I love your idea, and i also grow roses in my garden (which i consider cottage!). However this was my first summer with roses so i dont have pictures to share. I planted alot, and mixed them with catmint, coreopsis, white salvia, daylilies, and more. I feel like my gardens are very informal, i dont care for stuffy or the kind that have the same plants mirroring each other. I love mixing colors but i admit i have a hard time adding red and orange.
Heres the roses i added this year-
White dawn (climber)
golden showers (climber)
pope john paul 2
windermere
bishops castle
catalina
yellow and pink knockouts
lavender simplicity
blaze
black magic
rainbow sorbet
julia child
lace cascade (climber)
iceberg shrub and climbing
social climber (climber)
sweetness
madame pierre ogre

I think thats it. I think you have some wonderful ideas for your yard, isnt it bitterswwet to have all winter to plan and not be able to get started? Yet it gives you time to research and make good choices!
Can you tell me what a potager is? I have heard it but dont know.

Heres a couple pics for eyecandy, nothing special but will make us remember spring for a second!

Catalina, it has a yellow center but you {{gwi:323270}}

tell here

my annabelle hydrangea and becky towe phlox
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Limelight hydrangea , pinata climbing rose{{gwi:284573}}

Lilyfinch- I love your pictures! They are so nice to see on a gray day like today :) I really like your bird bath too. Very pretty!

A potager is a french word (meaning soup, I think) and describes a garden that mixes vegetables with herbs, fruit and flowers. It can be very formal or quite informal. I want a more traditional style, rectangular, with four beds in the middle and a center focal point. I plan to put a two-tiered fountain in the middle (if I can find one that's affordable) but instead of water (no electricity out there) I plan to put petunias and let them spill over the edges. Very pretty and they don't get in the way when it's time to mow the grass paths.

Some people use bricks or gravel for paths, but I like grass. Even though it's a more traditional layout, planting herbs and some perennials with the roses and having baby pumpkins and climbing beans in the center beds, I think it will make it very inviting. Some potager people get very formal with their garden vegetables, planting lettuces in patterns, etc. but I like a more informal, relaxed feel to the garden.

LL- I love your idea!! I think it will be so pretty. I have both free-flowing beds as well as a pretty symmetrical (hardscape) cottage area. I think your idea of symmetry will be niced mixed with the informality of the plants you plan on putting in. It might be nice to even have some slight formality within the beds(i like the idea of the lettuce in patterns) and then the other plants flowing through. I also think grass paths are another great idea. I have visited so many public gardens where they have grass paths and 9 times out of 10 I kick off my shoes and enjoy the grass underfoot. How big is the area? It sounds like a very fun project to plan! I can't help but think that an often overlooked perennial is Butterfly weed. It could be very nice in your garden. There's a great orange one (2 1/2' tall)that could really play off some rose colors and make a nice hot combo for you. There's also a really nice pink one that is taller (5').

I'm not sure if this link will help in reference to fountains, but I've ordered from this place before and was very pleased with the price and quality. I haven't priced up 2-tier fountains at all anywhere else, but maybe you can look at this and know whether it's expensive or not.

Lilyfinch, I really like combination of the limelight and pinata.

Here is a link that might be useful: fountains

Thyme- Thanks for the link. Very nice fountains and other garden items too :)

The area I have for this garden is about 25' x 30'. It could be wider at the back, but for a rectangular bed, that's about all the room I have. The horses' pasture is on the north side of the garden, so I have to leave room to get past it and not shock myself on the electric fence! LOL

I am excited to plan the garden this winter and it's more fun looking at rose catalogs if I actually have a place to put them :) Butterly weed is a great idea and I love butterfly bushes too. I have a couple on the other side of the house and they look great with the coneflowers.

A lot of the roses I want to use have a more informal look, with the blossoms opening to show the stamens in the middle. With a few exceptions, I'm trying to keep flowers the bumblebees can enjoy, too. With the lack of honey bees lately, the bumblebees have been our main pollinators. They love the apple tree, the lavender and the sunflowers, but I also noticed they liked roses like Tamora that they could get into. I even had one that would sleep in a Tamora blossom at night, as the weather got cooler.

Lavenderlass- i actually had a 3 tier fountain that cracked and now thats my plan for it! I was so close to pitching it. Maybe check out craigslist? Sometimes i post a wanted ad in the garden dept, and get good response.
One of my favorite bee attractors are agastache, especially the blue fluffy kind. And Caryopteris (spelling may be wrong)is incredible because the bees sleep on that too! I couldnt believe it the first time i saw that.

Lilyfinch- I'm glad you found a way to use your fountain :) I've been looking for one that's a little chipped or cracked, since I plan to put dirt in it anyway and have to have some drainage for the plants. Thanks for the ideas on other places to check besides clearance areas.

I've read that agastache is great for bees, but it's supposed to do better in zone 5. I'm thinking of trying hyssop officinalis (similar to agastache) but a little hardier. Catmint is supposed to be good too, if I can keep the barn kitties away from it :)

Is it coreopsis? or am I thinking of the wrong flower, is it yellow? Bees do look pretty cute when they fall asleep in a flower...that's when I ask myself, where's my camera??? LOL

lavenders, don't forget lavenders which deer hate.

Ianna- The Hidcote lavender I planted this year did wonders for keeping the deer out. I plan to put it around all the roses I still have in front of the house, but I'm running out of room for new roses. That's why I want to put so many in my potager :) Then I can put more lavender and some other herbs with the perennials. I may even have a little room left for the vegetables! LOL

I love your idea! Think it will be a fabulous place - I can imagine sitting there with all the delightful scents from the roses and herbs.

