I adore roses, they are my favourite of all plants and as such, I have a fair few in my garden. And by a fair few, I mean at least twenty at last count, and I may have overlooked one or two. I must get back out and check! As such, I’ve been been toying with creating a rose garden.
As if I need more roses, I now have a plan to put more in. I am excited!
I have a little bed near the back of the garden that has yet to be given a purpose that I am happy with. It’s been a bed for vegetables, a bed for the children to plant a few annuals and a bed for the kids to just dig and play round in. Currently it’s looking pretty sad, so I need to do something with it. You may have seen my recent post about getting a new bench, and as that’s near to this bed, it makes me all the more determined to revamp it and get the top of the garden looking pretty. I also hate to think of any space being wasted out there, so I must use it wisely.
As such, I have decided to create a rose garden. As I have mentioned, I have plenty of roses dotted all around the garden already, but I thought it’d be nice to have several all in one bed. It will add such gorgeous colours and scents to that part of the garden and it will offer me a fabulous excuse to buy more roses! Any excuse!
So today I thought I’d get some of my thoughts and plans around it clear in my head, and by doing so I’ll share them with you and maybe I can tempt you into creating a rose garden….
How to Create a Rose Garden
A Little About Roses
There are a huge variety of roses available to buy, so take time to get used to the different ones, from shrubs to climbers, to hybrid tea roses to floribundas, there are plenty to choose from. That’s all part of the fun!
You will find when you start looking into it that roses will all suit different parts of your garden. For example, you might want a rambler to run across a back wall, or a climber running around a door frame. For the purposes of this rose garden, it is going to be best to opt for shrub roses so that can all sit well alongside one another. Do read the labels for types of roses and size and spread. I myself do have a few rambling and climbing roses dotted around my garden, but it’ll only be shrub roses that I’ll be putting into this bed and I’ll try to go for similar size ones.
Making Your Rose Selections For Your Rose Garden
For me, roses are all about the scents and they can all smell differently so check out the scent descriptions before buying, and ideally, go and smell them yourself. For your garden, you might want to think about the colours as they will all sit together. Perhaps go for a collection of completely different colours, or you might opt to have them all yellow or pink. There are more than enough varieties for you to be able to theme it in this way if you’d like to.
Consider a good mix of repeat flowering roses or check when they each flower so that you will always have several in bloom at any one time.
Rose Care
Roses are hardy and quite easy to keep, but they are prone to black spot. You need to cut this away when you see it and don’t let the leaves fall to the ground as the black spot is just going back into the roots then. Make sure that when you water around the base of the roses, rather than from above, and they’ll ideally be in well drained soil in a relatively sunny spot. Baking soda and water can help to prevent black spot and I’ve also heard milk and water can be effective, though I have not tried this one out.
Cut back roses hard in early spring, after the frosts and cold weather. You’ll be amazed at how quickly they come back.
David Austin roses are my personal favourites. In my experience, some varieties can be quite weak stemmed for the first year or two, so use stakes to support flowers where needed and over time and cutting them back, they will strengthen.
Plan the Rest Of The Rose Garden
Think about companion plants. Around the roses I intend to plant salvias as I have read that they can help roses to stay healthy, and I think I will then add in a couple of different herbs to add to the fragrance of the bed. This should make the rose garden easy to keep as I’ll go for herbs like mint and thyme that should spread and suppress weeds.
Enjoy the whole process. I am now excited to prepare the bed for planting, I can’t wait for the fun of selecting the roses and then I am already looking forward to sitting out there near to them enjoying my morning cuppa.
Will you be creating a rose bed? If you like roses too, do tell me your favourites, I’d love to know.
You might also enjoy Creating a Cut-Flower Patch and 5 Tips for Encouraging Wildlife into Your Garden.
Very exciting Jocelyn, look forward to seeing the updates and hearing which roses you have chosen. It is impossible to pick a favourite rose but as you love David Austin’s some of my favourite David Austin’s are Jude the Obscure with its fragrance of sweet white wine, and Munstead Wood an aroma of old rose and berries and Tranquillity, amazing long lasting white bloom rosettes with a light fragrance of apples. Other roses for fragrance have to be Papa Meilland, Blue Moon and Devoniensis or the Magnolia rose. I better stop now before I go on and describe every roses in my garden!
Ha ha, you sound so like me when I start talking roses! Thanks!
We don’t have any roses in our garden but despite my poor gardening skills I’m tempted! I love the climbing varieties. I hear they are quite hardy too – always good where we live in the north. x
Oh yes, roses in general tend to be hardy, very easy to keep. Let me know if you get one! x
Hi Jocelyn, I love roses and I have a dream that I will have my own rose garden but I didn’t know, how to cure them. Thanks for sharing the tips and ideas for roses, now finally I will create my own rose garden. Keep posting!
Oh, how wonderful! Enjoy it and let me know how you get on.
I love the smell of roses but have never grown them, I might give this a go this year x
Oh yes, do! They are so easy to look after, enjoy x