Thanks for those great pictures. The lacy Japanese maple tree is lovely. I can't do lacy maple here, the summer is too hot. I like the purple alyssum - my favorite annual flower. Snapdragons is my second favorite, since they reseed themselves. Looks like you have a clump of zebra grass, or is it striped iris? I spent at least 1 hour killing zebra grass, and had to get neighbors to help since the roots is so deep. I spent even more hours killing invasive catmint - I banned catmint from my garden and planted blue salvia instead. Lavender is my all time favorite - it's never invasive.

Thanks for those lovely pictures - please let us know more about those blue companion plants. Blue color is smashing with roses.

Beautiful garden. You've done so much in just two years. Thanks for the encouragement. It gives me a lot to look forward to with the new garden I'm putting in.

What a beautiful garden, Gean. Your pics brighten a cold winter day.

I really like pansies and violas with roses. Great pics. The roses and all the plants look wonderful.

How delightful, Gean, amazingly lush for such a young garden. Well done, you.

Thank you for your nice comments.

I found some old pics showing the area beforehand. I used cardboard and newspaper and "lasagne'd" the beds. All of this area is a septic drain field and the yard is basically a raised bed. It's easy to work. the worst soil is under that old concrete patio, and the hardest part was chipping it out and hauling it away.

{{gwi:224242}}

{{gwi:224243}}

Strawberry,
The striped grass is Ribbon Grass, Phalaris arundinacea. It is invasive, but it is planted in a very confined, narrow strip. It tries to escape but I'm able to keep it in place, so far anyway.

The shrub with the blue flowers is a ceanothus, 'Victoria,' I believe. The light purple is Stokes aster. There is a campanula on the far right side and a small allium, Allium azureum tucked in there. There is also a hardy geranium which had been cut back by that time, but you can see the foliage. Here's what it looked like a couple of weeks beforehand in that area. The roses are Kim Rupert's 'Lynnie' and the gallica, 'Rosa Mundi.'

{{gwi:224244}}

Strawberry, about catmint, what I plant is nepeta. there are different kinds of mints. I haven't found nepeta to be invasive, but it does get large. Somehow when I first bought 'Walker's Low' I thought it would be low. Wrong big time, but I love the stuff. Salvias won't grow very well for me here, there is not enough sun. I like lavender, too. I use it in the inside of the garage bed as a border around the "chicken" and to define some of the little spaces inside the bed.

I'm still learning about it as it wouldn't grow very well in Alabama.

Wow, what a lot you have accomplished in two years! How do you like living in the Northwest, has it been "culture shock" for you? I grew up in Oregon and Montana; in Oregon it's so easy to grow plants compared to Dallas, but I have come to love it even with the challenges we have.

Exquisite, Harborrose. Wish my gardens looked half so beautiful.. Love all the blue.

The way the light comes through the trees, the grassy paths, what a serene garden. It's just beautiful. I can't believe you have only worked on it for two years.

Beautiful, Gean! Thanks, you make Lynnie look really great! Kim

Hard to believe you have been there such a short time, though I know it is true. You have really accomplished so much already. Jut imagine what it will look like in a few more years!

Rosefolly

Ogrose, thanks so much for the kind words. If you lived in Oregon, you know what it's like up here pretty much. Like you, I guess the thing I've learned most is to plant what likes your conditions. Salvia was a favorite plant in the south, but it just won't grow up here very well. My tea roses survive so far, but won't ever approach what they will in the south. But the once bloomers are beautiful; roses with a lot of petals inevitably ball, so I'm better off with the polyanthas, the semi doubles, the singles. Which is okay with me; I like them.

I tried growing campanula and ceanothus in Alabama with not much success, but my teas, chinas, zinnias, monarda, loved it there. When it's nice here, it's spectacularly beautiful; but it rains here a lot and summer is never really hot. Ceanothus and campanulas grow rampantly here.

I lived in Dallas for 25 years so know what the soil's like. It was caliche/limestone/black gumbo in the various places around Dallas I lived. But the teas and chinas didn't care!

Thank you, Floridarose, Hosenemesis, Rosefolly, and Kim for your kind words.

Kim, on the contrary, your Lynnie makes my garden look good! :)

Beautiful! It looks so much better organized than mine! Gives me something to strive for!
~Tammy

Thank you, Gean, for answering all my questions. Your garden is truly beautiful and inspirational. I love your blue perennials - they really complement roses. Thanks to your pictures, I looked up the perennials and found more that do well for my alkaline soil (pH 7.7). The following perennials do well at pH 6 to 8: alyssum, aster, begonia, bluebell, calendula, clematis, coneflower, foxglove, geranium, larkspur, lobelia, mint, and pansy.

I saw a Virginia bluebell carpet growing in the spring by the lake - it was stunning. Blue color is delightful.

Your Geranium in the Lynnie shot is beautiful, Gean. I guess that's Johnston's Blue? It doesn't grow well here where it's hot so we have Brookside instead. It resembles it quite a bit and can become rampant here (a GOOD thing!). Johnston's Blue wants more your conditions than desert heat, aridity and alkalinity. Kim

You deserve praise. What a lovely accomplishment. Please don't hesitate to post photos this spring. It's only going to get better.