You've already decided upon your roses? This is 'Ebb Tide'. It smells heavenly. :)

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Holleygarden- I've still got room for more roses and I love this one. What a pretty rose. It looks like a gallica, but it reblooms! Thank you for the suggestion and cloves are one of my favorite spices, so the fragrance is perfect :)

Just a cautionary note about rugosas, some spread by runners underground and will take over an area pretty quickly. I have a 'hedge' now of Therese Bugnet. Maybe some don't do that, but I would be sure.

I love the plan you have.

Gldno1- That's good to know. I don't need a hedge (at least not in this area). Maybe Therese Bugnet would be better where I can mow around it, like some gallicas :)

Please tell me about Lavender and deer. I know deer don't like to EAT lavender, but does it actually keep them away? I have a big deer problem and am looking for any solution possible in my backyard. I'd surely invest in lots of lavender if that is a deer deterrent. I haven't found much "smelly" stuff that works to keep them away.

LL--I was thinking about the size of your garden and it is just slightly smaller than the cottage area I have in front of my house (24X36). I have it broken up into separate beds like you are going to do. It is a lot easier design-wise to work with smaller beds. Are you going to make the center beds square and parallel to the outside fence? Or are you going to angle them more like diamonds compared to the fence? Or not do squares at all?Just curious as to what your final plan will look like.

Two years ago I put in a little rose garden-mostly rugosas and OGR's-I love it!!
These pix were taken shortly after everything was put in. I haven't put any new pix on the computer in a while, guess I gotta get busy!
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Brandymulvaine- I love your pictures! Very pretty garden and I really like your choice of roses...and good idea about using plants to repel bugs. I hope you take some more pics next summer :)

Thyme- I don't have hungry deer. I'm told hungry deer will eat almost anything. I have curious deer, who like to come down and eat apples off the tree, sneak over to the salt block when the horses are in the other pasture and chew on a rose if it's too close to the salt block. Since I moved the roses and added the lavender, they haven't noticed them and have stayed out of the front garden.

As for lavender, I think it works very well and I've heard mint, bee balm and several other herbs will also keep them away. They also don't like blueberries (at least mine don't) peonies, columbine, butterfly bushes and coneflowers, to name a few. But again, these are not hungry deer.

My plan for the garden is to have a fence around it and have perimeter beds along the inside of the fence for the roses and herbs. I want to have four rectangular beds (4' x 6' and parallel to the fence) with just the inside corner trimmed off surrounding a fountain in the middle, planted with petunias. I wanted a center focal point, but with no electricity out there, petunias seemed like a good alternative. Very similar to Jennifer Bartley's design on the front of her book on American potagers. (It should show a picture of it on the cover of her book on Amazon.) She uses lavender in the middle and on the edge of her inside beds. I've found that it's too hard to mix perennials in with the veggies, so I'll probably edge the inside beds with alyssum or marigolds.

I want to put roses on all four sides, but I'll probably start with the back and one side. These will both have small seating areas (table and two chairs in the back and a bench on the side) and the side is against some sheds that I'm hoping will look better with the roses screening them a bit :)

Okay, as I sit here today, going through rose books, I've decided...my "potager" is going to be a garden for roses, herbs and some annual flowers like sweet peas and morning glory. I really want a "girly" garden and I think this will be it. I should call it my "big girl" garden since I also am designing a "fairy garden" for my nieces :)

With all the mud out here and snow, for most of the year, I've decided to move the vegetables to another location and concentrate on pretty and fragrant flowers. However, I am practical enough to make sure they help the bumblebees and butterflies. The birds have all kinds of plants in the pasture and I don't want them too close to the barn kitties.

Any more suggestions for roses? Loved ebb tide and will include it in the garden. This area will have to be mainly for smaller roses, about three to four feet wide, although height is not really an issue. I hope to put the larger damasks and albas in front of the lilac hedge and surround them with deer-resistant perennials and lavender.

Vegetables are great, but with my short growing season, I have about three and a half months without frost. This means everything has to be planted almost on top of each other, so I think a bigger area would be a better idea. This way I can have a working garden and a pretty area to sit and have tea :) The fairy garden is really a pastel butterfly garden with lots of little surprises for the girls. I have gallica roses that change color from pink to fuscia to lavender to purple and little bridges that the "wee folk" might use. They love Tinkerbelle and I think this will spark their creativity and give them a garden they will enjoy. Also will have small apple trees, three foot high and smaller blueberry bushes and alpine strawberries in this area, behind the flowers. This is all non-toxic, so no lily of the valley, but violets and pansies are okay...you probably get the idea :) Any ideas on this garden are great too!

Look for stuff that can handle not being sprayed if you want to attract bees and butterflies.
-B

Here is a link that might be useful: Roses in my Yarden

Although, as mentioned before, Theresa Bugnet does spread by underground runners, she is still worth thinking about for a garden. Perhaps you could buy her grafted onto non-running rootstock. She blooms about a week earlier than other roses, has no disease issues, nice fall foliage, and the canes turn dark red in the winter.

You did mention you wanted shorter roses.. How about the Fairy rose? It only gets about 2 1/2 feet tall, and maybe 3 feet wide.

Harlow Carr is a wonderful healthy new pink David Austin rose, also only 2 1/2 feet tall and maybe 1 1/2 feet wide.

Molyneux is another shorter David Austin rose; it's a rich apricot yellow.

Most of the rest of my roses are taller, as you can see from this picture.

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Lois in PA