gb - yes, I know the tour coordinator that lives near here was watching the new bed go in - because she stopped in one day when Laurie and I were working on it! We gave her a tour of the garden so she could see the changes sice 2006 when we were on the tour. We talked about the possibility in a year or two of including our garden again, along with the neighbour to the north, the neighbour across the street (who was on the tour in 2005 and was probably the reason we were contacted for the 2006 tour) and another neighbour across the street and down two houses who is in the process of greatly enlarging her garden. Gardening is the neighbourhood competitive sport :-) so there's no shortage of gardens to choose from on this street and the one behind us! She mentioned it again when we ran into her at one of the gardens. They have a policy of not 'repeating' gadens until 5 years have passed so the issue isn't likely to come up until 2011. That thyme lawn was completely weed free! I suspect a garden service of some sort is involved on the property.... I just don't want a lot of yellow in my garden because there is a huge chunk of yellow in it already - the house! If I did have yellow in the garden, what I'd like to do with it is make a yellow garden as a feature for a section of the garden rather than mixed in. I have a lot of relatively monochrome/limited color range areas - that appeals to me a lot. I loved the peony/golden grass combo. In the same bed there was also euonymus with golden centers to the leaves and some gold juniper. I thought what needed to be done was eliminate most of the other stuff in the bed and make it a much more concentrated yellow bed! It would have been stunning I think. There was a lot of strong blue in the house trim and garden furniture and a gold bed would have complimented it wonderfully. Deanne - I agree that one of the fun things on the tour is seeing the personality in the gardens - they were all very individual and it's also interesting to see what it was that caught our eye in each. It makes me wonder what were the things that people focussed on here. Vyvyan Pennell, I know, was it for a lot of people! I've been thinking a lot about why that blooms the way it does. I have concluded that maybe the reason is the soil. I gather clematis likes things on the alkaline side. The soil there must be very alkaline - there's the concrete curb at the edge of the bed; the driveway goes right up to the bed and the base under the asphalt is limestone road base stuff; the porch is supported by concrete in sonotubes; and our soil here tends to be on the alkaline side in general. So, if you're moving the Pennell, maybe move it to somewhere near concrete - or add lime to where it is now? I give it some clematis fertilizer in spring because I know the soil there is VERY poor - clay, dry because it's under the roof overhang, winter salt ends up there from the driveway - and so on... It's amazing it survives at all! Maybe it's doing the 'bloom like mad/reproduce before you die' thing :-) Kathy - Randy has always been great at the close-up garden pictures. It's getting him to take 'big picture' views that are hard - he's naturally a detail kind of person.... Norma - the plant next to Vyvyan Pennell is Rodgersia aesculifolia. It's a fabulous thing - wonderful leaves and great flowers too. Rodgersias are one of gb's favorites too - right gb...? Denise - there is a x durandii growing in the BDC rose - and not doing anything worth talking about! Vyvyan is in such tight quarters, there's no way I could dig it up so there it stays! I'm going to give it some more fertilizer after it finishes blooming and see if I can get it to put out new growth and climb the ropes you can see in the picture.

If you want something that "pops", then you've got the right rose with Westerland, lol. "BOOM!" is more like it. I bought it thinking it was more apricot toned. Nope. It's ORANGE, at least here in TN, and orange doesn't live long in my garden (Yes, I'm a rabid Vol fan, but I don't drive an orange car, either!). I ripped it out and replaced it with its sport, Autumn Sunset, which IS apricot/gold. I love this rose. However, the canes are a bit stiff on both these roses. I grown Autumn Sunset as a large shrub, and it loves it. It's about 5'x5', and would get larger if I let it. I summer prune it to keep it in bounds. I'm not sure it would climb, but it WOULD make a nice pillar. Fairly disease free for me, but does get a touch of BS. It is in afternoon shade, and I suspect the flowers would fade in full, all day sun. It's completely cane hardy for me. Never had even a touch of dieback except on late season new fall growth. John

Last spring I planted blue Betty Corning near my arbor to climb with my apricot Westerland climbing rose. I chose Betty Corning because her blooms are bell shaped and will be effective when viewed from below (inside the arbor). She also adds fragrance. BC is type 3. There are many clematis fiends posting on the Rose Forum. If you ask this question there, you will get many responses. Betty Corning was suggested by one of the blatant enablers there.

