..........I have given up on bulbs - too much work, but I use lots of primroses, but I also lift them and put them in a shady place for the summer - yeah! that's a lot of work too. For real, real green, there are always boxwood borders. I have this around one of my rose gardens and I love it. Other things that I plant with my roses along the front borders are Campanulas - a wonderful complement. Also lots of pinks. The campanulas disappear in the winter though! I also use the typical rockery plants like aubretia and the white rock, we alway called white rock growing up in England, I am sorry, I do not know the botanical name, but it is first to bloom.
Hope this helps.
Pauline - Vancouver Island

Oh, no! No primroses! You will never be able to confine them or get rid of them.

I like silver Powis Castle artemisia. On the coast it might stay pretty year round. Here it gets a little ratty in the coldest months, but maybe 9 months it is a lacy billowy mound of silver, which is a nice contrast with lots of green. It roots easily where the stems touch the ground though it is not a hard to get rid of invasive plant.
Also Dusty Miller which is sold as an annual is pretty hardy and a good size for growing in front of roses. Most companion plant I have die down in winter.
I have some huge boxwoods and think that small boxwoods make a beautiful edge but it seems like you'd have to constantly be after them to keep them small. Would like to hear more about boxwoods as edging.
Linda

ceterum, I think maybe you are thinking of oenathera (sp?) or evening primrose. They are definitely spreaders, although they are surface rooters and easy to pull up if they wander too far.
Primroses, or primula, are lovely little rosette forming perennials that bloom in the spring and then sort of look drab in the summer - they need shade then and that's why Pauline moves them.

Usually veggies, eggplant, peppers, and what ever is on sale. I do have some hardy geraniums but they look like creeping charlie most of the time.

We have violets for weeds which I like bunches.

I am tearing out another row of grapes to make more room for orientpet lilies. I am also growing Martagon lilies from seed this year - kind of cool!

Obviously, I just grow what trips my trigger and I am not going for a cottage or formal look. It is more like Foghorn's Folly look.

You really don't want MY advice on this.

Foghorn

Foghorn's Folley - :LOL
Pauline

It's all a matter of what you like. I like easy care plants, that's why herbs are some of my favorite perennials. And I want to put a few evergreens in- maybe some tall, uprights between the sections of trellis- blue ones would be nice if any would survive here in the heat. Brandy

I have a back-drop of Arborvitaes and also some staggered short junipers here and there all rounded. I've got a topiary spiraled slender, taller juniper as well. Besides some greenery I also like different textures, shades of greens, from blues, as in my blue spruces, to lighter emerald greens, as in my arborvitaes. How about some holly? especially for the holidays? And you can NEVER go wrong with boxwoods!

Boxwoods are winners.

Betty

Brandy,
I've thought about this question for a couple of days now, but it took a comment from my husband to come up with an answer:
Nandina. The 'San Gabriel' kind. It doesn't look like the nandinas that you are thinking about. Here's a link:
http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/depts/hort/consumer/factsheets/shrubs/nandina_domes-sangabriel.html
I saw it with Kaye's roses over in Arkansas, and just knew I had to have one. I bought 2 and put them in the garden. Now my husband is insisting that I get more of them. He really has an eye for how to make the garden look good, (should have been a designer) so I plan on buying lots more. They stay short and are really good filler. They add a wonderful texture. It kind of looks twiggy in a way that I can't explain. They like full sun. They turn coppery red during the cold weather so you get winter interest out of it. It's kind of hard to find at the stores, but every once and a while you will see this really strange plant in the nandina section.
I'm also planning on getting some more of the 'Harbor Belle' nandinas. They are less than 1 ft high, spread around, and have red berries during the winter.
There's a dwarf cryptomeria that looks really good, but they are really hard to find and I don't know the exact name of the cultivar.
When I visited California, Mendocino rose had some of those tall narrow evergreens and they looked super cool in her rose garden. It really defined the area and made it look like a pro had done it.
The artemisia might be a good idea, too, as long as you don't mind it spreading. I just bought a 'Silver Mound' one and it's not supposed to spread. We'll see.
Hope this helps.

In the winter here, we just enjoy the bare garden. We don't expect much from it then. When it rains, we enjoy our cozy home and when it gets windy and stormy, we love the excitement of that. On beautiful sunny winter days we like the way the sun colors everything since it is lower in the sky.

Then in late Feb. when the first shrub in the forest starts sprouting fresh green leaves, we start getting excited. By March things are really hopping! From then on, it is one new thing after the other all the way until early November when the plants slow down and mostly stop until early March.

We do have a long growing season and usually lots of rain in the winter. The garden is totally bare in the winter. But we don't notice it. The children and I sure do wish we would get some snow at least once in a while. Some winters we may get some snow for a few days, then it melts. Sigh!

