I Never Promised You a Rose Garden -- But Here are a Few Other Ideas,
I promised to tell you about some interesting roses. But I never promised you a rose garden. In fact, I rather hope that you don't go out and plant one. I do have something in my yard that I call a rose garden. I call it that because it happens to have more roses than any of my other gardens. But it also has lavender, gentian, Russian sage, lettuce and onions.
Yes -- you read that right. Onions. They grow up into fascinating plants, with tall spire-like stems topped by huge globes of white flowers.I think of them as punctuation. Mixing plants like this is the essence of the idea of cottage garden. Isolating roses into something called a rose garden, with nothing to hide the bushes knobby knees is both awkward and boring.
Are you shocked? Take a look at a most royal garden --Queen Mary's Rose Garden. Nothing but roses. Sameness everywhere. This garden may be impressive in full bloom in June, but what happens after that? Sporadic flowers here and there, Awkward looking, leggy shrubs. Not much to look at. Not what you want from your garden. So let's take a look at all the more interesting ways that you can use roses in your gardens.
First of all, you can use them in a mixed border. That way you can plant things in front of those leggy bushes. You can even plant vines, such as clematis, beneath them, to twine through them and burst into flower when the rose blooms are getting sporadic. You add texture and life to your garden by incorporating roses with other plants. Get something wonderful like an ever blooming English rose and you'll always have a spot of color in your border .Rose bushes can form a centerpiece for a formal garden, or merely add some structure to a more casual one.
You want more than a single specimen plant? Create a fabulous flowering hedge. Many of the excellent shrub roses on the market will give you a thicket of blooms for most of the summer. Add a tiny hedge of lavender or other small perennials at their feet and you'll have a wall of incomparable beauty.
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