Pasture Rose

Rosa carolina

Pasture rose is the low-growing, tough native rose of dry meadows, rocky slopes, and open roadsides. It stays small. two to four feet. and spreads by suckering to form colonies that stabilize slopes and provide dense nesting cover. The single pink flowers in summer are everything a rose should be: clean, simple, lightly fragrant, and fully open to the native bees that can't get into doubled hybrid varieties. The red hips that follow in fall are small but persistent, and birds take them through winter and early spring when other food sources have been depleted. It tolerates dry, lean, and sandy soil where most native shrubs would struggle. This is the rose for the dry slope, the hot exposed bank, the gravel edge. not the border that gets watered and fertilized, but the place that has to fend for itself.