Rosa 'Popcorn Drift'
Rosa ‘Popcorn Drift’ is an excellent ground-cover rose that blooms profusely from mid-May through September here in Philadelphia. While I prefer to prune mine regularly in order to keep their shape quite tight, you can let these grow out and skip the pruning. These are extremely low maintenance shrubs. One thing to note: if you do let them grow out, the weight of the clusters of flowers will cause them to sag over and rest on the ground. I imagine this would be beautiful if you had these pouring over a retaining wall or patio wall. But as you will see in the photos below, ours would spill out over the walkway if we did not prune them regularly.
I pruned our Rosa ‘Popcorn Drift’ back on June 6th after their first bloom. They’ve come back in full force and I could not be happier with how they look!
Here are a “before” and “during” picture of the bed where our three popcorn drift roses are planted.
We removed the grass along the left-most side of the walkway. This “before” photo is from 2015 in the online real estate listing.
In this “during” shot we had removed the grass and planted the Green Giant Arborvitae (Thuja standishii x plicata ‘Green Giant’), the Allegheny Leatherleaf viburnum (viburnum x rhytidophylloidesand) the mysterious Oakleaf hydrangea.
Now, three seasons later, our bed has taken shape! The popcorn drift roses add the perfect pop of color in the center of the bed.
A collection of wild ginger and hosta enjoy the shade under our crepe myrtle. The little lime hydrangea, roses, and viburnum are thriving in full sun on the opposite end.
I hope you enjoy the gallery below. I absolutely adore the ruffled petals of these flowers in the early stage of their blooming. This rose is perfectly named as the creamy yellow buds “pop” into full blooms, they really do resemble popcorn!
