Rosa xanthina ‘Canary Bird’ in our garden.

One of the joys of spring, in our garden and elsewhere, is the Canary Bird Rose, Rosa xanthina ‘Canary Bird’. It was one of my Dad’s favourite roses and we planted a specimen four years ago in our own back garden.

Rosa xanthina ‘Canary Bird’ is a cultivated form of the Manchu rose, Rosa xanthina, which is a wild shrub rose native to central China, where it grows in scrubby areas and on open hillsides. It usually has an upright, arching growth habit and will grow from two to three metres (six to nine feet) tall and spread to become about three metres wide. Its stems are reddish and have reddish-brown thorns with delicate mid-green leaves. Rosa xanthina has semi-double flowers and R. xanthina ‘Canary Bird’ has the same growth habit but its flowers are single and more open.

‘Canary Bird’ is one of the earliest roses to flower, usually in late April and early May, although ours started to bloom by mid April this year. The flowers have a delicate, musky scent. Our specimen bloomed in its first year but it has been more spectacular every year, as it has developed a bigger framework of branches. Sometimes the rose can have a second flush of flowers later in the year, but I haven’t seen this yet.

Rosa xanthina ‘Canary Bird’ is very hardy and can cope with quite dry soils, provided they contain some organic matter. It will grow in a sunny or partly shaded spot. Ours is in an east-facing border in sandy loam and is in sun from late morning to late afternoon during the summer. Although the RHS website lists a number of possible pests and diseases, species roses such as ‘Canary Bird’ are generally trouble-free, unlike sickly Hybrid Tea thoroughbreds. This makes it an ideal candidate for an organic garden.

‘Canary Bird’ is easy to prune and can be cut into an informal hedge where its thorniness will act as a deterrent to intruders. It is sometimes used in municipal plantings and there is a fine stand of it next to the Canaries (Norwich City) football ground here in Norwich.

It is hardly surprising that Rosa xanthina ‘Canary Bird’ has been praised in the gardening press. It was The Guardian’s Plant of the Week in March 2012 and featured in Alan Titchmarsh’s gardening column in the Express in April 2016.

But I have left the best thing about ‘Canary Bird’ until last: it is great for wildlife. A mature specimen will provide nesting places for birds but it is the flowers that are proving to be very popular with insects in our garden, including hoverflies, and bees such as the delightfully named Chocolate Mining Bee, Andrena scotica.

A female Chocolate Mining Bee, Andrena scotica, on a ‘Canary Bird’ flower.