I plant lavender. I pick the deep purple ones that are shorter. This year I planted Thumbalina version.

I don't plant enough, I realize! So hard to give prime rose space to non-roses! But, I do plant thyme and oregano...they stay manageable and low. Also "Walkers Low" Catnip (catmint?), it stays fairly low, and again, has the cooler blue tones like lavender, and blooms nonstop! Chive, also germander stays green all year (here) and is not invasive. I don't like other things to bloom and compete with the roses. Other than iris, but their form is so different. I dislike most annuals, so my companion plants are herbs mainly. One lonely clematis, which is the classic companion. I must get a few more!

But my space is mainly roses, and I read this thread with hopes of new ideas! I do see alyssum looking nice with roses. Oh yes, lambs ear. But it requires cleaning up after. Mushy leaves under the plants harbor pests. My best option is the Walkers Low Catmint.

We have society garlic around them, in other places also CA poppies and/or calendula.

Bordering a couple of the beds are either bulbs or SB Daisy

I've planted various kinds of lavender, salvia, rosemary, strawberries, russian sage, daffodil bulbs, candy tuft and a few clematis. :)

My mainstays are irises, day lilies and pelargoniums. I find if the color combinations are right other flowers don't compete with the roses, they complement them. Also irises and day lilies don't bloom all the time, but having them among the roses keeps the roses further from each other, which I think helps a lot in terms of transmitting disease.

Remember "beneficial" can mean many things. I've come to encourage the little euphorbia weed (Petty Spurge) so prevalent around here to fill the rose areas because it chokes out the other weeds and seems to mask the new rose growth from the blamed rabbits. As long as this "weed" is lush and full, the ground stays damper and very little of the new growth is munched, so I'd say this euphorbia "weed" is my favored "beneficial" these days. Kim

Here is a link that might be useful: Petty Spurge

Oh goodness, I have everything. lol. Mums, salvia, daisies, iris, daylilies, society garlic, daffodills, geranium, dianthus, marigolds, liriope, gladiola, vinca, plumbago, clematis, passion vine, butterfly bush, jasmine, agapanthus, pansies, mint (IN POTS!), rosemary and I don't even know what else. I guess a lot of those are annuals. Dozens of flowers all the time. I love it, because then there's always something in bloom. Also, it helps to have something for my toddler to pick (and mangle) other than my roses.

THANK YOU ROSE!!! I have been trying to figure out what that weed was that is coming up all over, now just one more to name!

On beneficials, I have spent a bit of time mapping out which veggies are good next to each other AND what flower/plant either brings in a good bugs or drives off the bad. I picked the society garlic, because gophers are supposed to hate it. We put it in along the fence line with the neighbors brick pile, good cover for gophers. A gopher dug a hole up to one side of the row of garlic, walked through it, and dug a fresh hole on the other side...not what we wanted but, once those garlic get big and established, maybe the gopher will head a different direction.

We also use the calendula and poppies, Nasturtiums, comfrey, marigolds, geraniums, etc for similar purposes. Mint is supposed to be good, but keep it in a pot! Heather is supposed to chase off white fly, this has been a dud so far.

I've tried using different things as ground covers around the roses and in the end yanked them all out for various reasons. Some that were supposed to stay put spread terribly everywhere. Others that were supposed to spread never moved an inch. I gave up. I have nice clean dirt!

We have long winters, hot summers and fairly dry...so these might not work for everyone. Favorite companion plants are stock, cosmos, daisies, coneflowers, alyssum, bee balm, clematis, butterfly bushes and lilacs (behind the roses) tulips, daffodils, hyacinths, snapdragons, zinnias, marigolds and lots of herbs...especially lavender, catmint, sage and thyme :)

I never realized how much people use companion plants with a rose garden! Thank you all, I'm going to print this page up and visit my nursery this weekend!

I have volunteer Oxalis and Strawberries, which I just leave alone.
I wish the Oxalis was thicker and the Strawberries do not like being covered in the winter.
This past mild winter seems to have really hit them hard, especially as last summer I was very late in getting the Roses uncovered but the Strawberries looked pretty good.

This warm winter it seems everything under the cover, except the roses, and night crawles, looked like the worms went dirt tracking under there, took a real beating.

I was rushed for time, trying to beat the rain, which was too bad as on a deep black surface like that, every weed that had survived stuck out like a zit, but I simply did not have time to dig them all out.
As it is I failed and ended up digging the roses out of the black muck in the rain.
The only tool that works if you do not want to ruin the roses is ones bare hands.

