Welcome!

Where do you live? That will affect the advice you receive here.

If you have just bought this house recently, it may be a good idea to slow down and take your time with this. Sit on your deck (if you have one) and use your imagination ... what would you like to see? Where is the sunshine? What's your soil like? (If your soil needs to be amended, that's definitely the first thing you have to do.)

I did something pretty similar. I call it my Rose Field. It's a portion of our property that's 160 x 80, and it contains 300 roses of all types, all designed like a vegetable garden. Or, I have my antique Hybrid Tea garden in the front yard ... arcs and circle segments cut out of the turf, which contain 80 early-20th-century hybrid tea roses.

You get the idea. Take a look at what you have to start with, visit gardens to see what types of roses you are attracted to, grab your paper and start scribbling. I have photos of most of my gardens in my blog, linked below.

Those who know me will think it's completely hillarious that I'm telling someone to take their time buying and planting roses. Just to let you know, I have almost 800 roses now ... the latest of whom arrived yesterday from Roses Unlimited.

Connie

Here is a link that might be useful: Blog

Connie gives some great advice. In a new garden, it's good to know about sun/shade conditions, wind conditions, even where the view is from the kitchen sink or bedroom window!

You also want to figure out what style of rose bed you want. Just roses? What about a formal style with boxwoods and english lavender (do they even grow there)? Or maybe a more cottage style with lots of cascading flowers. Also, will you need any structures to place roses (arbors, pillars, etc.). What color/colors will you choose? So many design options!

Then you also need to know what roses will do well in your area. Some do well in hot places, others take the cold better. Some roses are prone to disease, and others are disease resistant, while the area you live in with its particular heat and humidity play a part.

The best advice is to do nothing now. Take the winter to truly plan and draw out exactly what you want your area to look like, and decide upon the roses/plants that will do well in your area.

You can also use this time to get the area ready (kill grass, amend soil, etc.), so that when the spring comes, you will be ready and your garden will have a great start.

Good luck! I know it's hard to wait, but you will be much happier in the end.

I agree with what was said above. Take your time. You will change your mind a few times. Look at garden magazines to get ideas on what your ideal rose garden would be. Look into roses that would thrive in your part of the country. That is key. Do your research on rose varieties. Also, consider companion plants that would enhance your rose garden.

Juliet

I'm so sad to hear that I have to wait. Patience is not a virtual I was blessed with.

I'm in Central Texas, zone 8b with very hard clay soil. The garden will be in all day full sun. Temperature for past two months have been over 100 degrees F. The builder did not grass the backyard, so I'm grateful to have a blank slate to work with. I would need to hurry because weeds are sprouting overnight.

I've already ordered 150, 20-pound bags of compost to be delivered this weekend. Do you think I can amend the soil in one weekend? I also have brick borders to be delivered as well. I'm just itching to grab my shovel and start digging! I just don't have a design plan. I do love the garden in the magazines, but I don't know if I can pull that off. Thank you all for replying to my post. I can't wait to make garden friends!

Take yourself up to Chamblee's in Tyler. They carry roses that will survive in your area, they have lots of different kinds so you can see what various classes of roses look like. Pick out six or a dozen to satisfy your Urge. Despite the good advise given above, we all understand the Urge and none of us could wait until next spring--you should see Connie's pot ghetto, where she keeps all theroses she has bought and hasn't gotten to planting yet. You can plant some or all some them now. Choose a few fragrant ones to put by the front door, the back door, under the bathroom window...

Then get a good book on the various kinds or roses. Roses come in all shapes, sizes, and all colors except blue. Some bloom most of the time and some bloom only once a year, but that once makes up for everything. Get to know all the on-line vendors. Make lists. Makes designs. Revise your lists. Revise your designs. Revise your revisions...It's what we all do. Welcome.

