I'm not sure you'd call this a "room" but my back garden is designed to envelope you in fragrance. It's an island type but there is a stone path and a bench at the end. All along the way I've put fragrant things--Roses (of course), Philidelphus, Buddleia, Gardenias, lavishly fragrant oriental lilies, some herbs that are fragrant when you brush past them and some others that I can't think of right now. I'm planting a new Blush Noisette right behind the bench. Hopefully the fragrance will carry on the breeze. Can you tell I have a "thing" for fragrance?

I love to walk down the path, sit on the bench and just enjoy the sights, the smells and the feeling of being outside.

Oh yes, I'm also adding a small "fountain" that I hope will have a little gurgle. I'm going for a relaxing romantic little garden space where I can sit and talk with my wonderful (and beautiful) wife.

@Ingrid: I love your choice of roses for that separate area of your garden. I too have a weakness for purple and lilac roses. It will be wonderful to see this develop through the years. I hope it turns out as grand as your vision. We all know you are a woman of intelligence and very good taste. Thank you, Ingrid.

@Jeff: Your garden area of fragrance sounds divine. And your such a romantic, Jeff. Do add a fountain and romance your wife there everyday. How awfully romantic of you. Sitting on a garden bench and talking is one of the great pleasures of life.

Juliet

I have very few garden rooms as my husband doesn't like to divide up the garden. All rooms are natural, either because a large boulder is in the way or there are a couple of large trees blocking the view. I have tried to use these natural features by adding free standing trellises and internal hedges. A secret garden just happened because our neighbours to the east put up a wall close to one of our patios which was backed by trellis. It looked a bit funny at first but I've accepted this strip of land between the wall and the trellis as a secret garden. I wish they'd have told us before though, or we wouldn't have put the patio just there.

Funny you should ask. This spring I intend to have several linked pergolas made, very simple open cedar frames, so I can plant climbing roses, mostly white (the view includes some ocean and the blue-green is so strong a color note that I can't plant pink or red or purple there). Once the posts and beams are established and the young rose plants are in, I can take my time deciding how to "furnish" these rooms - benches? long border beds for perennials below the climbers? A table with umbrella? And maybe a water feature? I need to wait until the roses are in before I can get the feel of each space and take it further.

Carol

I can't imagine a garden without enclosed spaces, but we're going to have to wait until our shrubs get over a foot tall. Once the plants get some size on them, though, as Carol says, I'll be able to work on refinements. Converting a brushy field into a garden takes time.
Melissa

I really like distance views to connect my gardens, so I guess you could say that my garden rooms have an open floor plan. I do have three new gardens planned for the upcoming year (if the snow ever melts and the ground dries enough to work before the heat of summer.)

Over the past couple of years, I have gathered quite a collection of David Austin roses ... mostly the old ones that Mr. Austin has deemed to be unworthy. Every single one of them is still in a pot, and this is the year that I am determined to put them into the ground. Instead of spreading them among all the gardens, I decided to group them together. That way, visitors can appreciate their scent and form all in one spot. I'll have a country-style picket fence to support the taller varieties, and plant the shrubbier ones in front. I only have a vague vision of this garden ... I'll probably make it up as I go along.

Another collection that is completely out of hand is my Ralph Moore mini roses. I have collected them for a few years. The closing of Nor-East's retail business last year opened the vault and made varieties available that I had only dreamed of having. These little guys are getting their own garden in a prominent spot by the barn ... probably designed like a knot garden, divided into quadrants with tuteurs in the center of each segment and a feature in the center of the garden. I'm still working on it.

The third garden will be a place to house all of the roses that I have collected from cemeteries and old house sites, and it will be designed to look like a country cemetery. Wood fence posts and wire fencing ... I even have an antique cemetery gate to use. This garden will require some space, since I have roses like Banshee, and R. moschata, and Mme. Lombard, and others that get pretty big.

If I can accomplish this, I will be left with only a few roses in pots by the end of the year. This is my goal ... to get as many roses as I can into the ground. It will be a very new concept for me, since I have always had potted roses waiting for their spot in the garden to protect through winter.

