' lies in its large, fully double blooms that showcase beautiful colour blends of pink, orange, and peach tones. Each flower displays perfect form with up to 10cm across dimensions, creating substantial visual impact when produced in characteristic floribunda clusters. The colour intensity varies beautifully throughout the season, with each bloom showing unique combinations of the warm, harmonious tones that create a constantly evolving display. The light, pleasant fragrance adds a delightful sensory dimension to the visual spectacle, whilst the long-lasting nature of the blooms ensures extended enjoyment both in the garden and when cut for indoor arrangements, making this rose exceptionally valuable for creating sustained displays of warmth and beauty throughout the growing season.
Growth Characteristics
This floribunda rose displays a naturally upright, bushy growth habit that creates an attractive, well-proportioned shrub perfect for formal and informal garden settings. The plant develops into a robust, vigorous bush with excellent branching structure and strong constitution. The medium-sized growth habit ensures prolific flowering whilst maintaining an ideal size for most garden situations, including mixed borders, formal bedding, and container cultivation. The upright nature makes it particularly suitable for rose borders, commemorative plantings, and positioning as a focal point where its award-winning blooms can be fully appreciated and celebrated by visitors and family alike.
Flowering Performance
From June through to September, with continuous repeat flowering until the first frosts, 'It's a Wonderful Life' delivers exceptional flowering displays that provide months of warm, joyful colour throughout the extended growing season. The plant produces magnificent large, fully double blooms in impressive clusters, creating substantial visual impact with each successive flush of flowering. The flowers showcase perfect form with beautiful blends of pink, orange, and peach tones that maintain their intensity and beauty throughout the flowering period. The reliable repeat-flowering nature combined with the light fragrance ensures continuous colour and gentle perfume, with regular deadheading encouraging prolific blooming and maintaining the spectacular warm-toned display well into autumn, making it particularly valuable for long-season garden interest and celebratory appeal.
Growing Conditions
'It's a Wonderful Life' thrives in full sun positions with fertile, well-drained soil, requiring at least 6-8 hours of direct sunlight daily for optimal flowering performance and colour intensity. The rose demonstrates excellent adaptability to various soil types and growing conditions, making it suitable for a wide range of garden situations. For best results, plant in fertile, well-drained loam with a pH between 6.0 and 6.8 that has been improved with organic matter such as well-rotted compost or manure, ensuring consistent moisture levels during the growing season. The rose benefits from good air circulation around the foliage, which helps maintain the exceptional disease resistance and promotes healthy, vigorous growth. Space plants appropriately to ensure proper air circulation and prevent disease whilst allowing each plant to develop its full award-winning potential.
Hardiness and Disease Resistance
This rose demonstrates exceptional hardiness suitable for growing throughout the UK, being fully hardy and showing outstanding tolerance of typical British weather conditions including frost, wind, and challenging growing conditions. One of the most notable features of 'It's a Wonderful Life' is its excellent disease resistance, which was thoroughly proven during extensive trials and significantly reduces maintenance requirements whilst ensuring healthy growth throughout the season. The healthy, lustrous green foliage remains attractive and vigorous, providing excellent disease resistance that makes this variety particularly suitable for organic gardening approaches and low-maintenance gardens. This outstanding disease resistance combined with its robust constitution makes it an ideal choice for gardeners seeking reliable, award-winning excellence with spectacular results.
Care and Maintenance
'It's a Wonderful Life' requires standard floribunda rose care to maintain optimal health and prolific flowering performance. Apply a balanced rose fertiliser and organic mulch in late winter or early spring (February/March), followed by another application of balanced fertiliser in early summer to support the continuous flowering habit. Water deeply once a week, increasing frequency during hot, dry periods to maintain consistent soil moisture. The excellent disease resistance and robust constitution mean this variety requires minimal intervention, making it an ideal choice for gardeners seeking spectacular results without intensive maintenance. Regular deadheading of spent blooms throughout the summer encourages continued flowering and maintains the attractive appearance of the plant whilst promoting the development of new warm-toned blooms.
Garden Applications
'It's a Wonderful Life' excels in formal rose gardens where its warm pink, orange, and peach tones create stunning focal points and celebratory displays. The upright, bushy growth habit makes it ideal for rose borders, mixed borders, and formal bedding schemes where its reliable performance and beautiful colour blends can be fully appreciated. The manageable size and excellent disease resistance make it perfect for smaller gardens, patio areas, and courtyard spaces, where the award-winning blooms provide brilliant colour and uplifting atmosphere. The rose works beautifully as a specimen plant or in groups, creating impressive displays that combine visual warmth with symbolic meaning, making it particularly suitable for commemorative plantings and special celebration gardens.
Container Growing
The compact, robust growth habit and excellent disease resistance make 'It's a Wonderful Life' exceptionally well-suited to container cultivation for patios, balconies, and areas where soil conditions may be challenging. The rose thrives in large containers with adequate drainage, using high-quality multipurpose compost enriched with slow-release rose fertiliser. Container-grown specimens require more frequent watering and feeding than those planted in the ground, but the manageable size and continuous flowering ensure spectacular results. The award-winning status and beautiful warm-toned blooms make container-grown plants particularly valuable for positioning prominently where the celebratory colour and light fragrance can be fully appreciated, creating excellent focal points for entertaining areas and special occasions.
Seasonal Interest
Throughout the growing season, 'It's a Wonderful Life' provides continuous interest that evolves beautifully with the changing months. Spring brings the emergence of fresh, healthy, lustrous green foliage and the formation of flower buds that build anticipation for the spectacular award-winning flowering display. The extended flowering season from June through to the first frosts ensures months of warm, joyful colour, with the beautiful blends of pink, orange, and peach tones creating uplifting displays that capture the essence of celebration and happiness. The healthy, attractive foliage remains decorative throughout the season, providing an excellent backdrop for the magnificent blooms and maintaining garden interest even during periods between flowering flushes.
