Ideas for Designing Your Rose Garden

The use of landscape roses can make the exterior of any house more graceful, fragrant and inviting. Selecting the right varieties to compliment and accent the home's style and your vision, will contribute to the success of your landscape and rose garden design.

Finding the perfect roses for your rose garden is not hard at all because of the the diverse varieties roses come in. The problem lies in choosing the right ones for your landscape needs and the design you wish to attain.

'Singin' In the Rain', a floribunda rose.  (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Roses come in a number of classes.  Each class holds characteristics that make them a great choice for use as landscape ornamentals. If you'd like to have roses growing up and over a trellis or archway or cascading from window boxes, the tall growing tea roses are a perfect choice. Tea roses are known for their wild growing blooms and all who walk under the archway enjoy a beautiful display of roses.

If a trellis is not available and you're looking to accent a wall, then choose a true climbing rose. The beauty of a true climbing rose allows you train the plant into many different looks and effects. In essence you can train it any way you want it to grow.

The Floribunda rose is an excellent choice when a vibrant splash of background color is what you're looking for. The popular Floribunda rose varieties give all this color in the landscape with their large and breathtaking sprays of blooms.

The versatile rose can also be used as a ground cover or planted in front of other plants to give color and accent. They can also be used as stand alone specimens and trained into a small tree or planted as hedges.  Rugosa roses are a good choice for this.

Lili Marlene floribunda rose (Photo credit: digiteyes)

The goal or impact of the rose is not the varieties or ways it can be grown but the colors they offer in the living gardening palette. What gardeners want are healthy rose plants that deliver impact in many sizes, styles, textures, colors and shapes. When considering your design for your rose garden choose the complimentary colors for your surrounding landscape. A simple arrangement of pink roses delivers the perfect compliment to a stone or marble entrance way or drive.  White tea roses offer a striking contrast against a dark red brick home. Roses come in so many colors it should be easy to find colors which compliment and enhance any decorating or landscape design you come up with.

Designing your rose garden will be exciting and challenging to say the least.  Incorporate your own color favorites and mix styles and textures for an interesting appeal.

Roses do well in a variety of temperature zones and climates so make sure you choose the varieties suitable to the area in which you live. This translates into fewer maintenance issues, and fewer pests and disease issues promoting overall a healthier rose garden.


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All About Roses

The most well-known of all flowering plants you could grow in your garden has got to be the rose.  The rose plant can spark a quick conversation amongst even the shyest of persons.  Almost anyone can tell you of someone they know who has grown beautiful roses or of someone who couldn't.  Almost anyone can tell you of someone who got or sent roses, especially around the holidays.  Even little children know what the rose plant is.

Cover of Beautiful Roses

Your local florist most likely has dozens of colors, types, and sizes of roses.  It would seem to be the best selling flower of all time.  The local discount store and even the local grocer carries some sort of rose these days. There are even books written just about roses! 

In my personal opinion, the best rose is one that has a strong scent.  A rose has a most distinct smell, and a scent welcome to most anyone.  The fragrance is like no other and has been reproduced in hundreds (if not thousands) of perfumes and air fresheners for years.  There are rose-scented oils and lotions, bath products, soaps, and shampoos.  There are rose colors and rose images galore.  You can find rose parades and people named Rose (like me!) :-).  You can even come out "smelling like a rose".  All because of a mere plant that reached enormous proportions of popularity.

The rose plant is available in a wide variety of colors, sizes, and types. It is known and grown worldwide.  The prices vary depending on where you buy or what type and size you want.

Do you want a rose plant already started in a pot?  You may have to repot it, so make sure you do your homework before you buy one.

Bagatelle Rose Garden (Paris, France). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When you decide what type of rose plant you'd like in your garden, think of placement.  There is a plant called the thornless rose plant that will grow in the shade.  But most rose plants are known to have thorns, so you wouldn't want your small child or grandchild or frequent tiny visitors to happen upon something that is so pretty that they can't resist grabbing and end up with an unwelcome handful of thorns.  It may even sour them on the enjoyment of the rose plant for life because of a tearful memory.  And roses are too beautiful to allow such a thing!

There are climbing rose plants which you most certainly wouldn't want trailing across the ground to be stomped by animals or other foot traffic.  Some roses are delicate and unfiltered light would cook their leaves to an unlovely brown.  If your rose plant is the type that grows into a bush, you would want to place it in a spot that allows for it to spread.

As you can see, deciding where you would like to plant your roses is an important consideration that is largely determined by the type of rose you are planting, so it will require some research and careful planning.  But for rose-lovers everywhere, it is a job that is well-worth the work.


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Should You Try Rose Gardening?

Ask anyone who has a green thumb about rose gardening, and you may need a tape recorder to remember all the advice you'll get!  Almost anyone who has an interest in gardening flowers and plants will eventually mosey into rose territory.  It's almost irresistible because of the beauty and scent of one of the most popular plants on earth.

Cover of Rose GardeningA rose is like no other plant.  Rose gardening then will certainly open up grounds for controversy among fellow gardeners.  It's a subject like that of rearing children.  To the rose gardening crowd, their plants often become like their own children.  They must be fed and nourished and guided properly to bloom and flourish into their majestic beauty.

Gardeners have even been known to talk to their plants to coax them into perfect health. (I admit I've done this a time or two!)

Rose gardening is sure to involve getting your hands dirty.  If you want to truly enjoy the experience, you must dig in with gusto and heartily embrace your adventure.  Well, there are gloves, you know; but the earth welcomes the hands-on experience.  Some say it is quite gratifying to become like one with the soil.

There is surely an art to rose gardening.  The experience can be as simple or as scientific as you so choose.  You may want to stock up on things like mulch, a shovel, a hoe, weed-killer, a watering can or hose, and maybe some organic fertilizer or "food" for your rose plants.  Not to mention band-aids if your plants have thorns!  You're certain to get pricked at some point if you have the type of rose plant that produces thorns.  But it's all part of the true rose gardening experience.

Roses have been known to contract diseases, so you want to know your plants well to be able to recognize unhealthy changes in their leaves, color, overall health.  Some varieties are particularly susceptible to such and must be monitored.

Image by Carlos del Vaca via FlickrCertainly some research is recommended should you choose to begin rose gardening.  It would be advisable to research your particular type of rose plant.  The adorable miniature roses may need different care than another type of rose plant.  Also, a rose that grows well in one area of the globe may struggle in another.

Unsure where to start?  The internet has vast amounts of information for rose gardening.  There are gardening clubs in many areas.  You can search your local library or favored book store for the proper books or magazines.  Maybe it would be a good way to meet that neighbor you never knew how to approach.  There are also many elderly gardeners who would enjoy mentoring the right student in rose gardening.

Remember, when you choose your rose plant, you may want to share the beautiful blossoms with someone special, or many someones.  A child's teacher, some lonely person in a nursing home or hospital, someone who is unable to enjoy the rose gardening experience firsthand, a favored relative or friend.  So make sure you choose carefully and choose enough to share!  A rose just isn't meant to enjoy alone.