Skip to Content

Once-Blooming Roses and the Small Joys of Gardening

The Purezza Banks' White Rose is a small, white, once-blooming rose. Its canes can grow rapidly and spread very far, so be ready for this one to take up a lot of space!

This is the Purezza Banks’ White Rose. These pretty little roses are once-blooming roses, meaning they only give me flowers once a year for a few weeks, though in cold years, we get the blooms a little longer.

I didn’t realize they weren’t repeat bloomers when I planted them. I was in the beginning of my gardening journey then, just trying to fill in some space next to the patio.

These cuties were next to some yellow Lady Banks roses at the gardening center. I bought a couple of each and stuck them in my yard.

Looking back on it, that’s not really a strategy I’d recommend.

Gardening by chaos is a great way to learn quickly, but it can also be an expensive and frustrating experience. I’ve killed camellias and scorched succulents and let my herbs go to seed.

No need to make the same mistakes if you can avoid it.

But it hasn’t been all frustration and failure. These little roses, which were not what I had expected, turned out to be a really pleasant surprise.

Once-Blooming Roses Help Mark the Seasons

In the intervening years, I’ve grown to love the springtime ritual of watching the branches grow heavy with buds and burst into bloom.

My garden has become a calendar of sorts. I can tell what time of year it is by when my repeat bloomers have their first flush, when the once-blooming roses get started, when the dahlias open up, and when the hellebores make their first appearance.

And when the flowers aren’t blooming, well, I know I’ve always got photos to tide me over until they appear again.

Gardening is Full of Joyful Surprises.

It turns out I really like marking the passage of time based on what’s blooming in my garden. If you had asked me before I planted these, though, I would have told you I preferred to have flowers blooming all year round on everything, if possible.

The joy from good, small surprises is a special kind of joy. It’s not showy or overwhelming. It’s just a quiet, peaceful joy, the kind that sneaks up on you and tucks falling petals in your hair or a spare five bucks in your coat pocket from last winter.

I hope never to take that kind of joy for granted.


If you’re curious about some of my favorite rose-gardening tools, here’s a round-up of the things I use most! These are affiliate links, which means if you choose to buy something through those links, I’ll receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. I will always identify affiliate links for you. Thanks for supporting my work!

My favorite pruning snips: the Felco F-8

Many other rosarians also swear by the Felco F-2

My favorite liquid fish-based fertilizer

My favorite organic mineral fertilizer

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

f