I was looking at black iron arbors as we will be replacing the wooden fence soon in a year or two with the new vynal white post and rail. We have a dog so we were looking at picket and post and rail with the green wire. The wooden fence is old and falling apart and even though I like the wood look as it is more natural I feel we have white vynal in the front of the house so trying to keep everything even as far as fence color goes. I won't be replacing the fence for another year or two so I feel the black arbor will go with the old and new fence plus match in with the white and black shed. White sounds interesting with the clematis but if we switch to a white post and rail fence then maybe pink is the better option. I was looking at golden showers as a climber but that is yellow so I will have to take a look at some of the pink one's mentioned above.. Thanks for the input!! The shed is my husband's gift and he told me to have fun decorating around it so I am!!!!

I'm another rose novice, deciding during a torrential rain storm this winter that this would be the year I'd plant my first roses. I learned A LOT during the first week that I spent educating myself. Most importantly, I kept asking questions...and still do. My first advice is to share your climate zone and a general idea of where you live. Growing roses on the Pacific Ocean, where I live, is very different from mountains or desert, and even from someone's backyard 5 miles inland from me. The best suggestions will be those specific to your growing conditions. This is what helped me most to get started: - read/skimmed back 20 pages of this forum, an excellent source of a wide variety of knowledge - read articles on the ARS website (someone gave their link above) - looked up two local ARS chapters (using the ARS website) and contacted their presidents via email for help and advice. They were tremendously generous with their experience and knowledge. I eventually attended a chapter meeting for each, one of which had a great talk about organic rose gardening from a well-known rosarian. - volunteered to help care for roses at a local ARS test garden to learn skills like pruning, etc. - read the "organic rose growing" forum here because I only do organic gardening - called rose vendors recommended on this forum and asked them questions Through my initial research, I met three individuals (one here on the forum) who know my area well and volunteered to answer questions on an on-going basis. All three of them were able to give me very specific information, down to nitty-gritty details, for my micro-climate. Their advice, encouragement, and warnings are invaluable. Finding someone who knows your area from personal experience is probably the best way to wade through the overwhelming amount of, and sometimes conflicting, information about rose growing. Here is a link that might be useful: USDA zone map

Those look to be 'Iceberg' roses, the best and easiest roses for Southern California, which might shock you since you seem to be having trouble with them. Most plants that flower need to have the old flowers removed. You don't need to remove all the flowers individually, you can take off the whole cluster when most of the flowers are finished. The bugs you are talking about are probably aphids. Stop spraying them with insecticide. It only makes things worse. Spray off the aphids as much as possible with a strong blast of water from the hose. In time, predators will take care of all the aphids if you don't use insecticide. Insecticide kills the beneficial bugs just as fast as the bad ones. The white stuff on the foliage is powdery mildew (PM). It's been a late and rainy spring and PM is rampant this year. Make sure your roses are getting enough water, because thirsty roses are more vulnerable to powdery mildew. As summer comes on the PM will go away. You could shorten the roses a little by cutting them back and that will remove a lot of the PM. It looks like someone has trimmed the roses into a hedge like shape. They are in a very narrow bed. Think about widening the bed in the future. It will look a lot better and you will have less lawn to mow that way. Congrats on the new house!

flowerlilies, Often people who work in garden centers don't really understand much about pests, diseases, and chemicals. You should ask first on the GW forum for the particular kind of plant. And don't believe the first poster who responds, because we can make mistakes too. Though, if we let a reply stand without further comments, that's probably a tacit approval. It's really important not to panic and apply a barrage of remedies before you have a good diagnosis. Also, when you post a question, it's important to give a general idea of where you live, because pests and diseases are regional, rainfall and winter damage can play a role, etc. For example, a diagnosis of scale insects on roses would be more likely if you are in Southern California, Hawaii, or Miami. But rose midge, suggested above, doesn't exist in those places. One thing I can say for certain, the purple spots with lighter centers are either cercospora spot or spot anthracnose, both fungal diseases that usually don't require control measures. Also, there may well be some spray damage, because homemade and "organic" sprays are rather likely to damage plants if not used carefully. Large purple smears are often the result of spray damage. What are you saying is wrong with the open mauve flower? If the grayish things are scale, they will scrape off easily with a fingernail.