Awesome - and I thought you were just about roses!!! lol. I see low growing sedum around that rock - grass be gone!! Or thymes and sedums. You can pick colours and blooming times. I love your cosmos and marigolds!!!

Nancy.

I expect you will be happy everytime you pass them. Very artistic solution to a difficult spot.

That looks great! I really like those planters and the terraced effect. It has a wonderful rythem to it. I wonder though,since it is you, just how long those pretty planters will be visible. LOL
You are going to have roses and daylilys spilling out all over!

That looks just great! I sure understand wanting to eliminate the steep mowing. My front yard has a ditch that used to require weedwacking. I now can run my riding mower up and down it and have pretty much eliminated an hour of work.

The annual bed is a charmer. I love cosmos.

I can just imagine the new planters overflowing with blooming roses.

Great job!

Fantastic! I love the way you gradually improve your garden every year, tackling yet another area and having hardscape which establishes a structure for years. It's so obviously well thought out. Congrats! Enjoy!

You have such beautiful gardenS -- yes, GARDENS as plural! You've done so much work there and your results are fantastic! :-)

Cameron

You have a very nice garden. Congratulations for finishing your half round terrace garden.

You should be very pleased with yourself! That is absolutely gorgeous. Thanks for sharing - it is great inspiration.

Rita,
I have admired your gardens from afar (lurkdom) for many months. They are amazing and your roses are to die for. I am just a beginner but you have inspired me to at least "try" to grow "real" roses and, so far, the ones I tried are still alive (hooray and hallelujah!) and blooming in spite of me. I call them the "roses nobody wanted" and it is an amusing story how they came to be. I have viewed just about every photo you have ever posted and your skills and expertise are phenomenal. These newest gardens are absolutely beautiful. I love the curved design of the beds and how they fit together without looking too rigid and set. Still "cottage-y" and lovely. Thank you so much for posting the photos! More, please?

Hey rita the new beds look wonderful. I have a couple quesitons. Did the guys just stack the pieces for the planters or are they fastened together in some way? Also you talk about moving large roses. How do you do that? What exactly do you do to prepare them and how do you keep them from suffering in the warm weather? Also what roses did you put in the planters that you just finished...were they new ones that you bought or transplants? Thank you and I appreciate all the help. c

I think that hill section going accross the front is very cottage garden. At least from my interpretation of it. I guess terracing is not that pure interpretaion of cottage style but I have no choice but to do some terracing as I have so many multi-levels here.

I am really pleased with how that planter section with those multiterraces turned out. It really looks interesting, even before the plants were added and thats the best part of adding hardscape.

Thank you all for the complements, its really nice to have people appreciate all the hard work :-))

So pretty and well thought out. Congratulations on your gorgeous gardens.

Beautiful!

You're absolutely, brilliantly, breathtakingly talented!

what a beautiful use of space!! your garden is gorgeous!

love those new beds! Why not continue them in bigger, flatter rounds along your driveway? Repitition and continuity are always great in any garden, especially one with limitied space. That huge rock was such a find.
I love looking at your talented use of space.
Pondy

Rita your gardens are amazing. Yours was one of the gardens I first saw on comming to the Cottage Garden Forum. I was blown away then- now I am blown over again.
Those terraces are so clever! I never would have thought of something like that! I love terraces and walled gardens. I looooooove that long blue stone wall with the daylilies! They are so beautiful and healthy!
Thank you for the pics Rita!
CMK

As to the contruction of the planters, I bought those perracing pavers at Home Depot (both the larger and new smallewr sizes). They are made to be stacked for projects such as this. Each one has a lip edge that you slide in place over the next one. When the soil is backfilled, it keeps it all in place. You have to make sure you keep them level, especially critical on the first row. Plus you have to put a row inground or partially inground, depending on how high you are going.

The roses were sitting here in pots so I wasted no time in planting them. That very first smallest planter has my MARGO KOSTER polyantha and the second has my WING DING polyantha with the tiny band of EYE PAINT in back of it. Those two polyanthas I bought locally.

Then I had HAPPY CHAPPY, WILL-O-THE-WISP and CARPET OF COLOR, so I put all three in the last one. Too many for the size of the planter, will be needing to move the middle one (WILL-O-THE-WISP) probably. But I had them all dug up from the working and had to do something.

To move roses, water, water, water the day before so that the root ball is moist and dig up. If its hot or the rose is very large, it will drop all its leaves (just keep on watering) but after awhile it will grow new ones.

Thank you for all the info. I have some plans for the corner area as soon as they prune the oak. I will show/tell as soon as it is ready ! c

Your garden is awesome, Rita.
I also have dwarf marigold and cosmos, like yours, but I never know how to combine them for effect. Yours looks fantastic and has given me the idea. Thanks for sharing.

Xuan

If its still 90 to 100, I would wait to move the roses.

Xuan- I just put some rows of marigolds in front of some rows of Cosmos to make that little garden. They both bloom constantly and provide lots of color.

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Heres another shot I took yesterday that shows the view along the front garden.