Lol, oh, Ingrid, need you ask? You are surely not alone here! I agonize over which ones to get, from where, and when. Should they be bareroot, potted or bands? Will I pot them or plant? If I plant them, where? Will they like it there? Will they grow? What size pot? Etc., etc. until I'm blue in the face. And in the end it's all a crap shoot. I hope you find the perfect spot for your three homeless ones!

I wouldn't call my mind orderly at all and I don't plan where I put roses on paper (I probably should) but I do obsess about where I will put new roses, and what I have to move to put new roses in. Especially when reading this forum I find I HAVE to have a new rose (like Bolero, for instance) and I will ruminate for the longest time on where I'll put it and what I need to take, if anything. I also ruminate about other plants in the my garden as well. For instance, I planted a blood orange citrus tree last spring so I could have some shade in my front yard so I could plant some roses in a spot that would otherwise get west sun. Now the tree is not doing well and I'm thinking of getting a different one and so I think and ruminate and fuss about what will work in the spot to give enough shade but not too much.

Once I get started thinking about these things I find I have a hard time stopping myself. I find I do this mostly in the evenings so I just go to bed and wake up the next morning not feeling nearly so obsessed. But, then, I can easily start the process all over again. Drives me crazy sometimes.

Obsession, I guess it can be called.

You are not alone.

You are NOT alone. I have a really hard time removing roses from pots and planting into the ground....l "worry" that they will die if I snatch them from the safety of the pot...
And all that stuff Kate confessed....I do that too....
Susan

Neither my mind nor my garden are that orderly. My "new" roses tend to be rooted cuttings of ancient ones that have either died, or are growing in impossible places (like inside of thickets), and I have decided they will probably die soon. I look at it as rescuing their DNA.

My garden is very shady, so it is not so much "where do I put them among the dozen appropriate places", it is more like "let's see, if they will grow in the dark for 2-3 years, I might be able to get them to grow taller, up to where there is some light...".

Everyone's brain works differently. A couple of months ago I was helping one of my nieces decide where to put some plants in her (very sunny) garden. We got at cross purposes in communicating a couple of times, and I finally realized that she thought there was an unbreakable "rule" that all plantings of any kind had to be exactly symetrical! When I told her that was rather an issue of personal preference, she was honestly astonished (she has an MBA from Stanford University, and is not a stupid or ignorant person)!

So, do whatever makes you happy - the roses will not mind.

Jackie

Oh yes, we've been there. And then after all that the rose says, "I prefer death to growing in YOUR garden". And before that the rose vendor says (6 months after the order was placed and confirmed), "We can't send it (or them) until next year, we've had a crop failure". And some growers take roses from Northern gardener's confirmed orders (for Spring delivery) and give them to Southern gardeners ordering later, leaving the Northern gardener to go without, because when the grower does this, the roses can be delivered earlier and the grower receives his money sooner. I'm talking about you, Pickering. At least they admit it. Sigh.

But it must be worth it or we wouldn't do it.

The longer I garden the more fatalistic I become, and the less rigid about my plans, and the more inclined to see what mother nature has in store for the garden.

Cath

If I spend another minute sitting on a boulder staring at my new little raised bed in the front yard, or standing in the street viewing it from another angle, or out with a big tape measure, assuring that SDLM will have enough space to grow along with the other plants for this planter, I believe my neighbors will ask to have me committed. I think I am perfectly normal.

Lynn

Of course we say it's normal - after all, you're posting not just on the Roses forum but the Antique Roses forum! That designation alone means that all of us spend copious amounts of time thinking about rose issues most of the rest of the world doesn't know exist. If there is an outer edge of rose gardening, we are it!

Fortunately, the aspect that keeps us from true insanity is that we ENJOY this kind of planning and thinking, at least for the most part. Yes, we may spend hours staring blankly at our gardens or planning sheets or drooling over rose catalogs, but in my world, it beats staring blankly for hours at mindless reality show programming or the like. At least we're planning to actively add beauty to our little corner of the world, and if part of the enjoyment of that is to spend "too much" time pondering it, it still results in a good product and lowered blood pressure in the long run.

Along those lines, I find once again that I'm much like Kate in my garden "planning". I tend to spend time agonizing over matching colors and/or heights to the spot and then make relatively spontaneous shifts for whatever "looks right" at the planting time. Since my beds are all marginally ordered chaos at the best of times, it's funny to think that any planning at all went into that. At most, I try to avoid serious height gaffes since I'm extremely unlikely to move a rose once planted (or to be successful at doing so if I try).

Join the club, Ingrid, and we appreciate the chance to reaffirm that we all are quite sensible and practical - it's the rest of the non-rose world that's "odd".