Tara, I'm also in zone 5 and I grow a lot of climbers, some of which are on a north wall. Mad is right that you need to pick north wall climbers more carefully than climbers in another site, since the north facing in my experience means that you'll need another zone's worth of protection for the rose to have surviving cane and climb. Some climbers might survive and regrow from the roots each year in zone 5, but not climb above 5' or so in a given year before dying to the ground again each winter. In that case it's a mistake to consider those climbers in our zone. You want roses that are "cane hardy" in our zone, which means they will have surviving cane in most winters. The most cane hardy climbers are those sold as Canadian Explorers like Quadra below. He's ridiculously hardy and blooms pretty much all season, but I wouldn't attach him to a trellis attached to a house - he'd eat the trellis and half of your siding for lunch. I have mine on a free standing arch and he owns the arch and doesn't play well with friends, being pretty thorny. Behind Quadra is a plant of Eden that you'd think would create the lovely photo you've imagined, and in warmer zones it does. However, while mine survives on the North side of the house, it's one of those roses that only blooms on surviving cane and that has only happened 2 of the 8 years I've had this rose. Even in years it blooms for me, I've only had one bloom cycle in a year for maybe 2 weeks. Probably not what you have in mind. I've posted other cream/white climber photos that would work on a north facing wall in a posting by Vicki zone 6 (climbers for a north facing wall) that's currently on page 2 in roses. In our zone, Buff Beauty wouldn't take a north wall and have surviving cane, but either Lunar Mist or Colette probably would. Lunar Mist (below) is yellow and Colette is a medium pink. Mine don't get as lush as in warmer zones, but they reliably have surviving cane. As for clematis, they LOVVVVE our loamy soil and grow exceedingly well for me on any surface in any part of my yard. I haven't had trouble overwintering most of them, even MultiBlue that's supposed to be a little more tender (it's on the north facing wall in front of Quadra). Unfortunately, that one doesn't bloom that often - here's one reblooming among some early mums in September: A good solid purple clematis that you can find just about anywhere is Jackmanii. Here's one of them (or maybe it's a Hagley Hybrid) attacking my fence early in the season before it's really climbing. The trouble in our zone (I think your soil is similar to mine) is that the photo you saw won't look that way - not because the clematis won't thrive, but because it will thrive far better than most of the roses. Here's one solitary Jeanne LaJoie climbing mini being totally swamped by two aggressive clematis (including the lovely pink reblooming but thuggish Princess Diana clem), and it's still early in the rose season and prime rose time relatively speaking. By late summer you literally can't see the rose on this arch, and you can only catch a few rose blooms here and there in this picture even now. Bottom line is that in our zones, you may need to rethink this picture and plan for a clematis with a rose accent, rather than rose with clematis accent. For most of my clematis, that means this would be mostly a June or July statement, with not a lot of bloom the rest of the year. Alternatively you could pick a killer once-blooming rose for early summer bloom (like Alchemist) and then a clematis to fill in the rest of the year, and not worry about them overlapping. In my experience, trying to time them to bloom together hasn't worked out as I planned. You could do Lunar Mist or Aloha or Colette that bloom frequently and a not too aggressive clematis like Multiblue, and have the occasional overlap, but not like the picture you have. It's all good, just may not work out exactly like the picture in your zone. If you want to see a lot of other rose clematis combinations, I posted lots of pictures in a thread a couple of years ago - something like Rose vs. Clematis, the Epic Battle. In nearly every case, the clematis won. Cynthia