Take 25% Jon's garden in England, 25% Pam's garden in Mendocino, 25% Ingrid's garden in San Diego county and 25% Melissa's garden in Italy and there you have my dream garden.

Jon's garden has that magical, English beauty. Pam's garden is in a spectacular setting. Ingrid's garden has a unique location and clarity of light and Melissa's garden has the romance and beauty of Italy.

Juliet

Well for a dream garden I would want more land, more money to buy plants and 10 East European field workers to amend this blinking clay. :D

I wish I had more space to plant trees - both just pretty stuff and an orchard for fruit trees. Then I would love to have enough money for pretty bed borders from pretty stones, pretty stone paths, wooden arches, arbors and so on. I also like water features, statues, even things like grotto, cool stuff.

Oh and about 10 extra cats, dogs, horses... x)

I love blank slates!

The challenge arises on the geography of the blank slate.

Perhaps, the question is: What is your dream blank slate.

I guess Iowa is not too bad, except for the weeds, harsh winters, JBs, etc., oh, and lack of young men willing to play among the thorns for peanuts.

Toodles!

F.L.

I have lots of blank slate left, so I'm still designing my dream garden. The only things I need to help complete it would be more money and some staff! :)

You know, not one specific rose was mentioned in any of your responses. Does everyone already have all the roses they'd like to order? If not, what would you include? DAs, OGRs, a mixture or start over with a vegetable garden? I even put gallica roses and two Lavender Lassies in my kitchen garden :)

Lavender_lass, forgot to mention the roses I would choose, but yes, they would be mostly Old Garden Roses and DA roses. If I had the room, I would repeat all the roses I love three times. Although, I think I might make the garden a little less colorful if I started over. I would make Sombreuil the cornerstone of the garden and have creamy white be the main colorway. :)

Juliet

I'd simply like a bit more space. I started with a blank slate this past Dec. :)

My work-in-progress garden is a mix of DAs, OGRs, moderns, herbs, lavender, irises, cherry trees, wisteria, morea, agapanthus, etc.

I'd like to eventually get a mediumish pergola attached to the house. We already have a broken concrete patio with whooly thyme growing inbetween. I'd cover the pergola with climbing roses (of course)

I plan to have a small arbor in one of the back corners with a seat covered in climbing roses (mixed with clematis)... and perhaps on the other side under the eventually-large cherry tree, another seat? I'd like to put a lilac, vitex or butterfly bush or something near there, too.
This is all in the back though...

in the front... right now I have some lavender and roses and camellia. I'd like to just gradually add to that... add some more groundcover companion plants. Eventually, I'd like to have a rock "river" down the drainage area in the middle of my front yard. I think that would be really pretty with the roses, and our area is rocky, so it echos the natural state. (in fact, I probably have enough rocks pulled out of the soil in the back to make a river in the front... but I kinda like them in the back, so...)

in the front, I'd also like to eventually get a split-wood fence put in... one of those really rustic ones, just a small bit, just big enough to have Baronne Prevost HP rose spilling over.

I don't have all roses by far, but then again, my wish list probably would be a few thousand names long. :D Roughly, I would probably do the same, OGR with some modern old-fashioned style roses (like hybrid musks for example), but I would get more once bloomers than I have at the moment - albas, galicas, centifolias, damasks. Also, I would get rugosas, for which I do not have space at all at the moment and some wild ones. Then, in perfect garden I would like to have an orangery, with exotic teas and other tender stuff. x)

Oh and I would probably get every moss rose that is out there. x)

I would love to be somewhere rural and more informal. My garden has too many limitations right now. Also, I would love more space. The two things I really want but don't have are a sunny grasses and wild flowers meadow and a woodland area where I could naturalize some spring bulbs. As far as roses specifically are concerned I love all classes, although I do select primarily for fragrance. I would love to grow more huge Teas for which I have no room and some huge HMs. I love the look of Plesanterie, but Cass's comment on HMF that hers is bigger than a Volkswagen always stops me from ordering it:-)

Masha

Several acres several achitectural follies, clematis and peonies and salvias so it's no totally a rose Museum. I'd like to have some of the usual suspects found in most great rose gardens but I'd also like to have a bit more than that. A wide variety of Bourbons & Albas are a must only few moderns & very few Austins as I feel they already everywhere.

The main requisite in my dream garden would be a full-time gardener---then nothing would stop me---

We lost a tree and Now I have lots of sun but I have to be realistic----

I'm just happy to be able to walk and enjoy the roses I have.

