Rose in the Landscape
Roses can perform almost any landscaping job in the garden. Here's
how to choose healthy, vigorous plants of the right type and variety to
assure years of pleasure.
Roses are among the most versatile plants available to gardeners. Don't
shortchange them by thinking of them simply as bloom-producing machines;
they can be an effective and integral part of a successful landscape
design. Because of the wide variety in their growth habits and sizes,
roses can meet almost any landscaping challenge. And, unlike some other
perennials, roses bloom the first year they're planted, so you won't
have to wait long before enjoying their colorful displays.
Use low-growing floribundas or miniatures to edge a walkway, or create a
mass of summer color by filling a bed with hybrid teas. Many types of
roses make excellent foundation plantings; you can match or contrast
them with the color of your house. Climbers trained on a trellis provide
privacy; grown against the house, they can cover an awkward
architectural feature or frame a window or door. Shrub and species
roses, as well as the stately grandifloras, make excellent background
plantings or tall hedges. Roses demand good drainage, so they are
especially suitable for terraced hillsides. The smaller roses adapt well
to container gardening, which means you can move them around to create
striking effects. Miniatures grown inside will provide flowers all year
around.
It's unfortunate that roses aren't used more predominantly in
landscaping; no other plant produces so many flowers so reliably over so
long a period of time or has such an astounding variety of
growth habits and flower forms.
Designing Your Garden
Many gardeners elect to keep all their rose plants in one part of
the garden. The tradition of a separate rose garden stems from the
nineteenth-century practice of devoting an extensive section to roses,
another section to herbs, a third to water plants, and so forth. A mass
of roses can produce a stunning and harmonious effect. It may be more
convenient to have all the roses in one area when you are pruning,
watering, and fertilizing them. But as long as the site is right (a
topic to be discussed in a moment), there's no reason not to enjoy roses
in all parts of the garden, as a focal point or as part of a colorful
tapestry with other plants.
Miniatures are particularly versatile; they will fit in well with all
parts of the garden and provide gorgeous spots of color. Use them as an
edging around flower beds or the vegetable garden, or mix them with
low-growing annuals, such as alyssum, calendula, and viola, or with
small rock-garden plants.
Roses can be an integral part of a formal or an informal garden design.
A formal design is characterized by symmetry and straight or regularly
curving lines. Elegant tree roses are an excellent choice for a formal
garden: A row of them can seem like a colorful guard of honor at
attention. An informal garden is more natural and asymmetrical.
Graceful, arching shrub roses and climbers cascading over a wall or
arbor are at home in an informal landscape.
There is a type of garden planned for efficiency, without regard to
design considerations, This is the cutting garden, usually located in an
out-of-the-way part of the yard, where flowers are raised for shows or
indoor arrangements. Roses in a cutting garden can be given optimum
spacing and arranged so that they can be cared for conveniently.
One of the key words in landscaping is restraint. A specimen plant is
one that is particularly lovely or spectacular and is allowed to stand
alone or to dominate part of a landscape. A single strategically placed
rosebush can be a bold accent that serves as a focal point. When a rose
stands alone or is positioned to stand out among other plants, it should
be special, with exceptional blooms, fragrance, or foliage.
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