I agree with catsrose and would add:
You could check the website list of San Jose Heritage Rose Garden, they have summer temps that often get into the 90's and sometimes the low 100's F. and look at photos from that list, on helpmefind.com./roses.
I love Old Garden Tea roses, and Noisette roses best, but I don't know which ones could take your heat.
Do you have a fence along the perimeter of your property? Tall shrub roses and climbers add vertical interest and can create a great blanketing of roses effect.
Old Garden Tea, and China roses repeat better than modern rose classes, if that is important to you. Pink H.P.s can be deeply scented.

Luxrosa

Well I'm never one to wait, just jump in and learn on the job. Who knows how many days we will be blessed with and I'd rather be looking, smelling and touching the roses NOW.

Fall in Texas is a good time to put a rose garden in so why not. Gardens are never done right the first time and plants die and get too big and on and on.

Don't wait, buy roses, plant roses, live life.

About the soil amendments, you're gonna need a truckload, not just a few bags....

Denise

If you're in central Texas, maybe a trip to the Antique Rose Emporium would be of help. They are in Brenham, between Houston and Round Rock.

Houston has a very large rose society that may be of some help too, if you're anywhere near there.

Here is a link that might be useful: Antique Rose Emporium

Vuwugarden, 150 20lb bags of compost. You really have 3,000 lbs of compost coming? If you do all that in one weekend you may not be doing anything else for a week! Ok, maybe that's me. I'm actually a little jealous and would come and help you if I lived nearby! I hope you have help. I really like catsrose's response. Bring home some pots, get your beds laid out, spread that compost and plant some roses. You will make mistakes and lose some plants, but don't get discouraged. All the advice here is wonderful and I treasure this site. People here are so kind and helpful. Everything you learn here makes so much more sense once you start digging and planting. Keep us posted on how it goes!

It sounds like you've made a great start. I think you can have the first part of your garden in place within a month. Catsrose is a very wise woman (and a landscaper). We should all listen to her.

Since your compost is on the way, it looks like you're on the right track. Here's the process I used to make my Hybrid Tea bed:

When I lay out beds, I use a tape measure and marking paint. This bed is a section of a 40' circle, using the trunk of the dogwood tree as the center. The area looked like this after we cut down the ugly holly bush.
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I killed the grass inside the bed lines with Round-up. After the grass was dead, my husband tilled the beds.
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We spread a whole truckload of composted rabbit manure into the beds(a friend has show rabbits, so rabbit manure is my organic amendment of choice.) DH tilled the areas again to mix it in.
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We put the pots of roses in their places. The roses in these beds are laid out on 3' centers. They're hybrid teas, which tend to grow up rather than out. Some haven't behaved as expected, and will be moved later.
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After the roses are planted, it's time to lay the irrigation lines. All of my roses are watered using drip irrigation. The newspaper is to help keep weeds from sprouting through the mulch.
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Here are the roses after they've been in the ground for a little while.
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This is what it looks like now:
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and here's a close-up:
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The time it took From when I laid out the lines of these beds until I had roses in the ground was about a month. It takes two weeks for the Round-up to completely kill the turf. It only took one day to plant all the roses (there's 80 of them in these beds), and I wouldn't recommend that pace to anyone. Fortunately the soil was in prime condition and easy to dig, but I still almost killed myself doing it. Add a few days to put down the newspaper, install the irrigation, lay the brick border, and mulch ... and you'll have a rose bed in no time.

Welcome to the wonderful world of rose addiction. There's nothing like it.

Connie

Oh, Connie, I love your pictures! Catrose and all my new rose friends, I've been a rose addict for years but have never had land to plant in.

I used to fill my apartment balcony with pots and pots of roses until the neighbor below complained about the petals falling on his deck. Goodness! There are worst things than petals falling on one's deck. In my eyes, it's like raining rose petals. Wouldn't the world be so lovely if we all walk around with a cloud that rains petals instead of water? No, I do like the free water we get from the rain, but you all get the idea.

I was crazy when I ordered the delivery from Lowe's. The bad part is they would only deliver to the curb so I'll have to drag all 150 bags myself to the backyard, not to mention the two flats of bricks as well. I don't have any helpers around, but I'm hoping my excitement will keep me going. If I don't post for a while, I'm probably in the ER :-)

Thank you all for the advice on where to go to view gardens in my area. Road trip anyone?