Florence

I actually think I have most of the roses I want but would like a somewhat larger flat area around the house to allow the roses to get really huge. I want big roses that always have some bloom, an arbor with a huge climber or two on it, a fountain like I had in a previous home which looked very classical, room for a few more trees, and a gardener to pull the weeds. Also a sitting area that's in the shade all day for those hot summer days with the fountain splashing nearby. Mrs. B.R. Cant will already be ten feet tall instead of ten inches. My bands will be full-grown and the whole area would look lush, romantic and unforgettably beautiful. Jon's garden comes very close to my dream garden, with a bit more of a Mediterranean orientation.

Ingrid

12 acres of land,
with a flowing stream,
to plant Rambling roses, close by
and within, Tea roses in yellow hues and pink,
would be lovely, I would think.
the perimeters all aflounce with Old Garden roses
eglantine briars, and roses brought in from a wilderness
Fragrance in jessamine, gilly flowers, narcissi
and a daybed enclosed with netting

Lux.

I have actually thought about this. I am a amateur painter and really love what Monet did to create a garden so that he always had a fantastic private place to paint and a beautiful place to live. So that would be my model, YES to a pond and a bridge. He loved roses as well as many many other flowers. And I would include many other companions like daylilies, salvias, lantanas, jasmine and other fragrant sub-tropicals.

I would choose all the roses I have now, just MORE MORE MORE. Teas, chinas and the noisettes that I can't fit in now. Hedges with masses of Mrs. BR Cant and pergola walkways of climbing roses in yellow and pink.
There would be room for once bloomers that I cannot afford space for now.

labrea is on my wavelength with architechtural follies.
lejardin has me also with Jons garden (love the walls), Pam and Melissa's hills and valleys and Ingrid's views.
But you know the one that sticks in my mind? morrisnoor's. It seemed to have the painterly views I dream of.

What location? If I could live anywhere? I would have to stay here in Florida because that's where the DH wants to live. So I'd bloom where I'm planted (goodbye hills and valleys).

In May I'd have an Open House so people would be inspired to grow OGR's in Florida. And have OGR's for sale from local nurseries for them to take home and get started.

P.S. I've talked to painters who've been to Giverny who said it was smaller than they'd imagined so I know my garden would not have to be huge just filled with every rose I've ever seen on these pages and loved, planted in special views and spaces.

Denise

I'm lucky. I have all the ingredients for my dream garden--over an acre of space, gentle slopes and flat areas, sun, shade, well water. I go for OGRs mixed with perennials, other flowering shrubs and evergreens. I have a whole line of glorious old white oaks, a manificent if messy magnolia, an enormous corkscrew willow. All I'm lacking is sufficient labor and funds.

My dream garden will be a reality.....eventually.

My only limitations are a proper landscape.

Ideally, a place in Italy with a Mediterranean climate...tuscan environment comes to mind, but doesn't necessarily suit everything I'd need. I'd like to have place where you are "rural", yet still next to a town....something similar to the Amalfi coastline, but not within the city/village itself...just really close nearby. On one side have the ocean, the other side have mountains or the Alps in the landscape, then have vast vineyards fill the remainder of the space.

As far as my property.....a small casa or home. I don't need anything large...never have. Small home leading to a vast area of almost exclusively OGRs and every Austin....accumulate as many as I possibly can. Introduce some variety in gardens like Medecino, hoovb, etc. and maybe have a "Forrest Gump" entrance to the home in which there is a long drive leading to rose hedges and mature willows and blooming trees on the path to the home.

But really.......who knows at this juncture? haha

Hmmm, I would also stay in Florida and rather than reinventing the wheel, I'll start with what I have but make it wider and deeper, that is, wide ENOUGH and deep ENOUGH to hold everything I want in it. The front/beginning of the garden would be an area of trees where I'd have lots of reblooming Hydrangea and oakleaf hydrangea under the trees, a soft under foot winding path that meanders among azaleas of every color (I think in my dream they'll bloom longer and repeat, camelias in the brighter areas, citrus, crape myrtles, vitex, weeping willow, giant oak and a small pond.

As the trees fall behind, the path would wind through Hybrid Musk roses, lolling in the coolness of the light shade, and gradually straighten out into a cobbled promenade made up of a series of circles within two side borders of the largest tea roses which would be allowed to be their biggest selves separated by tall slender evergreens. There would be a gravel path along the two giant tea borders and on the inside edge of each of the side paths would be a line of white pillars, i.e., a narrow pergola draped with climbers - all of the noisettes, tea-noisettes, wichuriana hybrids that like heat, and sprinkled with deeper colored climbers of other classes, especially Parade.