The problem with having to cover the roaes is finding what companions tolerates that, that is not unwanted.

I am not, repeat NOT, going to bury them again as workng in our black-gumbo is too much a pain in the buttocks in the spring.
I put strings on them to find them but the strings either rotted or were so soaked in black mud, I could not find them.
I actually think what ever the string was made of was candy for night crawlers as the few I found when pulled were no longer attached to anything and about half as long as they once were.
I also think one is still buried but will just wait till a sprout pops up to locate it.
The ones that did best were the ones so stiff that canes poppped up out of the dirt so they were easy to find, but up-righting them was not hard because I had to dig up the rose, but I had to dig a hole behind the rose to upright it.
I have done this more than once before but this was the worst of the worst, in a year when it should have been very easy.

The Oxalis comes from seed pods but I am worried the Straberries took a real hit.
It took four years for them to cover one fourth of the rose bed.

Kippy, everything you read about this or that plant "repelling" or "purging" gophers is repeated legend with absolutely no fact nor benefit behind it. Believe me, I've tried them all and NONE of them do what is advertised they will do. Gopher Purge is a euphorbia whose seeds will remain viable in the soil for fifteen years or longer. I pulled seedlings of that stuff for fifteen years AFTER the last plant had been purged from the garden. It did NOT "purge" gophers. They didn't eat it, but they continued digging right through their roots to get to roses and other perennials.

Society Garlic is exactly the same. A yard wide strip of it will not prevent nor repel gophers. They will dig under it, through it, walk through or around it. Guaranteed!

Amaryllis belladonna, narcissus, joquils, none of the bulbs "poisonous to gophers" will repel nor prevent gophers. I had one dig under the clump of belladonna on the hill, using the bottoms of the bulbs as the roof of his entrance. They won't EAT it, but they WILL dig right through it.

Many salvias are the same, they won't eat the roots but they will dig through them. They're doing it out back here, right now. The only thing which will prevent gophers are wire baskets. They will burrow around them, under them, eat the roots which grow through them, but they can't get into them, so the crowns of the plants are safe. Kim

I encourage the lowest clover that I found as a weed a while on back, and it provides awesome cover for my toads and small snakes. Sometimes not-so-small, too! :D I've even found little tree frogs in there. It's easy to keep nice, because I do cut it back frequently. I think it's very pretty, personally.

I also plant short ornamental grass specifically to encourage the preying mantises to travel to the roses. Anything upright and the right color would probably do, but they don't use the clover to hang out in. The ladybugs also use the blades of grass a lot, I've noticed.

Oh, I also have a bunch of spiders in there. Don't use my suggestions if you aren't a real nature lover, lol.

I use the grass in rhythms/geometry to give a bit of formal structure to the garden, too. My roses tend to be so arching or rambly :) I like the white-variegated grasses, and so do the mantises here.

Kim,

I know what you mean about the gopher weed, I hate those things and guess the gophers dont eat the root of the weed, but they sure do not mind digging just past it.

I would love to screen off the property from the neighbors gophers, but it would really take both of use to dig a good trench, we are raised, so easier from their side than ours.

I am trying to "feed" this gopher...

I have tons of other flowers besides roses. Especially plants like lavender and salvia (which the earwigs love) that complement the colors of the roses and hide the bottoms of the canes. I like to think of it as a cottage garden.

One year I planted scabiosa (pincushion flower) here and there and was shocked to see how many aphids loved those plants. I got an idea to plant them near roses that the aphids seemed to love. Sure enough the aphids preferred the scabiosa which were closer to the ground.

Also keep in mind that thrips love light colored flowers so that they can hide in plain site. Light colored flowers like small iris and Easter lilies etc... can attract those pests as well.

Are there any plants that can ward off earwigs specifically? I dont mind if they eat the old leaves, but earwigs go after the tender growth only as well as flower buds. I tried planting herbs like catnip, spearmint, and chives hoping the strong scent would deter earwigs, but they eat those catnip and the spearmint too!

Some people say earwigs don't eat plant growth. I totally disagree. In my yard I can count the amount of bugs/insects on my fingers. And the only culprit I can point to are earwigs. They are always hiding nearby plants that they have preyed upon. Not to mention, I've had traumatic events where I've cut spray of roses and sniff them only to have them crawl out over my hands and nearly onto my face! Now I am cautious of cutting/picking any flower with small, semi-perfect circles cut into the petals.