LL - you are very talented. What beautiful gardens you have! How satisfying it must feel to walk through your garden and see/smell all the beautiful flowers, and to look for the fairy, too! lol And in zone 4! That is truly an accomplishment.

My roses are definitely the stars. I have just started putting companion plantings in, and are definitely have lots to learn in that area. It would help if I could tell a newly emerging perennial from a newly emerging weed!

I can't wait to see your gardens as the roses mature. They will only get more beautiful. Thanks for sharing.

Here's a glimpse of my garden:
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Holleygarden- Your roses are beautiful! I really like your arch with the gate. What are you planning to grow over the arch?

Also, I think your birbath and urn are just perfect with your roses. They remind me of those 1920s gardens on the cottage forum :)

lavender lass and holleygarden, both of your gardens are exquisite, each in its unique way, and what a pleasure to see these garden pictures. We're finally beginning to see garden pictures in addition to rose pictures, and that is so satisfying and interesting. I've posted pictures of my garden quite a few times so I'll abstain, but I'd have to say the roses are the main element. This is somewhat muted by not only the companion plants but the hilly scenery near and far. I'm actually afraid that as they mature the roses might become too prominent and will compete with the scenery. At that time I suppose I'll have to do some judicious culling in order to keep everything in balance.

Once again, thank you both for the wonderful garden pictures.

Ingrid

Well, in answer to the original question; my roses are part of the ensemble.

But I'm blown away by both gardens pictured...and humbled. Holleygarden what are the bright red and the peach rose in the two pictures?

Here is a link that might be useful: Garden Musings

lavender lass, I really like the way the purples and whites play against the grayish stone on - is that your porch? It is amazing how quickly annuals and perennials can fill in. Love your hills and wide expanse of gardens.

Holley, the reds in your garden really accent the brick color. That's a wonderful view, and I like the accents of yellow there. The black fence is beautiful.

My garden is new, and I don't have very much room to plant roses; my sunny areas are where the septic drain field is. There is a garden near the garage and my border. I miss having a lot of room to plant, but I'm getting old, so maybe it's just as well, though. But back to your question, roses are the stars, and everyone else is just there to make them look good.

Building the border bed, cardboard and mulch
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Building the garage bed

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Border bed

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Border bed

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Garage bed

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I forgot, I wanted to show White Cap, too. It's a climber I've wanted for a long time; it's planted in the triangle of three birdhouses on poles with purple oxalis near. That has turned out to be such a beautiful rose, at only one season old. I can hardly wait until it matures. ps, noticed that Vintage has it right now, heheheh.

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Good question! For now the roses are part of a cast. I feel like i have a love hate relationship with them..if i plant them in a prominent spot they lose their leaves or dont look great. If i hide them amongst other plants they take off. Right now i am tweaking a few things so they are the stars! Also they are newly planted for the most part, so in a couple years i should be really happy with them. I think when they mature theyll be the stars for sure!
No matter how big they get, ill always have my catmint, and daylilies, and phlox, and oriental lilies, and.... :)

I love the fairy castle!!

Ensemble players for sure. The garden to be beautiful, in my eyes anyway, needs a big variety of plants; mixed planting also discourages diseases and pests and hugely extends the season of garden interest. And I love a great many plants besides roses.
Nice pictures! It's good to see beautiful gardens growing!
Melissa

Lavendar Lassie...stunning for such a young garden. You must be so proud. Holleygarden you are an inspiration of what a more mature garden can be.
Gene it's amazing what you have accomplished in a short period of time. The wooded background is soothing to the eyes.

Over here I have huge amounts of space to fill. And of course the budget is not finite. So when I began a year ago I filled in with Dahlia's, Oriental Lillies, Asiatic Lillies, and Gladiola's because the roses were tiney. Thankfully, Costco had boxes of them at a reasonable price.
I have added many more roses, some lavendar and rosemary. I use perennials to add a tad of color here and there.
Neighbors and friends plus people from church have also contributed many perennials which is so special.
Colorwise this has the look of an old country garden.
Enjoyed viewing your gardens, thank you for sharing.

I have had three rose aquiring periods - 1997/8, 2003/4 and 2009/10. In between, I have had a range of other plant interests. This has turned out interesting though as I have some big mature climbers and bushes alongside many new plantings, interspersed with an eclectic selction of other stuff, including fruit and veg. Could not imagine just having a rose garden, or any other single specimen collection - would get bored. The outcome is not exactly harmonising, but still interesting nonetheless....and seeing as how I have just extended my timescale for 'completion'by another 6 years or so, I couldn't predict quite how my gardening will evolve. I could have a Damascene conversion and throw it all in for conifers! Who knows?

What lovely gardens and photos! In my garden the roses are the most important but I wouldn't grow them without the rest of the ensemble. Here's some photos.
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The view is part of the ensemble.
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Whimsy is important
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This is one of my favorites
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Most at the one place are bunched together into a sort of hedge and scattered around at the other place. The bunched arrangement has developed some issues in later years and will probably be broken up some coming winter. The front of it is too close to the drive, and some giant morning glory has gotten into the center of it, where it is hard to get at.