Cynthia

I am very happy to validate you Ingrid. You have a beautiful garden and you are completely entitled to growing it in your own way. That is one of the wonderful things about having your own space. I'm just the opposite, bing bang boom, but really I am constantly thinking and dreaming also.

Wow, Ingrid! The only thing better than this forum would be if we all lived on the same block. Then we'd all be able to take great comfort from our mutual insanity and idiosyncrasies. I think it would be the most sublime living arrangement. It would be a rose-nut sanitarium. We'd have a waiting list to get in. The developer and architect will have been the ones to strategize and agonize sun exposure and soil preparation, making the dwelling style and siting perfect for our gardening needs. So when they come for me to take me to "the home", hopefully, I will be nutty enough or lucid enough to think that's where I'm going.

The funniest aspect of these outer edge symptoms is the ease with which some of us toss the meticulous plans and plant willy nilly when the moment comes. I think what that says is that at night and in winter when the garden in inaccessible our brains still demand garden stimulation, so we draw to scale our gardens on paper. We might as well make a board game of the garden, throw the dice, land on all the spots in the garden, and draw a rose photo-card for each spot. Then when the game is over and the garden is "planted", we could play the game again and see where the cards fall. The beauty of this game is that it will invariably place a rose in a spot that we never would have thought of but one that is perfect nonetheless. Just think of the beautiful ruminations that will result from playing the game night after night - and no eraser shavings!

I now think that plotting the garden is fine in that it does organize and focus the mind, but the mistake comes in trusting it to be the FINAL and ONLY way to plant. It is so true that standing in the garden is the only way to decide on where a plant will go. It is really the next logical step to plotting on paper, meaning that the paper is not the last step - unless your drafting board is in the midst of the garden and you are constantly getting up and sitting back down to assess ALL factors that come into play.

When I'm doing a major planting/replanting, I need the paper and pencil to figure out what the heck I'm doing, but now I know it's only a starting point, and I thank you, Ingrid, for your post. Your neurosis has a humanitarian purpose, but I don't think all of it is neurotic. Some of it is simply a matter of being spatially challenged (gee, that 4' really did look like 6') and also the age old problem of over-estimating your ability to THINK OF EVERYTHING. (Last year I moved a rose ten inches after getting it perfectly planted, er ...replanted.) Also, given the typical isolation of most gardeners, we have no way of knowing that we all do the same weird things. So it was good (and brave) that you asked, Ingrid. You just should have asked sooner.

Sherry

Here is a link that might be useful: If only sweat were irrigation...

This post was edited by sherryocala on Mon, Nov 25, 13 at 18:57

Sherry, so someone else digs a plant up and moves it ten inches, what a relief!
Kate, I too have wandered around the garden for half an hour at a time, plant in hand wondering where it will go.
I am also magically able, in my head, to turn a shady spot into a sunny spot, and vice-versa, if I want one or the other for a particular plant.
When I planted Francis Dubreuil this spring, I told him quite firmly that he wasn't to get too big for the spot.
Since there are so many of us, it must be perfectly normal.

Sherry, you had me laughing out loud (the dogs are looking at me curiously) over the rose garden board game. Yes, indeed. All those fine drawings through the long winter are great occupation for the cold challenged...but I, too, throw caution to the wind and just walk around with my shovel and potted roses (or bucket of soaking bare roots) and do a lot of "Hmmmm"-ing and end up plopping them down where the mood strikes. I've often wished roses were more like furniture: infinitely movable with no harm done when you see that no, that just won't do and then you put it all back where it was to begin with.
Yes, it's great to know that I am normal...ah, within our select group, that is. ;-)

Well, clearly that does not mean THIS gardener!!

(hey now stop laughing!)

I think there are those who hit the box store, buy an equal number of random plants and head home to have their mow-blow guy install in some sort of order and call it done.

But then there are those of us who search the forums for answers to questions too random to ask at the garden center, pour over garden catalogs tagging the plants of note, ponder colors (who else would know the difference between a warm pink and a cool pink) and debate if we really are good enough to get that plant we already know will not like our garden to some how actually like it and thrive.

After all, how many wrong roses were/are on my list for the imagined location just to discover I really don't have room for the two I decided on, and now I am realizing my newer orange tree is really in the wrong spot and would be better moved a couple of feet.....

The photo-my recycled canopy frame I plan on growing grapes and a rose on. Even though the Morro orange is a foot too far

I just feel very relieved and like I've found some resolution when I get a number of them planted at last.

