Rose Garden Guide

The rose is a symbol of love and beauty as espoused by poets throughout the ages – and with good reason, these beautiful flowers are likely to bring any garden out into huge bursts of colours. A whole garden of these wonderful plants will astound guests in summer months and keep the head gardener (whether that’s you or the other half indoors) busy, taking care to get the largest blooms possible.

What You Need for a Rose Garden

You need a plan to begin with. There are so many different kinds of roses out there you should be able to find something for each condition and situation of your garden. Rose hedges can be created with close planting and pruning lightly – Rugosa Roses can be great for creating hedges as they have plenty of leaves to offer a robust look.

Formal rose garden design relies on the beauty of the roses independently. It uses standard roses which can be tall and elegant – while these can be beautiful in themselves they do not always offer the lushness of a completely “full” rose garden.

You can also encourage roses to grow along arches and around gates and doorways – this can be a particularly good way of wowing anyone visiting your rose garden. Rose ground covers can be a great way to cover the floor of your rose garden, they manage to make the less full areas of the garden appear much more vibrant.

A Rose by Any Other Name

There are plenty of different kinds of roses out there – and rather than exhaustively list them all here, a guide to the different types of roses which may interest any gardener.

Miniature roses are usually quite small, they flower throughout the rose season with flowers about 2 to 4 cm across. They are not particularly thorny and provide small points of colour in any arrangement.

Roses known as “Species Roses,” are roses which flower with 5 petals – their foliage is somewhat ferny and this should be taken into consideration when planning your rose garden, it may not compliment the other rose choices you have made.

“Old Roses,” and Floribunda Roses are fragrant. These “Old Roses,” tend to flower in late spring and summer. These roses have mostly been replaced by Hybrid tea roses, which we shall come to shortly. Floribunda Roses usually have large clusters of flowers and are great for adding concentrated splashes of colour. They are loved by those who like a little history in their garden.

Hybrid tea roses produce flowers freely and are richly scented; the flowers are usually between 10 and 15 cm wide and have the high pointed centres we have come to expect from roses.

Climbing roses are the perfect was to cover any archways or trellis – they are one of the only ways to completely fill a garden with roses as there are obviously some spaces which other roses won’t fill. Equally, modern shrub roses are superb small bushy plants which usually grow to around 2 metres or so – these are hybrids of old and modern roses and are perfect for filling in any gaps left.

With this in mind you should be able to begin planning the general shape of your rose garden along with the colours. It is advised that you use a colour wheel when making colour choices so you are aware of exactly what goes with what. Also, remember, there is no such thing as blue or black roses!