Welcome back to Heirloom™ Garden Tours, a series celebrating beautiful gardens and the gardeners who bring them to life. Each garden tells a different story, shaped over seasons of planting, learning, and dreaming. Join us as we step inside inspiring gardens and discover the roses that make them unforgettable.

Marryn's Garden Tour

Tucked away in Stanwood, WA, about 45 minutes north of Seattle, Marryn Mathis of Farmhouse Flower Farm has created something truly special. As a cut flower farmer, she spends her days growing flowers for others. But her rose garden? That's entirely for herself.

What started with just a few roses has grown into a collection of over 287, anchored by the English roses she has long dreamed of growing. From the front gate, you can feel the intention behind every planting. This is a garden designed not for production, but for joy.

Roses Growing in Marryn's Garden

Discover the roses that fill Marryn's farm with color, fragrance, and beauty from season to season.

The Lady Gardener® is one of Marryn's absolute favorites. This soft apricot English rose has a gentle fragrance of tea and vanilla, and she's exactly the kind of rose Marryn envisioned when she set out to build her dream garden. If you've ever watched a video about English roses and thought, "I want that," The Lady Gardener is likely what you were imagining.

Scepter'd Isle® brings a powerful, dreamy myrrh fragrance to the garden, with cupped soft pink blooms borne in prolific clusters throughout the season. Fragrance seekers, this one belongs on your list.

Gentle Hermione® opens to shallow cups of pure soft pink with 90+ petals and a strong myrrh scent. A pollinator favorite and one of the most beloved English roses in Marryn's collection.

Koko Loko™ was one of Marryn's earliest roses, scooped up on a great deal back in 2018 before she even had a proper place to plant them. Years later, she's still earning her place in the garden.

Distant Drums is another from that original collection, and it's easy to see why she made the cut. Her warm blend of mauve, soft gold, and rose tones is unlike almost anything else in the rose world.

Honey Dijon™ brings golden caramel blooms that are a natural fit for a cut flower farm. Exceptional vase life, a beautiful fruity fragrance, and a color that plays well with nearly everything in the garden.

State of Grace™ completes that first round of purchases with her ever-changing display of soft apricot blooms that lighten to creamy yellow as they open. It's the kind of rose that keeps you guessing in the best possible way.

Veranda® Cream is one Marryn recommends for anyone just getting started. Her beautiful peachy blooms and glossy green leaves make her one of the most rewarding roses in the garden.

Colette® is a current must-grow for Marryn. Her second planting area is anchored by this rose, and it's easy to understand why: loaded with blooms, loaded with buds, and dressed in that gorgeous glossy foliage she loves.

Lichfield Angel™ shares that bed with Colette® and The Generous Gardener™, her creamy white blooms adding soft contrast to a full, layered planting. A quiet standout.

The Generous Gardener™ lives up to her name, filling the space with glowing pink blooms and magnificent climbing growth. She adds wild, lush texture to a corner of the garden Marryn clearly loves most.

Cécile Brünner™ is only two years old in Marryn's garden, but she's already a showstopper. A vigorous rambling rose with small, perfectly formed soft pink blooms, she serves as a dramatic focal piece in the garden. Low maintenance, incredibly prolific, and absolutely worth making room for.

Why Own-Root Roses Change Everything

Marryn knows firsthand what can go wrong with grafted roses. Some of her earlier plants were grafted onto a different rootstock, and over time that rootstock took over completely. The variety she had chosen was lost, replaced by a plain red rose growing from basal breaks. When she realized what had happened, she had to pull those plants and start over.

That experience shaped how she thinks about her garden now, and why she's so particular about where she sources her roses. Own-root roses don't carry that risk. Because the roots and the variety above are the exact same plant, there's no foreign rootstock waiting to take over. What you plant is what you keep, season after season. Every rose at Heirloom™ is grown own-root, which means when you shop here, you never have to wonder whether the rose in your garden is still the one you fell in love with.

More Than Roses

Marryn also keeps a personal cutting garden that she tends just for herself, separate from the production side of the farm. In spring it's full of snapdragons and sweet peas. Come fall, she flips the whole bed to dahlias and sunflowers. It's a simple, intentional practice and a good reminder that even the most productive growers benefit from carving out a space that's purely for the pleasure of it.

Her farm is also home to over 40,000 sweet peas, and she'll be the first to tell you that's where her heart truly lives. But the rose garden remains her gift to herself.

She also shares a tip worth passing along: nasturtiums, marigolds, alliums, and even onions or garlic planted near your roses can help keep aphids at bay. It's a simple companion planting strategy that works just as well in a home garden as it does on a working flower farm.

Marryn's garden is proof that even the busiest growers make space for beauty. You can follow along with Farmhouse Flower Farm and see what's blooming throughout the season.