Designing with Beautiful Roses
Roses are one of the most beloved and iconic flowers in the world. It’s no wonder why, with their alluring fragrance, exquisite beauty and diverse range of color. Roses have unrivalled versatility due to the many different types you can find from adorable miniatures, tidy landscape roses, towering climbers to romantic English roses. Utilize our design tips to bring these beauties into your yard this year!
Choose your Style
Roses fit in any garden design or style you can think of! Roses look fabulous in a formal garden achieve this by enclosing roses in boxwood hedging. Great varieties to create this look with are ‘Olivia Rose Austin’ or ‘Queen of Sweden’. If you enjoy cottage gardens there are many roses that are more rounded or arching to create a relaxed feeling. Using roses in a tidy landscape planting? Choose low growing and smaller roses such as Drift roses or shrub roses. Roses can even fit a contemporary style by being placed in modern planters and set around a patio, porch or even in the landscape bed.
Garden fence, pink roses, speedwell, catmint, sage… Beautiful landscaped flower bed bordering sidewalk
Design Tricks
-Plant Roses close to paths or seating areas so their beauty & fragrance can be enjoyed up close.
– Plant in mass color for drama! Group three of the same roses 18” apart so they will grow to look like one big, beautiful shrub.
-Color block with roses and perennials for a big impact. Grow groups and clusters of each to create blocks of color. A favorite combo is pink ‘Olivia Austin’ rose with purple ‘Cat’s Meow’ Catmint.
-Make rose blooms stand out by planting contrasting perennial flower colors and shapes (think spike shaped flowers like lavender).
– Have a specimen plant already? Make it stand out even more by planting a ring of roses around it!
– In small gardens select a few key rose specimens rather than trying to crowd in a lot of different varieties.
-Limit the color scheme to one or two hues so the design doesn’t look too busy.
-For smaller areas choose roses with lighter colored flowers in hues of soft pink, yellow or white to make the space look larger and brighter.
7 Great Companion Plants
-Allium
-Catmint
-Foxgloves
-Lavender
-Ladys Mantle
-Salvia
-Yarrow
Care Tips
- Select a spot where the rose will receive at minimum 4 hours of direct sunlight, 6-8 hours is best.
- Roses like rich loamy soil (our native soil is clay) to achieve this at time of planting incorporate generous amounts of Bumper Crop compost and pine fine mulch onto the planting hole.
- Roses are heavy feeders and love being fertilized with Rose-tone apply in early March and early May.
- Roses benefit from yearly pruning, be sure to shape and prune out dead wood in March.