I've been enjoying these posts. Naturally I'm one of the "population" as well. Usually I don't work with graph paper and ruler, but rather go out in the zone I'm planning, with stakes and possibly flagging tape, and perhaps a measuring tape if it's a really big job. Smaller areas just get the eyeball and sometimes a good deal of thought. I think a garden designer, professional or not, can be defined as a person who understands that whether a plant is in one spot, or else a foot away, makes a difference. Makes THE difference.
We are finally enjoying gorgeous sunny weather and I've been out digging in the big garden, amending the gray clay with copious amounts of old hay, and planting. It's a slow job: today I got one rose ('Mme. Jules Bouche'), one rosemary, one lavender, a white iris, a "mentuccia"--some kind of catmint?--in the ground in my five hours of labor, but still, this is what is going to turn this former steep weedy field into a garden one day. I had one little area I was trying to make sense of. It was a short, wedge-shaped strip with the garden road above and a narrow path below, bounded on one end by a thriving young 'Cl. Maman Cochet' on a pergola entrance, and on the other end by a young Italian pine with Artemisia abrotanum growing around it. I had amended this ground and planted various things there last fall and the year before that. Two roses, 'Camelia Rose' and a lovely Tea, perhaps 'Dr. Grill'; a common privet above, a rosemary, a pink, some odds and ends. The roses both died. A couple of stakes mark plants that are no longer there. The rosemary, pinks, and privet made it. The privet is too low below the road for comfort. There's nothing at the corner of the pergola entrance, so I planted another rosemary there. In spite of earlier amendment, the ground looks unprosperous, and I think the roses' deaths are partly due to stress from the bad soil, so I dug and amended generously, not being yet finished. I decided that there was room only for one rose, but want to add a shrub honeysuckle, L. fragrantissima, to the green border above, joining the privet, which I won't move, and rosemary. I need a couple more green shrubs for the border besides the honeysuckle. I may have to move the pink, perhaps on the slope of the rose hole once I've re-dug it. All the amendment raises the ground a bit above the path, which is pleasant, but my plans leave a low open area beside 'Cl. Maman Cochet' that I don't know what to do with. It's too small for a rose, but something choice needs to go there. It feels sheltered. It sits at a curve in the path. Actually I think it might be just the right place for a bench.
I love this kind of problem solving, and it seems a very reasonable activity to me. I consider I'm spending my time fruitfully. And, even though DH and I appear to be the only people on earth who enjoy my garden, still I'm improving the soil and helping prevent slides, and giving a home to a good variety of roses, some of them uncommon.
Melissa

You've all warmed the cockles of my heart, whatever those things are, made me smile and assured me that, since there are a good number of us, my neurosis has become, by definition, the new normal.

I love, love Sherry's idea of all of us living near each other, forming an enclave of old rose lovers who would be forever visiting each others' gardens, lending a fresh eye to whatever we may be agonizing over at the moment, and receiving advice which we may or may not accept without hard feelings on anyone's part. We do this to some extent here, but how wonderful to actually see each others' gardens and wander at will among all those roses that we thankfully don't need to care for. I'm not sure how Pam's 40 acres and my hillside garden would fit in, but since this is a magical scenario it would of course all make sense and work out.

I'm relieved I'm not the only one who plans on paper and everything looks just so, and then when it's time to actually put the petal to the metal, end up doing something entirely different because in the heat of the moment I distrust everything I've carefully thought out and am so sure that my "new" idea is ever so much better. Of course I've forgotten the problems this will create in the overall scheme, and the resultant confusion and disarrangement this will create. I then want to shoot myself and am too scared to ask my husband to yank out the rose from the laboriously dug hole to place it in some other (and often equally inappropriate place) that I now think would be better. I sometimes think if I threw the band over my left shoulder and planted it where it landed (assuming it didn't land on another rose) might be an equally good and much less taxing way to proceed.

The moral support your responses gave me is priceless. It has also cleared my mind wonderfully. I now know that No. 92 Nanjing will go where I will uproot Burgundy Iceberg (which I've been dithering about in spite of its black spot issues just because I've had it so long), and that Souvenir d'un Ami, which I had firmly decided would have to go because of its much less than stellar performance, will stay because it's a rose that's difficult to obtain and MAY still improve if I love it enough. That having been decided, I see may way clear to put Souvenir du President Carnot in front of Mutabilis, where its apricot tones will blend in with one of the color phases of said rose, and Dr. O'Donel Browne will join the pink to purple rose area in the back. Mission accomplished. I promise not to rethink this plan no matter what!

You're all the greatest!

Ingrid

I pretty much figure that everybody's neurotic. We're just neurotic in different ways.

Vive la difference!

Rosefolly

Melissa, apologies if I'm teaching my grandmother to suck eggs, but here, the accepted wisdom is not to disturb the clay, and plant on top of it, and the rose will find it's own way. Also to use plenty of gypsum which will eventually break it up.
As I'm new here, this discussion has probably taken place.