Another problem is that the adjoining neighbor immediately planted a section of Rosa rugosa parallel to my new planting, with the result that the two soon began to merge. They also planted perennials right next to my grass strip, without a barrier being present - you can guess what happened next.

Based on comments made a couple times they seem to have been waiting years for me to come over and weed my turfgrass out of their perennials.

Some roses, like 'Nevada' and R. nutkana 'Plena' (syn. R. californica 'Plena') have a physical structure and resulting visual presence lending them more to use as solitary landscape specimens than most other kinds. A fully developed 'Nevada' in full bloom almost appears as something approaching the appearance of a dogwood tree, with its numbers of flattish flowers studding the comparatively compact surface of the bush.

My roses are the stars of the show but like most divas they have a large entourage. I underplant my roses with low growing perenials chosen for foliage color and texture, not showy flowers that might upstage my divas. The roses rise above this foliar tapistry and get the light and air circulation needed to keep them happy, while the low growing plants form a living mulch, suppressing weeds,and freeing up more of my time to cater to my divas' whims. This creates a lush, formal rose garden but avoids that "municipal rose garden" look of roses lined up in neat rows surrounded by lots of dirt.
Heucheras are my main co-stars. They add lots of color and their blooms add interesting texture without upstaging the roses. Yes they are expensive but they are like great character actors--they can be always relied on to give a nuanced and colorful performance. And once they get established, you can divide the clumps and get more plants. Sometimes seedlings will come up. They are well worth the investment.
Lady's mantle is another favorite of mine and for a contrast in texture I have found Stella d'oro day lillies work well. London pride saxifrage lurks in the shade between the roses. Crocosmia adds excaimation points here and there, while boxwood adds structure.

LL- thanks. I'm not sure what I'll put on the gate. There's not enough room for a rose, so for now I have an allamanda, but it's not hardy here. I've been thinking that when it goes, I'll replace it with a jasmine. I've not been to the cottage garden forum for a while. I need to go check out that thread.

professorroush - I am quite embarrassed and am hanging my head low. The red rose in the 2nd picture is (whispering now) a... knockout. The peach rose in the third is the mini Carnival Glass (same fence, different bed). You see, when I started gardening I started with knockouts, moved to other moderns, and finally on to OGRs. (I'm a 'backdoor' convert.) My OGRs are quite small and I have no "garden" pictures of them yet. Still explaining....I never SP (if it lives, it stays), but as my moderns and HTs pass on, I'm replacing them with mainly OGRs. Well, I hope everyone forgives me for posting a knockout on the Antique Forum! I didn't think about it until too late! (Walking away sheepishly now.)

Oh good for you, holleyG. There are a few, a very few dogmatic souls on this forum but, in general, we all agree that we love roses, be they ever so common, and so, no, of course you must not hang your head. In fact, chin up, you have a lovely garden and your devotion and committment glows through. A healthy plant is a thing of beauty and always trumps aesthetics (since an unhealthy plant in the wrong place will always look bad)...and aesthetics should always trump mere snobbery. Stand your ground and hold your head high.

oh, fiddle, holley, in Alabama I had a hedge of red knock outs in the back yard, a double red in the front and helped plant and fertilize 200 for city plantings. They're perfectly nice roses!

Thanks everyone, for the photos and ideas.
Menodcino rose, I have drooled over your garden before. What is your whimsy rose? It's so enchanting.
renee

Holley, I giggled at your unnecesssary confession. I have something even worse, at least it stuns Swedish rose society friends when they see it, if they don't prefer to ignore it. Only one Danish rosarian looked somewhat nostalgic and said her parents had something like it. It's a round boxedged rose garden in a prime location on the back lawn near the house. It is divided into four segments, each with a dozen floribunda roses, one colour in each segment, yellow, pink, amber and pale yellow and oh horror, the soil is quite bare in summer when the spring bulbs have disappeared. I think an English person would call it an Edwardian style planting. I did it in honour of my husband's grandmother who was a professional gardener trained in Berlin in 1910 and the clipped box is a feature typical of the extreme south of Sweden where my husband was born.

That's Paul's Himalayan Musk.

Thanks, campanula and harborrose, for making me feel better. :)

mariannese - I think that sounds beautiful. I'm afraid I wouldn't be a very good Swedish gardener!

Mariannese, I liked your story and am glad you have planted something to honor your relatives, regardless of what others think or say about the style or the selections. It's good to be brave and courageous about who we are, ourselves, and our own tastes in gardens without worrying about the opinions of others.

Holley, if it's any comfort, there is someone who posts occasionally here who also (like you) has a beautiful garden with a very large red knockout rose that garners ooh's and ahh's every time he posts pictures. He's always proud to say it is a knock out. He likes it, and that is all that matters.

Okay, that's the end of my sermon. :) Gean

It's the absolutely crème de la crème of snobbery (I belong in this class) not to care whether a plant is common as grass, but only whether it's a good plant, you like it, and it works in your garden. Let's all be aristocrats together and grow whatever pleases us.
Melissa

Sometimes I think my roses are just part of the unruly mob.

Rosefolly