Red Ribbons™ Ground Cover Rose

When the garden occasion calls for opulence, Red Ribbons is the best way we know to grow a lush carpet of scarlet finery that perfectly complements all surrounding plants or serves as a breathtaking stand-alone. This ground cover shrub rose decorates the sunny border with large clusters of blooms in regular waves from one end of summer to the other, banked all the while by fresh, lush, disease-resistant foliage. It is considered by many the best red ground cover rose ever introduced, and we at Jackson & Perkins would have to agree.

The blooms offer brilliant color for any sunny setting. Semi to fully double, opening to 3 inches across, they boast up to 25 petals arrayed in a cupped form around a bright yellow center. If you lean in, you might detect a subtle, sweet scent, but Red Ribbons makes an excellent ground cover to taller, leggier roses because its fragrance does not compete with the stronger perfumes of hybrid teas and floribundas. Best of all, the habit is dense and nicely branched, with no bare spots, reaching just 2 to 3 feet high but spreading to 4 feet wide. This is the rose to edge a long border or use in a deep mass planting.

Red Ribbons blooms in great flushes all summer long, setting large clusters of petite, pointed, ovoid buds among the glossy dark green leaves. Bred in northern Germany, it is quite cold-hardy, but handles heat and humidity nicely as well. Red Ribbons is a shrub rose, bred to take its place in the three-season landscape no matter the fluctuations in the weather.

Introduced in 1990 by Kordes Roses, Red Ribbons was named Canterbury in Europe, and has since been rechristened Chilterns in Great Britain. Here in the United States, where we at Jackson & Perkins introduced it as part of our Garden Ease Collection, it has always been Red Ribbons, and has long held a place of honor in the ground cover rose family. We highly recommend it for your landscape.