Melissa, I can so identify with your comment that it sometimes seems your DH and you are the only people on earth who enjoy your garden. Of course that would change quickly if we all made it over to Italy!

It used to bother me and almost hurt my feelings, but I've now decided that if the two of us enjoy it that's enough. We're here every day and that garden is here every day to give us both joy and contentment (well, usually). When I think of how it would feel if it weren't there that's enough to convince me that it's well worth it even if no one else every lays eyes on it.

Ingrid

Hi all, it's taken me some 45 years to realize all my plans on paper are an exercise, but I still find myself doing them...so I guess that qualifies me as a neurotic!

I have better luck going out to the garden and letting it tell me what will work where (and you wouldn't believe how many plants I've killed figuring THAT out.) If in doubt, I put the plant in its pot down and step out to observe.

My DH says all this activity is just my way to spend more time in the garden and get him to show he loves me by digging holes...and I have to say our dogs approve of anything we do outside.

How about characterizing ourselves as "dedicated" instead of neurotic?

Count me in as a member of the neurotic club,

I've made countless landscape plans to position best these few roses:
Souvenir du Claudius DeNoyal, the red rose that made me love red roses.
.
-a red China rose I found, rooted and hope to identify some day, the blooms appear much like 'Sanguinea' but of more of an intense cherry red hue, with nice white quilling, which I love, and with 8 to 12 petals.
a Falstaff my neighbor gave me.
Kaiserin Auguste Viktoria, the climbing form, which I bought from vintage last spring after reading that it was sold as a Tea-Noisette in the early 1900's which made me think it might have a longer growing season, it continues to bloom through November. Huge white fragrant blooms and lasts long in the vase, far longer than any of the Old Garden Teas I grow.
climbing. 'Florence Bower's Pink Tea'
The reds must have some shade in my garden, or they will burn in the hot California sun.
The climbers must have something to climb upon, and Florence is very prickly so away from a path would be good.
so, again and again I place them on paper, and change my mind again and again and again.

I want to get it right, because it is a lot of work to move a climbing rose or a huge O.G.R. Tea rosebush.

Lux

Titian,
It sounds like you are either talking about planting the plants in clay, or else bringing in soil, or amendment, to put over the clay and planting the plants in that.
Planting in my clay doesn't work: plants don't grow, and the warm climate roses' roots rot in wet winters. We use hay as our mulch and amendment, simply because it's what's available, and when spread as a mulch over the ground it does more harm than good until it decomposes. It's not possible to bring in an amount of soil sufficient to plant the plants in, given the numbers of plants and difficulties of access and of terracing on such steep terrain. You probably haven't seen my posts about my pottery-quality gray clay, but it is tough stuff to deal with; still, when I manage to get enough half-rotted clay dug into it, the roses grow, and set up a virtuous cycle of growth-organic litter-decomposition that continues to enrich the ground. I've been working in the big garden for nine years now, and it's the only workable way I've found: heavy amendment of the native soil.
I'm chemistry-compromised and have never understood how gypsum works, though I gather it's not suitable for all clay soils. I don't know the chemical composition of my soil, never having had it analyzed. I do believe it's close to a neutral pH, but for the rest am ignorant. I'm a strong believer in organic amendment.
Your observations are welcome, by the way. Perhaps I should have said that at the start.
Ingrid, about finding people who share our pleasure in our gardens, I suspect you and I, with our husbands, are in the majority. Oh, well, patience....gardening will come back into fashion again one day, and perhaps will even regain a role in unfashionable folks' lives. I miss the days when growing things wasn't a niche activity.
Melissa

Hi Melissa, yes I did mean planting on top in brought in soil. I suspected there was a good reason for doing what you do! I don't know how gypsum works either. Anyway, you obviously have your problem solved, and though hard, slogging work, it must be keeping you wonderfully fit.
It is surprising to me how few people find joy in other people's gardens. I love seeing them, and do so wish, as Sherry imagined, that we all lived within pop-inable distance. I don't have a husband to enjoy my garden with, but I am lucky in my neighbour, who says lovely encouraging things like 'when are you going to have an open garden?' Believe me, if I did, there would be a lot of disappointed faces!

luxrosa, I think that sometimes the fewer the plants the more critical the positioning seems to be. Plus, it gives us more time to agonize over each one. If there were a hundred we wouldn't have that luxury.

Your description of Cl. KAV is oh so captivating. My bush one died almost instantly, no doubt my fault. I'm always looking for roses that last long in the vase and my garden has precious few. Of course I would have no place to put this one, and have to rip out another rose if Annie Laurie McDowell ever makes it out of her one-gallon pot, but I think one aspect of our neurosis is that glazed look and instant desire for yet another rose that sounds wonderful, even if we'd have to plant it on the roof. Isn't it wonderful?

Ingrid