Deep yellow double flowers with 30 or more petals, sweetly aromatic, produced in profusion on a compact plant. Rosa True Bloom® True Friendship, PP31,073, grows 3 feet tall and wide in full sun, hardy to 20 below zero.
This is the cold-hardiest of the True Blooms, running ten degrees colder than the rest of the line. It won the Rose Hill award in 2016.
True Bloom roses come from Ping Lim, the breeder behind the Easy Elegance line, who set out to cross hybrid tea roses with disease-resistant shrubs and get hybrid tea flowers on a plant that survives without a spray program. Two of them, True Passion and True Inspiration, were distinct enough that the program created a class for them: Hybrid Tea Shrub. They are grown on their own roots rather than grafted, so a plant killed back in a hard winter regrows as itself rather than reverting to rootstock, and there are no suckers from below a graft union. Most are hardy to 10 below zero, and high petal counts are the signature of the line.
The compact size suits a foundation bed, a low hedge, or a container. Full sun and well-drained soil give the heaviest bloom.