I blew off leaves and put down alfalfa and 10-10-10-
today.All set-let it spring.

I never stop looking through catalogs! A few new bulbs go in during the fall along with my usual Estella tulips.
Other than that new roses replace roses to be given away! Spring decides what new annuals will go in and what the garden will look like in late Summer and Fall. Usually different combinations or varieties of the same favorites. Marigolds, mums, dusty Miller, coleus and annual pelargoniums.

can you move roses that have been in place forever?

doveinhead1st, yes you can. Do a search from the main Roses Forum page for "transplant" and if you don't find what you want, go back to the bottom of the main Roses Forum page and start a new thread on the topic so that your question can be seen and people from your zone will respond.

Back to OP:
Plan? None
Measure? Nope.
Catalogs/web pages/journals: Devour them. The new Rosa Mundi arrived a couple of days ago, I'm afraid to open it...
color schemes? Don't care.
Draw plans? Nope.
Eliminate plants? Nope. If they live, they stay.
Read? Eh, I have to, CR. For my own garden, I started a compost pile last year, I need to take a look to see what I have at the bottom. I also need to collect the leaves before the town comes along and takes them.

More organic fertilizers. Regular fungicide sprays next year. I need to solarize part of the lawn to expand the small bed. Drama happens, usually by the end of May.

I read catalogs, websites. Read GW and ponder new and old roses and how they might look in different spots. I make powerpoint documents and use colored circles to play with my current garden setup and how I might make changes. Then in spring, I go to the garden and do whatever suits me (which is sometimes right, sometimes wrong). It's all fun but I find moving roses to be as exciting as buying new ones as there are millions of combinations. Then I plan on what fillers will work. This fall I'm removing some salvias as they get too big and almost year round cutting back which is too much extra pruning in addition to roses. I would rather just have roses. But will probably try a new perennial or two.
I am giving away some roses this year to make room for more new roses from the pot ghetto and other parts of the garden. I'm also having a mole problem in my veggie garden so may switch out gardens altogether. Wow, my brain sure is ambitious; wish my body was able to keep up. Not!

The garden is asleep under snow. Hopefully it will melt soon so I can cover at least my tenderest roses, if not I'll hope that the snow lasts till spring. I am inside, reading and writing. My husband gave me Graham Stuart Thomas' Treasured Perennials yesterday and when I've read it I suppose I'll be full of new planting schemes. I'll jot them down in my garden notebook and probably forget about it all in spring.

BTW, snow is a splendid medium for marking out new beds.

Ditto what Diane NJ says. It takes the pleasure away if I have to go to all the trouble of planning. Too much work; rather spend the time IN the garden. Wish I was there now instead of being stuck here in the house because it's now winter here in Illinois. I hate winter! But that's another thread.

I'm planning which branches I shall remove from the trees which shade my beds.

I am also thinking about removing some roses simply for the sake of cutting back. This is way too much work when I am really only getting roses in June. The rest of the year all I do is raise midge and beetle food.

Since I am fast running out of space, I spend months searching for the exact 2 or 3 roses I want for specific spots. Lots of revisions and starting over involved. I even have images of the roses taped to a paper outline of my beds to help me visualize various combinations.

I think it's fun doing all this planning, most of which takes place after it gets too chilly outside to do much garden work. Helps pass many a grey November-December day.

Of course, in the spring, as I stand there in the gardenholding the new bareroots, I sometimes scrap all the plans and, inspired by the moment and proximity, plant them in places I hadn't anticipated. What the heck--it was all fun anyway.

Kate

I go all out!

I'm alawys looking at the catalogues. My biggest problem is falling in love with roses that I can't find grafted on Fortuniana root stock. This year I don't think I'll be ordering anything else since I'm all planted out.

I begin my planning using Microsoft Publisher. Using a diagram of my yard I place the rose bushes where I'd like them based on sun exposure and impact. I've graduated from islands when I first started growing roses to hedges and rows. I then design the irregation process based on existing sprinklers and adjust for new water needs. Then I assign rose bushes to spots based on type, recorded average growth, blackspot tendencies, and color. I tend to place my grandifloras behind my hybrids teas and my floribundas and shrubs in front of those.

I basically plan everything out on paper in detail then execute my plans accordingly.

Adrian.

Wow, Adrian, I have a lot of admiration for you and all that planning. I usually take a break in winter until Feb. when I prune all, and move any roses that weren't happy in their places. I always say I'm not going to buy more, but usually buy one or two to fit in with the perennials. Other than that, its just a matter of taking care of them and picking and smelling the roses when they're blooming.
K

Gardening here is pretty much year round, depending on the weather. If it's too hot, too cold, too rainy; if there's snow, I don't get out much in the garden; otherwise, I work through the seasons. This fall I did have to lay out the positions of the major garden beds so that they could be plowed, which meant a lot of time with stakes and flagging tape. Fall is generally the best time to shift plants and to plant new arrivals. This year it looks as though we are going to get all our roses and shrubs in by Christmas: a great achievement. With the mild autumn we've had I've been able to do most of my weeding and mulching, but haven't been able to begin pruning: that will be the major winter task, along with continuing to catalog my roses.

