Yellow is magic. It can lift our spirits and create cheerfulness and optimism. The golden hue of yellow roses spreads joy, happiness, and positivity wherever they are seen; in a garden landscape amongst lush green foliage, a wedding bouquet, picked fresh from the garden for a friend or a vase in the home. Yellow roses are a timeless, universal symbol of friendship—Joie de vivre, which can enhance our mood and brighten our days.
“Yellow usually means it’s not that serious.”
Bobby Unser
There is a meaning attached to the colours in every classic rose, and yellow roses are the perfect examples of using colour to convey a sentiment. Across the world, yellow roses create a sense of well-being, care, affection, and friendship; in some cultures, they create remembrance. The different hues of yellow roses are a good option when sending flowers to a friend or picking roses as a gift because they are charming and less romantic than red roses but are still symbols of affection, gratitude, and joy. In contrast, yellow roses may signify disloyalty, jealousy, envy and greed in certain cultures.
Yellow rose felt jealous of red rose. It cherished being yellow, when it realised friendship lasts forever. Unlike Love.
Bhakti
The brilliant yellow rose that brings a golden hue to the garden is adored by many, and yet others find the hue jarring and overbright. There is no denying that yellow roses are the colour of sunshine that partners with all the shades of green to create a harmonious landscape.
Cote d’ Azur Rose
“In the world of safe hues, like black, red and white, yellow shouts: Look at me. I’m happy!”
Joy Sewing
- In Chinese culture, lemon-coloured roses are given on birthdays; they symbolise wealth, prosperity, and good fortune.
- In Middle Eastern countries, yellow roses were initially used for decorations, medicine, and confetti, but today, yellow roses symbolise love for weddings.
- Japanese students are presented with lemon roses at graduation, which symbolise delight and a fresh start. But they also can signify courage and inner strength, perfect to support a person going through difficult times.
- During the Victorian era, yellow roses were used as symbols of jealousy, and when given to others, it was to accuse them of betrayal or infidelity.
“The yellow glistens. It glistens with various yellows, Citrons, oranges and greens flowering over the skin.”
Wallace Stevens
The garden has many yellow roses that grow to form a backdrop for the other coloured roses that sit as specimens. Along with other plants, trees, blossoms, and textured foliage, they combine to create the tapestry of the garden. The garden’s climate is so hot with intense sunlight that it often causes our yellow roses to be brighter and a deeper yellow. When golden yellow buds break open, it is a welcome moment that brings a smile and a sense of joy. That first glimpse of a golden hue often opens from red buds.
“We find from experience that yellow excites a warm and agreeable impression.. The eye is gladdened, the heart expanded and cheered, a glow seems at once to breathe toward us.“
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
“The sound of colours is so definite that it would be hard to find anyone who would express bright yellow with base notes, or dark lake with the treble.”
Wassily Kadinsky
Yellow Rose Origins
The colours of early roses popular in Europe, America, and Asia were pink roses ranging in shades from deep Magenta or Fuschia to soft pastel Pink and White. Roses in other colours, like varying shades of yellow, were discovered much later in Afghanistan and Southeast Asia. During the 18th Century, yellow roses bloomed naturally across the land and were soft pastel yellow to a rich sulphur colour. The Europeans tried to create a hybrid between yellow roses and European roses using these three flowers in their hybridisation:
- Rosa Ecae: A small bush with yellow flowers originally from Afghanistan.
- Rosa Foetida: A large, vibrant yellow flower.
- Rosa Hemisphaerica: Double-flowered, intense yellow flower originally from Southeast Asia.
During the 17th Century, yellow roses were used as a form of payment. During the 18th Century, they were found in the Middle East and South East Asia. These early plants led to the development of the yellow roses of today. Early yellow roses gave off an unappealing sulfuric aroma. Due to modern crossbreeding, the smell has evolved into a pleasant, sweet fragrance that is much more palatable and recognisable as the signature rose scent. Yellow roses have been crossbred naturally and unnaturally, creating numerous variations in shades ranging from pale soft yellow to buttery shades and more gold, vibrant, eye-catching shades that are striking in the garden.
“She turned to the sunlight And shook her yellow head, And whispered to her neighbour: “Winter is dead”.”
A A Milne
Wooden pencils have been painted yellow since the 1890s. The colour yellow was chosen because the highest quality graphite came from China, where the colour signified royalty.
Life of the Party Roses
Once yellow roses were discovered and successfully hybridised in multiple shades of yellow, they became very popular in European gardens as a contrast to the white and pink roses. Over time, modern roses have been successfully cultivated for the ability to repeat bloom year after year and for more extended periods. Unfortunately, along with the ability to rebloom over and over all season, the fragrance aspect was lost from many new roses. After many years of research and development, it is only now that rose breeders have successfully married the repeat blooming attribute in modern roses with a fragrance.
“Every thorn on a yellow rose stem is a reminder that beauty can arise from life’s prickly moments.”
Jude the Obscure Rose
How lovely yellow is! It stands for the sun.
Vincent Van Gough
Joseph Pernet-Ducher was the first rose breeder to cultivate the yellow-orange rose. Joseph Pernet pursued his research on tea roses in a quest to widen the colour palette of roses, focusing on the search for yellow. In 1898, he introduced Rose Soleil d’Or, a bright orange-yellow hybrid tea rose that surprised and delighted many rose lovers. It was a vigorous, thorny, upright Foetida hybrid that grew to 90- 150 cm tall with flat cup-shaped blooms in clusters or singly with a strong spicy scent. The colours are a blend of orange, yellow, apricot and pink. The outer petals curve inward, and the inside of the rose is pink with a yellow reverse.