Between the pillars the paths would open inward into the beds that surround the series of cobbled circles that are edged with agapanthas or daylilies or Ilex crenata 'Compacta', some with fountains in the center or a metal birdcage-type arbor or a gazebo. There would be room to walk among the roses (which naturally are quite large) and other plantings of flowering plants too numerous to name, grasses and evergreens. I would have all the bourbons that could possibly grow in Florida without spraying not just the SdlM clan, because the soil would be a perfectly balanced organic shangri-la that would keep the roses supremely healthy and free of disease. Some would be pegged and some tall. I would have Paul Neyron, Baronne Prevost, Jacques Cartier and any other HP that the head gardener assured me would be happy. There would be a garden of DAs with Graham Stuart Thomas as the featured rose, planted in a grouping of three in the center. All of the DAs would be the most fragrant ones. There would be a garden of the oldest HTs including Kaiserin Auguste Viktoria but no Pernetianas (this is a dream not a fantasy). I think in the connecting areas between the circles I would pair the bush form and the climbing form of any that has both. I would have a section - perhaps a whole circle with all of the Cochet teas and another for all the other smaller and medium teas. There would also be roses that are now only found in Europe, and most importantly, no warm climate roses would be extinct, but they would all be growing happily in my dream garden.

Sherry

I have an awful lot of my dream garden already. I'd stay here. I have space, good growing conditions, and the conviction that sooner or later I can create the garden of my dreams through my own design talents. What I'm short on are money and time. My dream would be more money, enough to do skilled work like fixing some of our terrace walls around the house and perhaps do some terracing and construction in the garden itself. And as time passes and my husband and I get older, money to hire someone to do the heavy work would be really, really nice. And although we spend generously on plants in relation to our overall budget, if I had more I'd spend it. I've been dreaming about rare lilacs for two years now, and still don't see any real chance of getting them this year.
And now it's time to remind myself that I am FABULOUSLY lucky to be where I am and doing what I'm doing.
Melissa

I am Swedish and not very original so I want what all Swedes want, a lake with my own little sandy beach and a jetty for the little white or green rowboat. The rest would follow automatically in this setting, birches, pines, dog roses, wild raspberries, bilberries, lilies-of-the valley, harebells, oxeye daisies, oxlips, wild strawberries, meadowsweet, forgetmenots, white waterlilies. I used to spend summer holidays in places like this. They now cost millions. I don't think I'd even bother with a garden.

I would like an unpolluted spring-fed stream from which to grow fresh watercress for our salad. My mother's land actually had three of these -- those were the days.

I feel like I am already really living my dream. One thing I dream about though is having my own ruin. It would be walled in by a tall stone wall. One would come to an almost obscured door in the wall to enter it and find fascinating crumbling walls with ramblers growing on them. I would also like to have a Monet bridge. How about whole garden areas dedicated to various artists and authors, but very subtlely with mysterious clues. I could go on and on and I already have.

Darn it Mendocino Rose; you just described MY dream garden. I love secret gardens; one thing I don't have.

My dream garden would be large and enclosed by tall stone walls. There would be garden "rooms" within separated by tall hedges. I would have one room dedicated entirely to white spring bloomers with a touch of blue (light blue phlox divaricata in front of white tulips in front of white bleeding hearts in front of a hedge of white lilacs). Each room would also include a bench or seating area to relax and enjoy.

Another room would be dedicated to pink and white peonies and white and blue irises and early blooming clematis.

Another room would be dedicated to albas, hardy geraniums and foxglove.

One room would include a trio of fragrant crab apple trees and daffodils with a table and chairs underneath for spring picnics.

I could go on and on, but you get the picture.

42 degrees on the porch this morning and the rain has finally quit. I was reading this post and thinking about my burnt up canes, frozen by nasty spring winds. But I realized something.
The only garden I want is the one I've got. It probably has one of the most tremendous views around, and that may be it.
My grass is terrible. I planted straight clover lots of places and it was really pretty but the dandelions choked it out. Somehow, though, it has the feel of a country meadow, and I like it.
My naturally occurring cement, I mean dirt, cannot seem to be modified no matter what I do and the underlying gravel bar finishes the deal off.
Only fir trees grow well here. I have a couple trees that are 15 years old and five feet tall.
Success? Ain't much. It doesn't matter, though.
I garden, therefore I am.

