Looking Back at 2025

One of the defining highlights of the year was the unveiling of The King’s Rose (Ausa27a16) at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show in May. Created in collaboration with The King’s Foundation, it holds a meaning beyond its delicate striped petals and gentle fragrance. For every plant sold, a contribution supports work that promotes sustainable communities, traditional craft skills and a deeper connection with the natural world.

At Chelsea our stand became a sanctuary within the show. Designed around the idea of a hidden garden, it invited visitors to pause and wander through planting that felt intimate and welcoming. The King’s Rose stood at the heart of it, alongside much loved English Roses, each one telling its own quiet story through colour and form.

Across the season, roses bloomed with an abundance that surprised even us. Warm early weather brought colour ahead of its usual rhythm, and borders everywhere filled sooner than expected. Shifts of apricot, pink, cream and soft yellow moved through gardens with remarkable generosity.

At Albrighton, our own displays reached full beauty weeks earlier than planned. The rose gardens seemed to breathe out colour at every turn and carried fragrance through every pathway. Visitors remarked on the sense of lightness and exhilaration in the air, and the roses responded to the season with a quiet confidence.

Later in the year, another moment of celebration arrived as Gertrude Jekyll^® (Ausbord) was voted the World’s Favourite Rose by the World Federation of Rose Societies. Loved for its perfectly formed deep pink blooms and exceptional fragrance, this much-admired rose has long held a special place in gardens around the world. The award recognised not only its beauty, but its reliability and enduring appeal, reaffirming Gertrude Jekyll^® as one of the most cherished English Roses ever bred.

While summer brought its spectacle, we also returned, as we do each year, to the quieter joy of bare root season. There is something profoundly moving about seeing a rose at the very beginning of its journey. Roots packaged, stems pared back to essentials, each plant holding its entire future in a simple form.

Bare root roses invite contemplation. They ask gardeners to imagine what will come and to plant with intention. These early days in winter remain some of the most hopeful moments in our year, a reminder that every rose begins its life not in full bloom but in stillness.

To look back on 2025 is to walk through a tapestry of beginnings, early brilliance and moments of celebration. From bare roots placed gently into winter soil to the bright show gardens of Chelsea, the year felt full of life and connection.

Now the roses rest, gathering strength for the seasons ahead. As the garden grows still, we hold the memories of the year close and look forward to the promise of another. Every bud that opens in 2026 will carry a whisper of this past year, reminding us that the garden always finds its own rhythm and that each new season brings its own beauty.