Lemon Drift® rose

Lemon Drift® Rose opens bright yellow and fades to creamy white as the flowers age, so a plant in bloom carries both tones at once. Rosa 'Meisentmil' grows 12 to 24 inches tall and spreads 24 to 36 inches in full sun, hardy from Zone 5 through Zone 11.

Bloom runs continuously from mid-spring to frost, and the flowers drop cleanly without deadheading. Yellow is a hard color to keep in a landscape rose, since most bleach out entirely by midsummer, and this one holds enough of it to read yellow through the season.

Drift roses are a cross between full-size groundcover roses and miniature roses, bred to stay low and spread wide while blooming continuously. They were developed to fill the awkward spots: hillsides, narrow strips along a walk, the front edge of a bed, containers. All of them are self-cleaning, disease resistant, and need no deadheading.

Note that Lemon Drift is hardy to Zone 5 rather than Zone 4 like most of the line, so it needs a little more winter protection at the cold end of its range. Disease resistance is high. Cut back by about a third in late winter. Shipped on its own roots.