The Rose Garden at Mottisfont

The Rose Garden in June at Mottisfont, Hampshire — The Rose Garden in June at Mottisfont | © National Trust Images/Clive Nichols

The walled garden at Mottisfont is home to the National Collection of Pre-1900 Shrub Roses, which creates an annual spectacle in early summer. Unlike modern species, these 'old-fashioned' roses tend to flower just once a year, so their blooming season is an extraordinary annual sight. We've now reached the end of the season for another year.

Over 1,000 individual rose plants bloom in our walled garden during peak season. Climbers are trained onto red-brick walls, and shrub roses are set in beds among other flowers with complementary colours and foliage to show them off at their best.

Rose season may be over, but there's still plenty of summer colour in our gardens.

Pruning and deadheading

Many of the roses we care for only flower once a year.

While it’s tempting to tidy a rose by cutting off the blooms once they've passed their best, we leave the once-flowering shrubs and ramblers to produce rosehips. As well as providing a colourful display in winter, the rosehips are also an essential food source for wildlife.

We deadhead any repeat-flowering shrubs by pruning directly after flowering. This encourages the rose to bloom again later in the summer, and often into the autumn.

We then prune all our roses over winter, starting in early December and working right through until March.

Plan your visit

Flowering just once a year, in late May to mid-June, the blooming season of this unique collection of roses attracts thousands of visitors. Here's some information to help you plan your visit at one of our busiest times of the year:

Most of our visitors tend to arrive before 2pm. If you arrive in the afternoon, there’s still time to enjoy all that Mottisfont has to offer. We extend our garden opening hours on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays during rose season, to give people more opportunities to visit.
If you have the flexibility, a weekday visit is generally quieter than a weekend, even during school holidays. If you can only visit over the weekend, Saturdays are usually less busy than Sundays.
We recommend car sharing or use of public transport where possible to avoid pressure on limited parking spaces. Mottisfont & Dunbridge station is just over a mile away on foot, across fields and some country roads.
National Trust members, Art Fund members and under 5s visit for free. Please note that we otherwise charge peak admission during June. Off-peak admission applies from 5pm onwards during our evening openings.

The Rose Garden in June, with red, pink and purple roses, at Mottisfont, Hampshire — The Rose Garden in June at Mottisfont, Hampshire | © National Trust Images/Clive Nichols

Making your way through the Rose Garden

The first walled garden is our recently revived Kitchen Garden, where two beds of 11 types of rose provide a modern introduction to the hundreds you’ll find beyond.

Walkway arbours are decorated with four varieties of climbing rose, based on Graham Stuart Thomas’s choice of companion roses. Hedging of Rosa rugosa ‘Rubra’ leads you into these arbours, mirroring the entrance to the central garden.

In the central garden, you’ll find deep box-lined borders full of rambling and climbing roses and clematis trained on the high brick wall behind. The main paths crossing the site converge on a central round pond and fountain, surrounded by eight clipped Irish yews.

Either side of this historic central pathway are two deep herbaceous flower beds boasting many of Graham Stuart Thomas’s favourite perennials, chosen for their structure, scent and wide colour palette.

Agapanthus, geraniums and peonies mingle with pinks, lilies, phlox and nepeta. The centres of the borders are a mass of soft blues, pinks and whites, whilst stronger yellows, oranges and dark pinks draw your eye along the length of the border.

Long borders brim with plants chosen to complement and underplant the roses. They also extend the season, providing colour, shape and scent before the roses bloom and after their petals fall. In June the roses are accompanied by striking spires of white foxgloves.

The northern section of the walled garden, with its wide paths, is deliberately planted with a 'cool' colour palette to provide a counterpoint to the central Rose Garden.

Visitors in the walled Rose Garden at Mottisfont, Hampshire — Visitors in the walled Rose Garden at Mottisfont | © National Trust Images/James Dobson

A gardener's dream

Created by Graham Stuart Thomas – one of the most important figures in 20th-century British horticulture – in the 1970s, Mottisfont’s walled garden was chosen to house many varieties that may otherwise have become extinct.

‘Few better sites could have been found for a garden of old roses than this.’

- Graham Stuart Thomas, An English Rose Garden (1991)

With an artist's eye and consummate knowledge, Graham Stuart Thomas designed a garden that would combine roses with a mix of perennials to give a season-long display.

Taste the roses

Pop into the café to try Jude's rose flavoured ice cream, as well as a range of other delicious flavours.

Take a virtual tour of Mottisfont’s Rose Garden

We know that not all of you will be able to visit during the rose season, so please enjoy this video tour that we made with Emma McNamara, the Horticultural Development Specialist for the National Trust.

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