Cutting and Floral Arrangements
The large, fully double blooms with strong stems make 'It's a Wonderful Life' exceptional for cutting and creating stunning indoor arrangements for special occasions. The beautiful blends of pink, orange, and peach tones create extraordinary visual impact in arrangements, whilst the light fragrance adds a delightful dimension to indoor displays. The long-lasting nature of the blooms ensures excellent vase life, making them particularly suitable for celebrations, anniversaries, and special events. The substantial size and perfect form of the blooms add elegance and warmth to arrangements, whilst the sturdy stems provide excellent support, ensuring professional-quality displays that bring the award-winning beauty and gentle fragrance indoors for extended enjoyment.
Fragrance Profile
The light, pleasant fragrance of 'It's a Wonderful Life' provides a delightful sensory experience that perfectly complements the visual beauty of the warm-toned blooms. This gentle scent emanates from the fully double flowers and adds a refined fragrance dimension to garden displays without being overwhelming. The subtle fragrance profile makes this rose particularly suitable for positioning near seating areas, pathways, or windows where the pleasant perfume can be appreciated during quiet moments in the garden. The understated scent allows the spectacular visual impact of the award-winning blooms to take centre stage whilst providing a gentle olfactory pleasure that enhances the overall garden experience.
Wildlife Value
The large, accessible blooms provide valuable nectar sources for bees and other pollinators throughout the extended flowering season from June until the first frosts. The continuous blooming habit makes this rose an excellent choice for wildlife-friendly gardens, supporting local pollinator populations throughout the growing season and into autumn. The light fragrance and clustered flower form serve as attractants for beneficial insects, contributing to a healthy garden ecosystem and biodiversity. The repeat-flowering nature ensures that wildlife benefits extend throughout the growing season, making this rose a valuable addition to pollinator-friendly garden schemes and sustainable gardening practices.
Companion Planting
The beautiful warm blends of pink, orange, and peach tones in 'It's a Wonderful Life' provide excellent opportunities for companion planting with a wide range of garden plants. The warm, harmonious colours work beautifully with complementary blue and purple flowers such as lavender, salvia, and catmint, creating stunning colour combinations that enhance the rose's joyful beauty. The variety pairs exceptionally well with silver-foliaged plants such as artemisia and lamb's ear, creating sophisticated combinations that highlight the warm tones. Cream and white flowers provide fresh, elegant contrasts that allow the warm-toned blooms to take centre stage, whilst deep green foliage plants create dramatic backgrounds that showcase the award-winning colour blends to perfection.
Award-Winning Recognition
'It's a Wonderful Life' has earned the prestigious title of Rose of the Year 2022, a coveted accolade that recognises exceptional garden merit and outstanding performance. This award followed two years of rigorous trials and assessments by specialist teams, confirming the rose's combination of beauty, reliability, and disease resistance. The award-winning status reflects the rose's exceptional qualities including its succession of long-lasting, lightly scented flowers on robust and disease-resistant plants with lustrous green foliage. This recognition makes it an ideal choice for gardeners seeking proven excellence with outstanding garden performance and reliable results.
Celebratory Significance
True to its heartwarming name, 'It's a Wonderful Life' serves as the perfect rose for celebrating life's precious moments and creating gardens filled with joy and warmth. The beautiful warm tones and award-winning performance make this rose particularly meaningful for commemorative plantings, anniversary gardens, and special celebration spaces. The reliable, long-lasting performance ensures that it will continue to bloom and provide happiness for many years, making it a lasting tribute to wonderful moments and cherished memories. The combination of celebratory colour, proven reliability, and award-winning beauty makes it an ideal choice for marking special occasions and creating lasting memories in the garden.
Robust Constitution
One of the most outstanding features of 'It's a Wonderful Life' is its robust, healthy constitution that ensures reliable performance year after year. The vigorous growth habit combined with excellent disease resistance means this rose will thrive in a wide range of garden conditions whilst requiring minimal maintenance. The robust nature ensures prolific flowering and healthy growth, making it particularly valuable for gardeners seeking dependable performance with truly spectacular and award-winning results. This robust constitution, combined with its proven disease resistance, makes it an excellent choice for novice gardeners and experienced rosarians alike.
Contemporary Garden Appeal
The award-winning recognition and beautiful warm colour blends give 'It's a Wonderful Life' a contemporary appeal that suits modern garden designs and celebratory landscape schemes. The proven performance and reliable flowering create striking visual interest that remains attractive and relevant in contemporary garden settings. The combination of award-winning beauty with modern disease resistance and robust performance represents the perfect fusion of aesthetic appeal with practical garden value, making it a versatile choice for various garden styles and contemporary applications.
Why Choose 'It's a Wonderful Life'?
Rose 'It's a Wonderful Life' ('Dictwix') represents the perfect combination of award-winning beauty, proven performance, and exceptional reliability. The large, fully double blooms with their beautiful blends of pink, orange, and peach tones provide continuous colour and celebratory appeal from June through to the first frosts, whilst the light fragrance creates a delightful sensory experience. The upright, bushy growth habit and excellent disease resistance make it suitable for gardens of all sizes and styles, from formal celebratory displays to mixed borders and container cultivation. Whether grown for its award-winning recognition, spectacular blooms, gentle fragrance, or reliable garden performance, this outstanding floribunda offers exceptional value and enduring beauty that will provide years of joyful splendour and celebratory moments in the garden, making it the perfect choice for gardeners seeking a proven winner that combines outstanding beauty with dependable excellence and creates truly wonderful displays that live up to its heartwarming name and bring happiness to every garden setting.
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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