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Bowes-Lyon Rose Garden

The Bowes-Lyon Rose Garden, supported by Witan Investment Trust, has an inspiring contemporary design, teaming roses with a broad range of companion plantings

Looking its best in...

  • Spring Camassias and alliums
  • Summer Roses in variety, agapanthus
  • Autumn Airy grasses
  • Winter Seed heads, specimen trees, Cornus sanguinea 'Midwinter Fire'

A rose garden with a difference

This innovative project, started in late 2007, replaces the old rose borders and catenary at the southern side of Weather Hill. It aims to inspire visitors with its plant combinations, demonstrate best environmental practice, and encourage biodiversity. It incorporates the Pavilion, built to commemorate Sir David Bowes-Lyon (RHS President 1953–61).

Explore and be inspired

For pure inspiration you can’t beat the Bowes-Lyon Rose Garden, where the winding paths allow you to explore choice roses alongside an array of herbaceous plants, bulbs, perennials, evergreen shrubs and clipped yew cylinders.

We worked with David Austin Roses and Harkness Roses to choose a range of pest- and disease-resistant, repeat-flowering roses, including climbers and ramblers.

In trials with the Royal National Rose Society, we have found that snapping off – where the dead flower is snapped off just below the flower stalk – is the most successful deadheading technique, with roses bearing more flowers and producing their next flushes sooner. 
 

Spring: A sea of blue

In late spring, carpets of Camassia leichtlinii subsp. suksdorfii Caerulea Group and C. cusickii bring a sea of blue to the slopes on both sides of the Bowes-Lyon Rose Garden, while exuberant drifts of Allium ‘Christophii’ enjoy the sun on the southern edge of Weather Hill.

Summer: A crescendo of colour

By early summer, the showy bracts of Cornus kousa var. chinensis (Chinese dogwood) appear; creamy-white at first, but later turning white and lastly red-pink.

Summer sees the many roses at their spectacular best, including modern classic Rosa Brother Cadfael ('Ausglobe'). This David Austin English rose repeat-flowers, producing fragrant, peony-like blooms from late spring into autumn.  

Swathes of fine green turf make the perfect foil for all of this colour – we give it an extra twist with lawn art, where attractive designs are mown into the sward.

August is an excellent time to admire the Agapanthus, bringing splashes of true blue to the planting schemes. 

The pair of borders linking the Bowes-Lyon Rose Garden and the Mixed Borders is well worth exploring for its award winning collection of plants. Each one holds the RHS Award of Garden Merit (AGM), meaning these plants are among the best garden plants of their type.

Autumn and winter surprises

Come autumn, ornamental grasses catch the breeze and the light to lend an air of grace. They look particularly beautiful when laced with dew-laden cobwebs.

In winter – when all would be quiet in a traditional rose garden – the interest continues, as majestic trees and seed heads come to the fore. 

Do not be afraid to plant roses in generous drifts where space permits and allow them to grow into each other for dramatic effect of large waves of flowers. The bold plantings of Rosa ‘Flower Carpet White’ by the pavilion are particular effective examples of this good garden performer, which flowers almost continually throughout the summer months.

RHS Garden Wisley Horticulturist

Do not be afraid to plant roses in generous drifts where space permits and allow them to grow into each other for dramatic effect of large waves of flowers. The bold plantings of Rosa ‘Flower Carpet White’ by the pavilion are particular effective examples of this good garden performer, which flowers almost continually throughout the summer months.

RHS Garden Wisley Horticulturist

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The Royal Horticultural Society is the UK’s leading gardening charity. We aim to enrich everyone’s life through plants, and make the UK a greener and more beautiful place.