Choose Your Roses Wisely

There are so many different types of roses in so many varieties and colors, that it might seem overwhelming at first.  Choosing wisely is far easier if you give some thought to your garden layout before venturing to the garden center or browsing the catalog.

Consider, first, the types of roses available.  Large shrub roses have great presence and are usually covered with large, beautiful flowers.  They look wonderful along the front and sides of your house, or as accent plants throughout your garden.  Even when not in bloom, the rich green foliage of these bushes is a pleasure to see.

More delicate than shrub roses, but no less visually stunning, are hybrid tea roses.  Blessed with full flowers that are a delight to view, they make the perfect cut flower, allowing you to bring some of the beauty of your garden inside.

For great drama with a touch of romance, little can rival a climbing rose in full flower.  Whether you train them to climb a wall or trellis, or surround a doorway, the look is striking.  Imagine a covered walkway to your front door with climbing roses literally surrounding you as you approach.  Enchanting!

Even if you don't have much space, you can still have roses.  Petite roses are compact plants which can be planted in small areas of your garden.  Even if you don't have a garden, petite roses thrive in containers as well.  Enjoy the beauty and elegance of roses on your patio or terrace without the need to do any planting at all.

Roses may be purchased in three ways - in pots, wrapped inside a plastic bag, or bare root.  How you purchase them is entirely up to you, but roses in pots will probably have the most difficulty adapting.  Many do purchase this way with great success, but there is simply a greater chance of root damage when transplanting potted roses.

Bare root roses are most frequently the choice for catalog and online stores because they ship so well.  They're kept dormant and stored without soil, with damp sawdust or burlap used to keep their roots moist.  Bare root plants are typically planted in early spring and adjust well to their new home.  They also tend to be cheaper than potted plants.

Don't, however, let price by the only consideration when choosing roses.  As with most expenditures, buying the cheapest is not always the most cost effective, especially if you’re inexpensive roses die two weeks after purchase.  Choose healthy, good quality plants first, and then get them for the best price you can.

If you are shopping locally, inspect the plants carefully.  Choose plants that have at least three strong canes or stems.  Look for any signs of distress or insect infestation, and move on if there's any damage to the plant.  Your new plant should have white, healthy looking roots and plump buds.

Finally, keep your color scheme in mind.  Complementary colors will give your garden an overall pleasing look, while colors that don't look good together will appear jarring and cheap.

Rose Gardening: Let's Begin

We spent the last few articles looking at flower gardens in general. Now let's get a bit more specific and spend some time discussing the queen of the garden - the rose. 

Perhaps the best known and most loved flower in the world, roses add elegance, beauty and refinement to your garden.  Considering their delicate beauty, they are surprisingly easy to grow and don't require much maintenance.

They're not just beautiful, either.  They've been used in a variety of ways outside of the garden for centuries, for medicinal as well as more ethereal purposes.

They’re use in perfumes, for example, is well-established.  Did you know, however, that they are often used to flavor baked goods and some confections? 

Rose petals contain tannin and have been used to control bleeding.  An infusion of rose petals has been shown to help treat diarrhea.  The ancient Chinese used rose water and rose oil as a remedy for colon and stomach troubles.

Roses are related to plums, apples and almonds and belong to the family Rosaceae and the genus Rosa. There are specimens of roses in the fossil record dating back forty million years.  Fossils from Colorado, for example, have been found from about that time period.

Roses are native to most of the northern hemisphere, growing wild in North America, Egypt, India and even as far north as Siberia.  While they can grow well in the southern hemisphere, there is no evidence to suggest that they are naturally occurring there.

The roses we know today are the result of thousands of years of cultivation, beginning with the ancient Egyptians and Chinese, and followed by the Greeks and Romans.  It's believed that the Romans introduced the cultivated varieties to England and France.  The English and French were actively cultivating roses as early as the 15th century.  They crossed the pond the following century.

Cultivation and hybridization have resulted in literally thousands of varieties of roses, with an astonishing range of colors.  Unfortunately, this has also made roses not quite as hardy as their ancestors.  While easily maintained, they're still less resistant to diseases and insects, and should be watched carefully for signs of distress.

Roses can be used in a number of different ways throughout the garden.  Climbing roses can soften a wall or fence, or become a beautiful, living sculpture on an arbor or trellis.  Rose bushes can accent the front and sides of your house, giving your home that all-important curb appeal.  Some varieties can even be used as hedges.  

You can even set aside an entire section of your yard for a rose garden.  If you grow enough of them, you might even be able to sell them at your local flea market for a nice little profit.  How great would that be?  Put the profits away, and next year you might have enough to pay for all your new plants!  

Don't Let Diseases Kill Your Flowers

Diseases can attack almost every living thing, and flowers are certainly not immune.  The garden can be a scary place, full of viruses and bacteria and fungi, oh my!  Learning to protect your flowers can keep your garden in bloom throughout the season.

Fungi can lay dormant in soil for a very long time, even when there are no plants growing in the area.  Planting flowers in previously unused ground doesn't guarantee that your plants will be safe.  You need to be on the lookout for any signs of stress in your plants.

Fungi are incredibly prolific, and can spread up to 100 million spores from one infected plant.  Once a plant is infected by fungi, which typically enter the plant via the root or the leaves, you will have to work diligently and effectively to eradicate the infection before it spreads.

Unlike fungi, bacteria can't live in unplanted soil for any length of time.  They require warmth and moisture in which to grow, and tend to be more of an issue in areas which have a warmer and wetter growing season.  Bacterial infection is often transmitted via overhead watering, with the bacteria splashing up with the water onto a cut stem or leaf.  You should examine your plants periodically for damage.

