Landscaping A Rose Garden – Choosing Roses for Your Landscape

Question: I love landscaping and want a rose garden in my backyard. Before planting a rose garden what varieties or styles give me the most options in design, low maintenance care and minimal disease problems. Katy, Georgia

Answer: Roses are not only beautiful as cut flowers or when used in arrangements, roses are very useful and attractive plants and flowers when used in landscaping. A rose garden is so popular the White House has one. Presidents may change but the White House Rose Garden lives on.

Roses and gardeners have enjoyed a long relationship which continues to this day where roses still enjoy great popularity today.

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

Finding landscape roses isn’t difficult — you can find lots of varieties. The problem comes in choosing the right ones for your landscape needs.

Roses come in a number of classes, with each holding characteristics making them a great choice for use as landscape ornamentals. For example, suppose you want to have roses growing up and over a trellis or archway – tall growing tea roses make for a perfect fit. Tea roses are known for their nodding blooms, and all who walk under the archway enjoy a beautiful display of roses in full bloom.

If a trellis is out and you’re looking to accent a wall then a true climbing rose is you’re the best choice. The beauty of a true climbing rose allows you train the plant into many different looks and effects.

When a vibrant splash of background color is what you want — the Floribunda rose is an excellent choice. The popular Floribunda rose varieties give all this color in the landscape with their large 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 — the Rugosa roses being excellent choices.

The goal or impact of the rose is not the varieties or ways it can be grown — it’s the colors they offer in the gardening palette. What gardeners want are healthy plants that deliver impact in many sizes, styles, textures, colors and shapes. Roses do all of that!

When designing your landscape and rose garden choose the best color roses to compliment the color of your surrounding landscape. A simple arrangement of pink roses deliver the perfect compliment to a stone or marble entrance way and plain white tea roses offer a striking display against a dark red brick house. Roses come in so many colors it should be easy to find colors which compliment and enhance any decorating or landscape scheme you come up with.

Years ago it was popular to landscape using a single variety, today most gardeners like to incorporate a mix of different colors, species and styles of plants into the landscape. This creates a garden full of vibrant color.

Roses do well in a variety of temperature zones and climates; make sure you choose the varieties suitable to your area. This translates into fewer maintenance issues, less pesticides and disease issues and overall a healthier landscape and garden.

Related Articles Of Interest:

• The Versatile Floribunda Rose
• Try Tree Roses Potted or in the Ground
• Pruning Climbing Roses – Essential Things To Know
• Choosing and Planting Roses in Your Garden