Strawberry, another perennial you might like is garden phlox. My favorite is a white phlox called, 'David.' Here's a picture; I look forward to it every year. I read it is tolerant of pH up to 8, so it should do well for you. It's mildew resistant, which is a problem with garden phlox as well. Any of those plants you mentioned are worth growing, I think. Foxgloves are beautiful, but they are also poisonous if you eat them. So be sure to teach your children to be careful about what they put into their mouths!

Also, with geraniums, the geranium in the picture above is a blue hardy geranium or cranesbill. The geraniums with fuzzy rounded leaves are actually pelargoniums. I am crazy about cranesbill, not so much pelargoniums. You will have fun figuring out what you like and what each plant likes and needs.

{{gwi:224245}}

I am glad you like my garden, Strawberry. Thank you for your nice comments. Gardening is so much fun, and it is also fun to talk about plants and learn from each other.

Kim, you're right, that is Johnston's Blue. It bloomed most of the summer, and I kept cutting it back. I have a Birch's Double and a Kashmir Blue also. I bought a white late last summer and haven't seen it bloom yet. They are great plants.

Pam and Tammy, thank you. I am looking forward to the roses maturing a little and maybe blooming a bit more this summer.

how lovely! I have to admit I'm rather jealous at how well filled in and lush your garden looks compared to mine, which is approx the same age! congrats! It's lovely! :)

Gean, I, too, really like cransebills. I have a few different varieties of them. They are a great perennial

Gene your garden is truly glorious. So full at such a young age. Your color combinations of rose, blue and white are spot on. Just so fun to admire at this time.
Thank you for sharing.
Jeannie
PS we got 14"...and you?

Aimee, that's really sweet of you to say. thank you. My roses are so young; it is the companions that like this soil and cool weather that make the garden look lush.

Krista, I agree about cranesbill. What are the other perennials and companions that you like, Krista?

Jeannie, I was wondering how you were doing in the snow; so glad you posted. 14" !!!- we got about 4 or 5. Can you even get out of your door? Thanks for the kind words, too.

Congratulations Gean. Lovely results from just two years!
I particularly like the photo with the Phalaris arundinacea, ceanothus, roses and scabious.
Some of the plants I miss here, are the geraniums, which grow so well for you.
Although I do have Geranium sempervirens which does very well here.
I also have Nepeta Walkers Low which I wouldn't be without.
It grows and increases well, but is not at all invasive here.
Daisy

What sharp eyes you have, Daisy. Yes, that is pincushion flower or scabiosa, not Stokes aster. I've made that mistake before, confusing those two. Maybe one day I'll learn. Even funnier, I've never owned a Stokes aster but have often bought scabiosa!

Please tell us about Geranium sempervirens; those in warm climates might be very interested and I am not at all familiar with it. Thank you also for the kind words.

Gean, your garden is wonderful; you should be so proud. One reason it's so harmonious and beautiful is that you've confined yourself to a fairly narrow color range which gives it a serene and cohesive atmosphere. It took me a while to arrive at that stage, and I had to eliminate yellow and apricot from my color scheme (except for yellow irises), before the garden made sense color-wise. I've now cautiously added back Charles Darwin and Cl. Lady Hillingdon which have soft tones. I do hope you and other people will allow us to see pictures of your spring/summer garden. My garden is now four and a half years old and I'm hoping it will be the best spring yet, but you'll see positive changes every year that will inspire you to keep adding more beautiful things. It's such a rewarding journey, and you're already well on your way. Congratulations!

Ingrid

Your garden is really lovely, Gean! You've done an amazing job in just 2 years!

Gean, I really like dianthus, and dicentra, (bleeding-heart). I have some dicentra that bloom all summer, and also some that bloom once in spring.

Thanks, everyone. I have admired all of your gardens, either through pictures or your postings and descriptions, and am glad to have shown you mine as well. Thank you again.

Krista, I am becoming a great admirer of bleeding heart and really hope to add some dianthus this year. I miss the smell of it.

Thank you again.

Hi harborrose thanks for sharing your photos with us. I especially loved seeing the "before" of how you reclaimed that patio area for a beautiful garden bed.

If you're crazy over cranesbills, I hope you have Rozanne-- it is by far the longest blooming cranesbill I've grown. I ultimately replaced plants of Johnson's Blue and Brookside with Rozanne because only Rozanne was constantly in bloom.

May I ask in the log photo--what is the purple rose to the right?

hi, littlesmokie,

Is your Rozanne form more mounding or does it get leggy? Johnson's Blue does get leggy but I have found that it's a useful trait as it grew up into a rose last spring, and I really liked the effect. I hear Rozanne is a tremendous bloomer.

The rose by the log is Indigo, a Portland/damask perpetual. It is a very picky rose, I've found. Last spring/early summer it developed yellow veining in its leaves, as you'd see in a rose that has iron deficiency. You can see the yellowed leaves in the picture above. After treating it with iron with no response, I realized Indigo's problem probably was the two concrete stepping stones I'd placed within a foot of it the previous winter.