I plan sketchily, but leave a good deal to the inspiration--or desperation--of the moment. I don't plan more than the minimum necessary for the immediate task. I probably plan more in summer than in winter. I do work out more detailed small schemes as I go along, but have never been able, or willing, to plan and execute a large and complex plan. When I've attempted it the results weren't better then with my current method, and were a lot more tiring. It may be that I still haven't sufficiently mastered my materials, i.e. the plants, to be able to use them "fluently". I start a new area planting the major plants, then correcting mistakes the following year and beginning to fill in with smaller plants. I do sometimes draw plans, not much recently, possibly because the spaces I'm gardening in are irregular in form and sloping and don't lend themselves to this method of planning. I brainstorm writing lists of plants and writing down ideas.

I read and think about plants and gardening all the time, reading mainly Internet and books. Catalogs are usually more tempting than honestly informative: the Vintage catalog is a huge exception (the Schultheis catalog is also extremely seductive). If the weather gets really bad and I'm stuck in the house, or if I simply get sick of gardening, I just do other things: read, cook, write letters, or go visit an art museum. When things get really desperate I clean house.

Melissa

It depends on the tides.

Seriously, being a plopper and a bargin bin hunter, I am amazed I spend any time planning anything at all. Little good it does, indeed.

Part of the fun of growing roses is IMHO being able to beat to death any research one wants to undertake, or none at all, depending on the tides.

F.L.
NAGL

Devon,
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Part of the fun for me is going outside, measuring and marking on paper, trying to visualize everything in my head, putting tags down for each rose in the spot they are going to go in, and seeing how the colors would work together and how the sizes would work together, and how beautiful the garden is going to be once grown.
I repeat this process multiple times before I get down to digging and hauling in compost and boxes and mulch.
Of course, being down here in Texas, all of my roses get 2 or 3 times as big as anyone on the forums say that they are going to (even the Southern ones, go figure) and so measuring is only good in that it gives somewhat of an idea. I have learned to make paths wider than I want them, etc, to accommodate monster roses.

No...I never measure...except distance between roses to determine how many I can cram into a bed. I have already ordered 20 for Spring from catalogs. I actually tell my husband who to gift them to in case I drop over dead. I haunt local garden centers waiting for shipments so i can fall face first into them when they are loaded off the trucks in spring. If they are pretty, I buy them and tell my husband "OH,I have had that for YEARS"! I actually HAVE charted for sunlight (6am-6pm hourly) in a particular bed and had the trees trimmed accordingly. This fall I also started expanding two formal beds via the lasagna method so now I will just wait and dream of spring.

How much planning? as much as I feel like. It's really more about the enjoyment of the process than it is about an end result. The roses already in place don't need a lot of attention. I know I'll prune them at the end of January, top dress, put down organics.

Other than that, puttering with diagrams and lists of this or that rose I want to acquire and which will give up their spot; all that is more for my own amusement.

I do almost all my planting in the winter. The hardest part is estimating how large they will really be when they grow up. No paper, but my gardens are roughly divided by color and plant type. I have a kind poiple garden with a bunch of Tom Carruth blue roses and other purple roses. I have a yaller and apricot garden with lots of roses of different classes. I have a Tea and rambler garden, all soft sunset colors. Accents are small polys or found or miniature roses.

I do remove or move plants that don't work, especially anything that begins to look invasive. Sometimes nurseries mislabel or just don't know what they are selling. When you research why their 2x2 perennial is 3x8 and find it is an invasive plant, naturalizing in all the local state parks, it's time to remove them.

I measure the good ole landscaper way. You learn how to pace out a yard and measure a foot with your foot. If necessary, I use landscape paint to outline locations.

Love planning in the winter. Bring on the catalogs!! I havae a map of my garden-have 250 roses. If I love tags I know what is what. Love moving them around for balance, etc. Shovel prune and bring in the new.

I buy a bunch of roses in the fall for spring shipment, and then spend the rest of the winter trying to figure out where I can possibly put them. Measure/color schemes/paper? Nope!

doveinhead - Where in MI are you located? Send me an email and I can assist if need be. I'll also put you on the list for roses I will be giving away come spring if you are in the metro Detroit area.

Devon - this thread got me thinking. I usually just subscribe to the "buy as you go" method and plunk plants in as I go. But this time I am putting in a brand-new hillside rose garden, so I actually got up one morning this week at 5 a.m. and started drawing up a plan. I was excited to sleep (might have been from too much coffee the night before also) and started cutting and pasting in roses). This is the first time I have ever come up with a design plan. I'll probably still plonk in the companion plants but I have the bones of the garden done and the roses ordered. I'm actually pretty pleased about it. It was fun!

I lay awake in bed at night and visualize. I walk down into the garden and think about companion plants. I go to the Vintage website and look at interesting roses and then try to figure out where I might fit them in. Right now I'm trying to figure out how we will come up with the money for fencing in a big rambler project.

I am a big planner and being an engineer I like to design and study things in great detail. I visualize things in my head and put them on paper in scale drawings. When I make changes I mark them out on the ground and adjust. I am constantly looking at catalogs and design books. I am always thinking of ways to improve my garden. I have been feeling a little overwhelmed by all the upkeep of my garden and my thoughts recently have been how to scale back some of the larger maintenance tasks without sacrificing too much of the size and beauty of my garden, so I have been eliminating a few of the larger climbers and ramblers which I had trouble getting to on ladders for training and pruning. I've been working on a golden foliage color scheme in one part of my garden this fall using other sorts of shrubs with creme colored roses to enhance a "moonlight garden" that glows on a clear night.