I like the pictures of curved or round garden beds. How do you get that look? Also, please suggest a reputable online vendor that would sell roses at this time of the year. DA's pot roses are too expensive for me to start with, as I'm looking to add 50+ bushes to end with 800 like Connie.

Oh, by the way, I'm new to the rose forum and am not too familiar with the acronyms. So far I think I know that DA stands for David Austin, correct?

To answer someone's previous post, I love the english roses, old rose look. Hybrid teas don't seem to bloom well for me here in Texas, but I do love them as well. I'd like to have one side of the yard all english roses and the other with hybrid teas.

While you're thinking about the roses it would also be a good idea to think about the hardscape, i.e. the parts you would like paved or want to put bricks or other kinds of material. Do you have an area for sitting out in the garden, and what about paths to line the different areas together? Also fountains, bird baths, anything like that which might need a solid surface to sit on. And, how about trees and/or large shrubs for shade and added interest? They always say that plants should really be the last thing to go in the garden, after all these other issues are taken care of. In Texas especially you're going to want shady areas to sit where you can enjoy roses and also to shade some of those roses from the afternoon sun. Hybrid teas might not be the best choice for your situation since they're more finicky. The tea roses, chinas and noisettes would probably be a better bet, and really look a lot more interesting that the uniformity of hybrid teas. Vintage Gardens is also a very good rose vendor based in California who has scads of old and very charming roses on offer. If you go to the picture gallery of this forum you'll find all kinds of pictures of great roses, some of which may be just right for you. Best of luck to you and welcome to the forum.

Ingrid

And so you know early on, we wants lots of pictures! Just like Hartwood's... before, during and after.

Ingrid has a good point about hardscape, especially paths. Paths should be the most direct line between points because that's what we do--you can tell a bad design because paths get worn across grass, thru beds, etc. We'd rather duck under a low branch than go around a tree. So if you have a shed, faucet, back gate, walk the lines and put your paths accordingly. And don't make your beds too long. More than 12 feet and you'll find yourself cutting thru. We'd rather risk thorns than walk another 10 feet.

Variety is nice. Unless you want an "exhibition" garden, row after row gets dull. Use your corners, put in an arbor, put in a pond...And don't get too formal unless you have more self-control than 99% of the people on this forum. There will always be the one (or 5 or 6) more roses you can't live without and they will wreck your entire design.

Websites: Vintage Gardens is the largest and has the best website for learning about the various roses. Then Roses Unlimited, Heirloom Roses, Chamblee's, Ashdown, Countryside, Rogue Valley...Most sell all year long.

When I was planning my garden beds, I bought a pack of graph paper--the kind with the bigger squares, not the green kind, and drew out what I was thinking using the graph paper as one square equals one square foot. Then I was able to draw in the features I wanted, paths, a small fountain, the arbor, and the rounded edges to the garden. Then I went to www.helpmefind.com and looked up roses I was interested in and asked people here about them to determine a good estimate of the mature size. Then I knew how much room to give the plant in my garden plan. For my garden, I started with the big stuff and stuff that I just had to have like some gardenias and have added smaller plants to fill in each year. I had as much fun with my plans as I did creating and planting the actual garden. Of course, I did my planning in the winter and my planting in the spring. Maybe you can just start with a quick drawing now and this winter you can add more so you'll have a better idea of what to do next spring.
I decided to add a link to a garden plan that I found on-line that shows the graph paper I'm talking about and that draws in the plants that shows the size of the plant.
Hope this makes sense and helps. Jeff

Here is a link that might be useful: sample garden plan

First, I'd start with the background against which your roses will be seen. A clipped hedge? A screen of conifers (maybe with large climbing roses scrambling out of them, as they do in England)? A screen of non-invasive Bamboo?

This is a great time to plan for some sort of water feature.