Connie

I can't seem to stop doing this. I do love to have something new to work on. I am building an area called the Mad Hatter's Tea Party. It's actually an inside joke because my husband, who looks the least likely to do so, collects tea cups. The pathways and beds will be simple and formal with a circle in the middle for the tea party. This will contain a statue of the Mad Hatter and the White Rabbit and all kinds of tea cups and tea pots. There are already climbers hanging over the fence. I will plant a lot of fun cottage flowers and some polyanthas.

I'm planning a tea/potpourri garden with roses and herbs. The roses towards the back will be damasks and albas, with the ones towards the front being Davis Austins and portlands. I plan to have lavender (lots of lavender), lemon verbena, bee balm and mints (in pots), violets and maybe alpine strawberries, and a seating area for two to drink tea. I hope to have some climbing roses over an arbor with a bench underneath and maybe some star jasmine with white petunias in pots on either side. It's an L-shaped garden with the table in the middle. I'm using my antique bricks for the seating areas.

Thanks Juliet for another nice post for me to read and dream about what I would love to have.

I'm recovering from my back surgery but I can still dream-----LOL

Florence

@zeffyrose: Your welcome Florence. I have enjoyed reading of everyone's garden room ideas very much as well.

I hope your recovery is going fabulously, Florence. You have been through so much medically recently and are very strong and you have a wonderful sense of humor about you. I send you love and prayers for a speedy recovery.

I do hope you have many roses in your garden this year. I always enjoy the photos you post of your garden on the rose gallery.

Best Regards,

Juliet

My gardens are full of rooms. My old rose garden is surrounded by sweet olive shrubs 6 feet tall. When you walk in you are hidden from the outside world. My new rose garden is in my orchard, but still surrounded by evergreens. There are many enclosed areas inside, where there are roses all around and only one exit. I like to be hidden! The rest of my gardens are like that too, but roses grow so much faster than the other shrubs! 7 years into my other gardens and they still aren't enclosed.

But as for garden room plans.. This year's plan is a winter garden. I've got an area of the yard that is full of weeds and snakes during the summer but perfect in the winter. Got a shipment of winter blooming trees and shrubs in today. The area is already almost enclosed with hollies, camellias and viburnums that I panted 7 years ago. Last year's garden room plans included 2 camellia rooms. I just love rooms!

My small backyard has a fence on the sides, trees along the back which kind of close it in and an open field beyond. It may eventually have rooms as roses get bigger and hide what is around the corner, and I have climbers poised to grow up into the trees, but my front yard is wide open. Eventually the tea roses on the side will be big and Le Vesuve in the center will be good sized, so I'm hoping for some intimacy and shelter from the outside world, but I don't know. Right now I'm planning to put smaller roses (Sweet Chariot, Anda, Verdun, Lauren) in pots on the gravel to reduce the impact of it. I realize now I could have made the beds bigger and didn't need such a large path of gravel around the circle, but I won't be enlarging the beds in this lifetime. So I've been planting a little closer to the edge, welcoming the encroachment of greenery on the gravel and adding plants in pots will fill in the vast emptiness. I almost bought some Japanese 'Sky Pencil' Hollies to plant at the curb entrance to the circle for height interest, but then I found out they need a pH of 5.5. Don't have that!

I had once thought of swagging climbers on chains around the circle. We'll see about that. I'm kind of afraid of looking like the hanging gardens of Babylon. Also, how many roses can really be packed into a 30x30 area? At some point it will get ridiculous. Of course, maybe I could do a double tier of swags 12' high. That's a thought. No, it isn't.

Sherry

I love everything I've read here and thank you all for inspiration, especially Pam's Mad Hatter room is such a whimsical concept for a garden room. Being a big fan of Alice Through The Looking Glass, I would love to do that too. And cweathersby's winter garden idea is appealing to me.

I think I am going to eye out some vacant lot nearby and make it an annex to my garden, so I'll have the space to make more rooms.

Juliet

@sherryocala: Sherry, I must say in reading your post above, I find your writings very entertaining. You are so creative and have a wild imagination. I love it! It will be neat to see how your garden rooms develop as your roses get bigger. Thanks for the input!

Juliet