It is amazing what special status roses have in gardens! A gardener will move a tree, completely restructure a flower bed and change the location of a patio before they decide to touch an established rose. New homeowners who inherit roses plan their entire gardens in ways that feature and complement them.
There are good reasons for that. Roses are very long lived. Some of them can thrive for a hundred years or more and once established in a location don't require any care. During my early gardening years I watched with humble envy how an abandoned rose on the outside of a courtyard produced perpetual garlands of beautiful flowers with no pruning, deadheading, watering or fertilizing, while the one bud on my excessively pampered plant refused to open.
They over-deliver on color and fragrance: mass plantings of landscaping roses, gracefully arching bushes, branches heavy with fragrant blossoms or delicate sprays of flowers peeking modestly from the tops of old trees the rose clambered on. They offer great versatility for horizontal, vertical and ground cover planting.
Rose bushes, especially tall arching ones, are a great way to create structure in your garden.
Free bloomers require minimal maintenance and are exceptionally fitted for landscaping. Once a rose hedge gets comfortable with its surroundings colorful bloom is guaranteed for many years.
You have to be patient, roses are sensitive plants and they will take their time to acclimate to a location. My "Gourmet Popcorn" didn't bloom the first year and had only sporadic flowers the second, despite appropriate feeding, watering and pruning. After the third year they started producing the compact masses of popcorn shaped flowers that inspired their name. They bloom May through November and even graced the garden with frozen blossoms in the middle of winter.
Here is a list of care free roses that are great for landscaping: "Knock-out", "Morden", "Flower Carpet", "Iceberg", "America", "Mr. Lincoln", most rugosas, miniature chinas.
Main Areas: Garden Writing; Sustainable Gardening; Homegrown Harvest
Published Books: “Terra Two”; “Generations”
Career Focus: Author; Consummate Gardener;
Affiliation: All Year Garden; The Weekly Gardener; Francis Rosenfeld's Blog
I started blogging in 2010, to share the joy of growing all things green and the beauty of the garden through the seasons. Two garden blogs were born: allyeargarden.com and theweeklygardener.com, a periodical that followed it one year later. I wanted to assemble an informal compendium of the things I learned from my grandfather, wonderful books, educational websites, and my own experience, in the hope that other people might use it in their own gardening practice.