It's nice, also, to have a transparent screen of small trees, like Crepe Myrtles, to see THROUGH, between the house and the rose garden. This will make the view much more interesting. Myrtles will give your house some shade, while remaining small enough to never be a threat during wind storms. Muskogee, IMHO, has the most beautiful trunks.

As to the roses, choose for maximum disease resistance, dense growth habit, tolerance of extreme conditions (particularly heat) and foliage. And anything you choose should absolutely ADORE heat.

plan9fromposhmadison, funny you mentioned Crepe Myrtles. I have one large white one, in a 90-gallon container, and six 15-gallon ones being delivered this weekend. The backdrop currently is a cedar fence, and I was thinking of lining the fence with the smaller Crepes for privacy and summer blooms. Then I would add ramblers or climbers to this fence bed to get the roses trailing on and over the fence (hope the neighbors don't mind). The trees should bring in shade for the benches as the planned garden is towards the south and gets all day Texas sun. So far so good? Please let me know if the tree idea is not a good one as I haven't planted the trees yet.

Vuwugarden,

I would think that the roses would get too much shade if you are planting the crepes and the roses along the same fence line. Keep in mind that depending on the variety of crepe myrtles that you bought, they can get quite tall and cast quite a bit of shade. I have some in my yard (I'm in Bastrop) that are less than 10' tall, but then I have a couple others that are easily 20'. The taller ones are probably about 15 years old, so that certainly didn't happen overnight, but you do want to take that into consideration.

Vuwugarden, when you say "cul-de-sac backyard", are you saying it's pie-shaped? That could lend itself to some really interesting bed designs. Even though as others have said, we rarely ever get it right the first time and changes seem to be endless, I would encourage you to put some thought into your design before you dig. Sometimes inspiration strikes quickly and doesn't have to be real time consuming. The thing about your own inspiration is that it will be very satisfying to you later on and will sustain your spirit in those moments of discouragement and exhaustion. It will be an anchor to hold onto, something you'll be sure of in the midst of swirling uncertainty. I sat down and Googled images - those tiny thumbnails - to look for a garden plan for my front yard. I was afraid of embarrassing myself with a willy-nilly non-design that would wind up looking ugly and out of place in my small, awkward front yard. Several pages of pics later, i saw something that clicked in my brain as a circle of lawn surrounded by shrubs. When I clicked on it, I found it to be a paved circle in a city park with benches surrounded by bushes and grass. But I had my inspiration!
Pre-roses
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The circle begins
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The roses are in
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The grass starts to have problems{{gwi:303322}}
Gravel replaces grass
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Sorry, I hit the Submit button by mistake.

As you can see mine has evolved since the initial inspiration and every part was an incredible amount of work and exertion, and though roses have moved and left, companion plants have grown and left, and now evergreen azaleas have been added to give naked canes some cover and a more filled look to the beds, I've always been happy with the circle design. It was the exhilarating first step.

As far as digging in the sun, in my first backyard rose bed I actually used a beach umbrella for shade while I sat on the ground with my feet dangling in the bed doing the "double dig" because it was killing my back to bend that far over to dig the second shovel down. Have you ever tried digging from a seated position? It works.

Also you need a wheelbarrow and probably a wagon with big rubber tires for hauling bags and bricks and all the other stuff you need for maintenance, feeding, etc. You need to learn how to best spend your strength and energy. Don't go wasting it on lugging 40 lb bags of compost one at a time. Pulling a heavy cart with 4 bags on it is easier on your back that carrying one bag from the front yard to the back 150 times. Better yet, will your vehicle fit into the backyard? Got some friends?

I'm excited for you to be starting your wonderful garden, and I'm so glad that part is behind me. Work smart and protect yourself. Also, I think you'll find the most success with Teas, Chinas and Noisettes. They love our heat, don't mind humidity & wet weather and don't suffer from the fungal diseases that modern roses do. Since I don't spray, that's very important. Where are your photos???

Hartwood, I love your gardens, designs and roses. I wish I could get to Virginia to see them in person. You've done such a beautiful job.

Sherry