I replaced the concrete with rock stepping stones, added more iron and the rose recovered. It has not really had any leaf problems other than that. I am cautiously optimistic it will be happy long term in my yard, as I am really fond of the blooms and the color. Next year will be its third year.

{{gwi:224246}}

Sorry Gean. I definitely have old age brain death!
I was thinking Geranium sanguineum, whilst typing sempervirens!!!
Mine is in shade. Although, whilst it was in a pot, it was in sun. It doesn't seem to need a lot of water either.
I don't seem to have a photo of mine.
I have tried to post a link, but cannot get it to work!!
Daisy

No worries, Daisy. You are talking to someone who scraped the snow off a pick up truck yesterday to go to the store after being snowed in for three days and ten seconds later could not find the snow scraper. I still don't know where it is. It was just there - where did it go?

Besides, I'm the one who called a scabiosa an aster, so we're even anyway. Glad to know though that one of that cranesbill family is happy with you.

Harborrose, very nice! You've not only kept to a cohesive color scheme but you've made the shift to plants that grow well HERE and not what you had THERE. I am a big promoter of blue companion plants with roses too! I do have Stokes aster and it's very nice with the roses. I use a lot of delphiniums too, although I have to treat them as annuals as they never seem to come back. Slugs, I think. I once gave a presentation to the local rose society on companion planting where I mentioned having to replant the delphs every year, and I heard someone in the back mutter, "well at least I'm not the only one!"

I use a lot of blue lobelia too, and both annual and perennial blue salvias, which don't get put in until July when it's finally warm enough for them.

I come from a long line of Alabamans, although I never lived there myself, but I do sometimes wish I could grow camellias and azaleas like my grandmother had in Mobile. Oh they grow here, but nothing like there. The flowers rot here in the rain, even though Mobile gets more rain than Washington does. OTOH, she never grew roses, and the roses I did see there always looked sickly.

I'm a big promoter, in this area, of the once-blooming roses too. They do so well here, and a large well-established plant can bloom for 6 weeks easily. That's more bloom than you get off the modern repeat bloomers which generally only give 2 good flushes here. And no winter damage on the once-bloomers.

I have the David phlox planted with my roses and it's becoming a problem. Rhizomes running throughout the bed, and plants popping up everywhere, but without blooming. Becoming a mess. I'm having to weed out phlox, and it's tough to dig out. I also have the native dicentra, Dicentra formosa. Very pretty with the roses but it also spreads by rhizomes, though those at least will bloom. And it never needs staking and never flops or breaks, unlike the Dicentra spectabilis.

Thank you, Gean, for the pictures of white phlox and Indigo, very lovely. You explained what went wrong with my transplanted rhododendrons. I moved them next to my concrete walkway and they went chlorotic immediately. I had to water them with kitchen water soaked with used lemon rinds to lower the pH. They turned greener.

We have 12" of snow on the ground - I love it, since I don't have to water my ten Austin roses planted late this summer. My tall house shaded some Austins in late fall, down to 2 hours of sun and Lady Emma Hamilton, Wise Portia, and Christopher Marlowe were still blooming! We don't get much sun here in Chicagoland.

Gean, please keep us informed of your garden development, I look forward to more pictures from you.

Reg, I know that garden phlox/paniculata will colonize. I read that David's bad about that. I'm trying to keep it in two clumps so will take the shovel to the others that show up. Thanks for telling me what happens in your garden. The phlox has always taken a couple of years to take hold and start to bloom -do you think maybe the small ones just haven't matured yet?

Btw, do you prune yours down in early summer to control size? I haven't before but might try this year.

I have the native bleeding heart, Dicentra formosa all through the woodland garden - at least I did until I started digging in it. I hope it comes back because it is really pretty. A friend gave me one of the large dicentras, spectabilis. It had grown from hers, so I figured it spread. It is a striking looking plant, for sure.

Sorry your delphiniums didn't return; mine didn't either, but neither did the larkspur. which of the delphiniums do you like or have the best luck with?

I had always wanted to grow delphs in the south so planted them the first year. I wasn't as crazy about them as I thought I would be and think I like larkspur better anyway. I am trying to germinate some wintersown magic fountains, but if they don't take, I don't think I'll try for the started plants.

I am glad you have luck with salvias. I loved 'May Night' in Ala and planted some up here, and they just didn't grow. I switched to 'Cardonna' last year and I don't think they did well here either. I haven't tried the annual salvias here; I grew salvia farinacea, mealy cup sage, in the south. Is that what you grow as an annual?

btw, the chicken topiary pic above has a 'Cardonna' in it- it's the spindly looking plant between the lavender rows. That was taken in early August; it never really got robust. But maybe it will grow better this summer.

hi, Strawberry,
It's amazing how much of an effect concrete leaching can have on a plant. I've heard of vinegar as an acidifier; thanks for the mention of lemon, too. You post pics too, okay?