Fall is in the air and the sun is getting lower in the sky already. I am really looking forward to spring even now. Fall is a beautiful time of the year. Each season has its pleasures.

In the meantime, I must get busy planting my new roses that have been in bigger pots growing this summer. And I have bulbs and lilies to plant. Lots of work now, then a nice rest along with much exciting anticipation.

Enjoying LIFE!!
Karen

I like Hardy Geraniums, low growing salvias (sinola sage is my favorite edging plants) and Veronicas as well as rain lilies (they are evergreen) as edging. I also use Veronica Georgia blue that is everblooming and flowers in the winter. I use Diascia, Nemesia, Chalibrochea in various colors and Nierenbergia (both Mount Blanc and purple robe) for edging as well. Have not very invasive daylilies, Siberian Iris and German Iris, too. ( I just got my order of repeat flowering Irises - we will see how they do).
Most penstemons are evergreen in zone 8, I like Huskers Red for edging.

There are so many plants and bulbs to use in a rose beds that one cannot even try to list all.

Wow, so many terrific suggestions! I am going to print this thread out eventually, so I will have all the information at my fingertips.
CW- thank you for going to the trouble of looking up the link. I printed the description out. I doubt I would ever see one of those around here. I would have to order it. I liked the idea about something w/ berries. I will have to look into that.
Karen- it seems your weather is a lot like ours in the winter. We rarely get any snow.
I placed my first order for the roses last night so I am on my way... I am still thinking about some dwarf gardenias around the edges. Some one pointed out they are supposed to be in partial shade here, but I only have 1 that fried in the sun, the others are 2 different kinds and have done fine.
This is rather a daunting task... but I keep looking at my bed on graph paper and rearranging it, trying to make sure I leave room to plant some things that will stay green in the winter. Thanks for all the suggestions! Brandy

I grow Iris with Roses. They are evergreen and are blooming right along with the roses in the spring!

The invasive "primrose" is the Mexican Evening Primrose. It is same genus as the regular Evening Primrose and looks similar, but a different species. I planted a white variety that was very pretty but eventually nearly drove me crazy. It made tuberous roots that spread rapidly deep underground. I had to dig the area a foot deep and practically put the soil through a colander before I finally got rid of it.

All my mental file space is devoted to roses. I have lots of other plants in the garden, but they are passalongs or things I impulsively grabbed at the garden center, and I don't keep up with cultivar names. I've discarded a number of perennials because they grew too much under rose conditions of high soil moisture and fertility-- either becoming invasive or becoming floppy. Then a lot of them have bad disease problems in my climate, and others are destroyed by the groundhogs. So the ones that survive without much messing-with, I spread around by patching them arbitrarily into open spots. I confess I haven't added a new variety in years, but the garden gradually looks fuller and lusher. I don't really like looking at tidy expanses of mulch.

nepeta, pincushion-flower, stokesia, candy-tuft, a creeping sedum with yellow flowers, a rhizomatous mat-forming lavender geranium, native geranium, native coral-bells, native blue lobelia, aquilegia vulgaris, a garden variety veronica that seeds itself, siberian iris, and daylilies in apricot, light yellow, and purple.

Michaelg, and ceterum - sorry about that; I had no idea there was a REALLY invasive evening primrose that spread deep underground like that. Well, we'll avoid that one like the plague! I learn something new every day on this forum!
To answer the original question, though, I also plant nepeta, jolly bee and rozanne geraniums, lavender, smaller daylilies, asiatic lilies, lots of clematis, siberian iris, and pansies and violas because of their lovely blue colours. Some of these plants (lavender, nepeta) require a lot less water than the roses so you have to be careful not to drown them by mistake:)
Judith

Brandy,
I actually spend more time worrying about my winter garden than I do my spring/summer/fall garden. There are quite a few things that are beautiful in the winter time. Some are really nice fragrant plants. Winter is so depressing to me that I really work to have blooms during the whole season. If you want to know more about that then email me. But I thought you were just looking for something to hide the roses a little. That nandina IS available at nurseries. The nurseries around here are sorry, but I've seen it at 2 different nurseries within the last year. I'm willing to bet that your local nursery could order it, even if they didn't have it on hand. .... HMMM, that just gave me an idea. I think I'll do that next week.

I have evergreen daylilies and crinums by my roses, which hides what little roots show. I also had white fanflower which was doing brilliantly as a profusely flowering groundcover until my roses became too large and crowded out the sun. I also have evergreen vines growing behind my roses, both potato vine and bower vine. And I don't know how it is in NC, but my roses have been pretty much evergreen in zone 9a Louisiana.

Now I'm planning on planting a bed in my front and I was inspired by a house in the neighborhood. They had rosemary (an evergreen, at least in New Orleans) along with some artemisia. They didn't have the combo with roses, but I think it's a beautiful combination that I think I'll add some white rose bushes to.