Viruses, like fungi, can infect bare soil but cannot replicate in that environment.  They can only reproduce and become destructive within the cells of a plant.  Like bacteria, they enter the plant via a tear or cut in the stems and leaves.  Insects are often responsible for transmitting viruses, although contact with infected pollen can also be the cause.

Once you see signs of stress in your flowers, proper diagnosis is the key to rapid recovery.  You can research the issue using books or the internet, or some other resource that will provide the information you need.  You can't treat the disease until you know what you're fighting.

If you're unable to identify the problem yourself, a visit to your local garden center or extension service might be advisable.  A good description of the symptoms might help them prescribe a treatment.  Bringing a photo along with you would give them even more information.

Once you've diagnosed the problem, then you need to choose the best solution.  If at all possible, start with an organic treatment. Not only will this be gentler to flowers, but it will be kinder to the environment as well.  Often commercial fungicides and chemical treatments can be as bad as the disease itself.

Take some time to research the types of issues your specific choice of flowers may be prone to.  An understanding of the potential threats in advance can save you time and effort, and perhaps your flowers, when the need arises.

Flower Gardens and the Landscape

The landscape of your property is the natural decor surrounding your home.  It's the process of tying all the natural elements - trees, flowers, rocks and water - into a pleasing whole. 

Your flower garden should be an important element in the overall landscape.  It should be peaceful and restful, a beautiful addition that reflects your personality.  Whether that means elegant and stylish, or smart and fun, you create the space that most appeals to you.

Design your garden to fit in with the rest of the landscape, creating a flow and harmony that is pleasing not only to you, but to your guests as well.  Let it be a place of enjoyment for all who venture into it.

The same design elements that help to structure your landscape, such as form, line, scale and texture, are  important in the design of your flower garden, as well.  These elements all play their role in achieving a pleasing design that complements your home.

More so, perhaps, than in the overall landscape, color plays a very important role in designing the flower garden.  Choose flowers in complementary colors, that work well with each other and flow from one color to the next.  Contrasting colors will clash, disrupting the peacefulness and beauty you're striving for.

In much the same way as you choose trees of different heights, and bushes below them in the larger landscape, in the flower garden you should choose flowers of different heights, shape and fullness.  Varying forms are pleasing to the eye, while uniformity can be boring and look institutional.

You'll want the eye to flow naturally throughout your garden, and fences are very useful in creating the lines of your garden and directing the viewers eye.  Use fences to create both horizontal and vertical flow, striving for as natural a pattern as possible.

Keep the height of the mature plant in mind when considering the layout of your garden.  Plantings along walls or other barriers should always flow from tallest in the back to shortest along the outer edge.

If you have the room and the inclination, a water feature can make a stunning addition to the garden and surrounding landscape.  Anything from a simple splashing fountain, to a pond or waterfall can add a touch of serenity to garden.  Just the sound of splashing water relaxes us and lessens stress.

Don't forget walkways in your design.  Not only will you and your guests get closer to the flowers, but the different types of walkways are a design element themselves.  Match your walkway to the structure and feel of your garden, and tie the entire garden together.

And, finally, choose flowers that work with your landscape.  You might be able to grow orchids outside in you area, but if you have a traditional garden they may not blend in.  Harmony and balance are the keys to a pleasing garden design that will give you years of pleasure.

   

 

Design Tips for Your Flower Garden

Are you a bit scared of the idea of designing your flower garden?  It can seem like a big project, and you certainly don't want to get it wrong.  Taking your flowers back out of the ground because you don't like the design can be heartbreaking.

The key is getting it right the first time, and that's not as hard as it may seem.  If you're artistic,  a great garden design may be easy for you.  The types and varieties of flowers, their heights and textures, and their placement in the garden may come very naturally to you.  If you're not an artist, these decisions may be a bit of a struggle.  But you don't have to be an artist or professional to have a garden you can enjoy!  Some simple guidelines will help you create the garden you've always imagined.

Texture is one of the most important elements in your garden design, and textural variety is key to an aesthetically pleasing garden.  Uniformity and similarity can be boring.  Choose plants that have different heights, different size flowers, and leaves of different sizes and shapes.

Different flowers bloom at different times throughout the growing season, and choosing flowers according to their blooming cycle will extend your enjoyment of your garden for as long as possible.  You can, of course, take a different approach and plan your garden around a specific season.

A spring garden, for example, would feature the colors of flowering bulbs and bushes.  The pinks, yellows, reds and purples of tulips, daffodils and azaleas would be the stars of this type of garden.

Your summer garden is probably the most versatile, with whites and blues mixing well with both spring and fall colors.  A garden that features red, white and blue flowers would be the perfect backdrop for your July 4th party!

The colors of a fall garden are deeper, with reds, deep yellows and oranges predominating.  These look best with the striking reds, oranges and browns of the fall leaves.

Unless you're going for a naturalistic, wildflower look, you'll want to choose flowers in colors that complement each other, no matter what the season may be.  Colors that work well together will give your garden a pleasing, refined look.

Give some thought to where a flower will be planted.  For plantings along a wall, taller plants should go up against the wall, with progressively shorter plants towards the border.  The same would be true of an ornamental circle of flowers, where the tallest flowers would be planted at the center and the shortest flowers at the outer edge.

Finally, consider mixing annuals and perennials in you garden.  The foundation of your garden can bloom year after year, maturing into substantial plants, while you get the pleasure of choosing different annuals each year to fill in the gaps.  This will let you work a bit on your garden each year, without having to redesign it on a yearly basis.