“This was an epoch-making rose — the first hardy repeat-flowering orange-yellow rose. Every modern yellow rose owes its coloring to Pernet-Ducher’s cross.”
Quest-Ritson 2011
What Pernet-Ducher was really after was the pure yellow colour of one of its parents, ‘Persian Yellow’. He went on to develop a new breed called the Pernetiana that preserved the yellow colour in his crossings in 1910 and named it ‘Rayon d’Or’.
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“There is nothing in the world that is not mysterious, but the mystery is more evident in certain things than in others: in the sea, in the eyes of the elders, in the colour yellow, and in music.”
Jorge Luis Borges
Winter Sun is a classic shaped Hybrid Tea in a soft yellow that flowers right through into winter, hence the name. Winter Sun has excellent resistance to blackspot and is always covered in blooms on glossy green foliage. In Germany, Winter Sun was bred by Tim Hermann Kordes in 2001 as part of the Eleganza Series. Winter Sun is growing in one of the most challenging areas of the garden and has afternoon direct sunlight and exposure to winds, yet it is always magnificent. Out of all the roses in the garden, it is entirely trouble-free, only watered and fertilised, but requires no other embellishments or maintenance.
In the golden petals of a yellow rose, find the inspiration to bloom amidst challenges.”
Another standout rose that loves the heat is the Gold Bunny Rose. A happy, bright yet warm yellow colour, Gold Bunny, is often the first sign of Spring and so welcome. It grows as a compact shrub or a climber and is a popular Floribunda Rose bred by Meilland International in France in 1991. The blooms are large, prolific, fluffy, and fully petalled in a cupped form in brilliant lemon yellow. Silkies Rose Farm suggest
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The fertiliser should be applied while Gold Bunny is in full flower and that way, she doesn’t collapse under the pressure of producing such a magnificent display of blooms … but sheds cleanly and presses on to produce the next round of flowers.
Alain Meilland (1912-1958) spent his short life as the driving force behind the development of one of the best rose-breeding companies in the world. He was also responsible for the famous Peace Rose, Pierre de Ronsard and more than 140 other roses. He was part of a multi-generational family of French rose breeders that began breeding roses in 1850 in Lyon, France. The family’s first rosarian was gardener Joseph Rambaux, well-known for developing the Polyantha ‘Rose Perle d’Or’.
The rose is simple, you learn it in one hundred lessons- one lesson a year
Alain Meilland
On a cloudy day, Yellow roses spread their golden hue like brilliant sunshine and glow in the garden, leaving an imprint of radiance. One rose that never fails to brighten the front garden is Soul Mate Rose, also known as Julia Child’s Rose. The foliage is thick and glossy, so the yellow blooms sit beautifully against the green in an abundance of buttery yellow old-fashioned blooms.
“Expressing warmth and affection, one yellow rose at a time.”
With the attributes of the Soul Mate Rose, it is not surprising that the rose has been awarded the Royal Horticultural Society’s Award of Garden Merit. Soul Mate was bred by Tom Carruth in the USA for Weeks Roses and introduced as ‘Julia Child’ in 2006. It was then introduced in Australia in 2009 as ‘Soul Mate’, and is known in the UK and New Zealand, since 2012 as ‘Absolutely Fabulous.’
“Before you find your soul mate, you must first discover your soul.”
Charles F Glassman
Soul Mate has a strong, spicy anise fragrance, and the blooms are prolific, with continuous flowering throughout the season. It is hardy and healthy, with excellent heat tolerance and disease resistance.
I really just want to be warm yellow light that pours over everyone I love.
Conor Oberst
Yellow In The Garden
Yellow is a warm, sometimes hot colour that can distract the eye away from an eyesore and brighten a dark or shady corner. It is the perfect foil to draw attention towards a feature and is excellent for use in a border. Yellow will lead us in, and we will gladly follow.
Yellow, being such an intense colour, is fantastic as a contrast and harmonises well with the opposites on the colour wheel: the blues- purples- pinks, reds and all the hues between. One pairing that will never be intrusive, garish, or “too much’ is “yellow, white, and green.”
Of course, yellow is not only in roses; one way to achieve a cohesive look with yellow flowers is to think of the garden as a painting and plant in brushstrokes with a single type of flower: daffodils, tulips, daylilies, daisies, and snapdragons or other perennials. Plant these in drifts and plant loads of them repetitively over the garden.
Yellow will add a sense of drama and excitement combined with red roses or red foliage in Autumn.
Yellow flowers will always pop in the landscape, making an ample space appear cozier and smaller.
Look at what nature can do by adding a touch of pink to yellow roses. The Peace Rose is a beautiful rose enhanced by a delicate pink edge, and the Diana Princess of Wales Rose has a soft yellow glow towards the centre. Many roses have a faint yellow centre or will slowly age to yellow, and this combination can be found in Bright Spirit, Camille Pissarro, Life Of The Party, Kordes Jubillee, Dame Elisabeth Murdoch, My Yellow, Paul Cezanne, Papi Delbard Climbing Roses plus many more.
“Where yellow blooms, happiness follows”
The Header Image courtesy of Unsplash.
Content Di Baker 2024
Images Di Baker 2023-24
Thank you so much for this. I love yellow roses. I enjoyed reading this article so much and appreciated the matching photos. So much information and history to savour.