I, too, feel I have most of what might be my "dream garden" lacking only the strength to maintain it all properly. I have views, I have space, I have hundreds of roses and other plants and the beds laid out just like I want. So part of my dream would be to have enough income to afford a helper, one with very good knees to do what I find difficult. (And that statement comes to mind because I'm inside taking a cooling break from hauling 12 yards of mulch by wheelbarrow!)

Then if the sky really were the limit, I would have tall stone walls built to enclose my raised beds and the raised beds themselves be magically changed to field stone. I'd put in an even larger fountain at the center of it - one that doesn't need refilling every day but with the same shallow bowls that the birds love so much (hence the need to constantly refill.)

Then I would have only plants that were totally hardy in the beds. I'm working on eliminating all the wimps, but in my dream garden all that would already be done. Roses would grow tall and stay tall, perennials would thrive. And I'd have more herbs interspersed in the beds.

Oh, and I'd have a lovely tilled plot somewhere with annuals for a cutting garden all fenced in with a pretty little picket fence and with a cute garden shed like you see in all the magazines.

I'm making myself laugh here.
Dream on, everyone. :-)

First of all I would choose a healthier spine and bone structure then I would dream of a much less humid climate (favorite would be Italy). I would not want many acres though. I also agree with Elemire about dreaming about having help, however, I am not that ambitious and would be satisfied with much less than 10 helper. Maybe Florence's solution about a full time gardener? No, that would not be needed if I were in better shape - I truly love to do a lot of the gardening myself. All the above given I could dream of a lot of roses, OGRs, Austins and moderns: some I grow now and some I don't but I loved to: many petaled teas that do not open here just would ball or Austins that I try to grow but incline to SP because they blackspot and ball or rot like Abe D. One type of roses I would probably avoid or would trust to a gardener or helper: HTs with no fragrance. I love cutting roses, that's what pushed me into rose growing to begin with, but fragrance has become more and more important for me. Nonetheless, I would never have a garden where I would have only roses. I like gardens with a lot of perennials, fruit trees and a garden a climate where peonies and lilac would also grow well. And then I would invite labrea to take pictures. Also included in this dream is visiting Jon's, morrisnoor'(is he the one in Sardinia?), Melissa's and some of the Californians' gardens. I should not forget Olga's (first when she prunes and then when her roses bloom BEFORE the JBs starts invading).
Dream on....

well, there is the dream garden which has no basis in reality whatsoever - so this would essentially be a huge walled garden with high, high old brick walls, all of which would be covered with espaliered pears, apples, cherries, apricots, peaches and plums, ramblers and climbers. A Nut walk and a green oak pergola with vines and noisettes. Wide gravel paths with screens of tall perennials such as miscanthus, eupatoriums, verbena. A vegetable garden, an alpine scree garden, a grass and monocot bed, dahlias, pinks, daylilies and violas. A collection of primulas and an alpine house. A shady area of dogwoods, sorbus, forest pansy, malus, underplanted with spring bulbs, paeonies..... I could go on. Also, in this dream, ever seed will germinate, every cutting will strike, every bulb will sprout and pests and disease are unknown.
Then, there is the dream in which the existing garden is finally licked into shape, all the projects you planned have come to fruition. Tediously, my dream would be to sort out the paths and edges properly instead of simply hacking a bit more space and commandeering it for this border or that plant family. To attend to edges with proper grass paths, instead of the stomped earth, woodchip and weed infested things they are now. To have at least one properly tended grass area - instead of the weedy, badly shaped bits of limbo between various cultivated areas. To sort out the whole structural thing so that my garden is not a collection of old bamboo and hazel poles, odd bits of timber and plumbing pipe, not fully dismantled bits of previous supports and to sort out the plantings so that everything is not the current mishmash of flowers, fruit and vegetables - this looks gorgeous (at times) but can be a nightmare to weed, tend, harvest. There is generally too much of everything. Finally, to be prepared with a range of pea sticks so that plants are staked BEFORE they become giants which then fall over in the first rain shower.

Oh, Annececilia, you reminded me of the quaint and colorful garden shed that has truly been my dream. I actually do have the room for one but not the money. I'd love a glasshouse, too - one of those Victorian looking ones. And like everyone I'd like a helper with a strong body, a heart for gardening, and the integrity to give it his all. He would be worth a fortune and in the dream he'd get every dime of his worth.

Sherry

Oh, yes, Sherry...a glass house!! You've reminded me that's a dream of mine as well. (And of course, in the dream I'm wealthy enough to ignore the huge heating bill for it up here in zone 4, LOL!)

Anne