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The Living House -- A Really Different Way to Grow Roses


© Carol Wallace

This week I'll tell you how to build one. Well, not a real house. An outdoor room would be more like it. A flowery pavilion, with floors and walls of roses.

No, I'm not crazy. Last week I talked about several ways to use roses. I ran out of room before I ran out of ideas. And when I looked at what I had left to talk about I realized --you could create one really wild outdoor room.

First, the walls. You have a lot of choices. Erect trellises to create four walls (making sure to leave an entrance) and train your favorite climber or rambler up them. Put a few boards, or some lattice across the top and let the roses form a living roof. If you're using once-bloomers (and many of the really vigorous ramblers only do one show a season) plant some clematis along with them. The clematis will twine up the rose canes and create the appearance of a second bloom.

Not into construction? Simplify things by buying hedge roses and letting them grow tall. Do you have an ugly chain link fence you'd like to hide? A rambling rose, with its flexible canes could be woven through it to turn an eyesore into a blooming wall. My next door neighbor grew "Blaze" this way. I would sit between the fence and the side of our own house and imagine that I was in a very exotic pavilion.

In my current garden I already have a wall of shrub roses, planted in front of an old stone wall. The wall is higher than the roses will grow, however. So now I am planting roses to spill down the wall from above. I ordered one called "Baby's Blanket" from Jackson & Perkins. As it hasn't overwintered yet, I don't know if I can safely recommend it. But it does bloom rather constantly, with small, tea-rose shaped pale pink blossoms.

Another rose I grow successfully cascading down a wall is one called "Grouse." This is part of the "Game Birds" series of groundcover roses offered through Heirloom Old Garden Roses. Grouse has single flowers, blush tinted white. Mine is growing in rather poor conditions, but sends out a waterfall of slender canes without fail each year.

The main thing to be careful of when choosing a rose to grow down rather than up is that you don't get an overly vigorous one that will reach the ground below the wall. Many will root where they land, creating still more roses and playing havoc with whatever other plants you may be growing there. Of course, if you need a lot of roses, this is one way to make them.

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Here's the follow-up discussion on this article: View all related messages

9.   Aug 30, 1997 10:44 PM
Speaking of pleached trees -- here is one of the most phenomenal pleaching jobs I've ever seen. Carol (virtually gardening) ...

-- posted by CarolWallace


8.   Aug 30, 1997 10:29 PM
Not too many questions,Debbie -- but they did requite that I locate the book somewhere amid the debris in my library to find the answers. I finally did!

The book is called "Sunflower Houses" by Sha ...


-- posted by CarolWallace


7.   Aug 29, 1997 7:33 PM
I don't think I asked enough questions on my last post! :)

Debra Teachout-Teashon

Contributing Editor

Pacific Northwest Gardening< ...


-- posted by Deb_TT


6.   Aug 29, 1997 7:25 PM
Carole, the living gazebo sounds great! I wonder how long it took to get that way! These were standard size trees? I guess for a real quick gazebo a fast growing tree, or how about ones that have beau ...

-- posted by Deb_TT


5.   Aug 29, 1997 4:31 PM
Debbie, I did include a chair -- although it probably won't be too comfortable to sit on when it grows. The Arborsmith site that I included features trees pleached into unusual shapes. One is an armc ...

-- posted by CarolWallace





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