Soft yellow, shell pink, and white. If you wanted to add a rose for a bit of "interest", one with coloring like Princess of Monaco could suffice (sorry, I am not familiar with which varieties perform well in FL.) http://www.helpmefind.com/rose/l.php?l=21.270125.

You could eliminate the yellow and use shell or light pink, white and something like Princess of Monaco.

While the scarlet color would be lovely, it will stand out a bit due to the eggshell on your home.

Lynn

Whatever you pick make sure they are grafted on fortuniana rootstock. We have nematodes in Florida that will eat the roots. These are the only retailers that I know of that sell them grafted for Florida. Nelson's Roses, Cool Roses and K & M Roses

Howdy! Very nice house! I recommend the climbing Peggy Martin rose on an arbor as a focal-point. The light-pink contrast would look great with your home. You can find it (own-root) online at Antique Rose Emporium. No thorns. Very little black spot. Canes grow 15+ feet. You could then plant the rest of the bed with an assortment of roses/flowers complimenting your color pattern. I think you may have a hard time finding plants that fit your coral color scheme so you may want to consider the more traditional flower colors...just my two cents ;)

I really like your color scheme. This post has gardeners from Florida. Maybe this can give you some inspiration

http://forums2.gardenweb.com/discussions/3729352/fragrant-roses-that-produce-abundant-perfect-cut-blooms

What a beautiful home and garden. You can either use complimentary colours which in your case would be cool colours or contrasting colours which your husband has already beautifully picked out. Either way it will be a gorgeous garden. Just keep in mind that roses are living plants so the colours will always change from new blooms to old blooms. In addition the same rose may have slightly different colours in colder and hotter gardening zones.

If you are planning a very formal garden then you may need to concentrate on hybrid teas, floribundas and grandifloras. If you prefer a more natural setting than old roses and shrub roses would also look great in your garden.

Having lived and gardened in Fl the better part of my life before retiring into the mountains, what I think you really need is something easy care and still have some color contrast. Along the 15 ft part up next to the hedge about 3 feet in, put 5 regular Knock Out's or Double Knock Out's. Then up against the house 2 Blushing Pink Knock Out's Then right smack in the middle, up against the outside hedge, I'd stick Sunny Knock Out. 3 different colors that aren't harsh but will be fairly easy to take care of and look good. It will be a little work getting everything put together but a good start will make all the difference in the world as time goes on.

MUCH appreciate all of the responses to the questions I posed! In regards to the color question, I might be answering my own question but the original owners did a considerable amount of work with plantings in the front of the property including a callery pear canopy driveway (blessing to view / curse for my husband to deal with as they're entering old age), and what we believe are ornamental cherry and possibly ornamental crabapples to the front and side of the home.

It definitely looks like soft whites, light pink, and red were selected with some intent. Here are a few pictures my husband recently took... know it strays from the rose topic a bit but, again, thought it might be useful on confirming if we might want to try and mirror with rose plantings in the back of our home. Welcome identification of any of the trees / blooms as we're not 100% certain on any. With the exception of the callery pears, the trees that are blooming are all planted within feet of the eggshell exterior walls.

There also is a small separate area to the side of the home where 3 matching rose bushes grow together in a somewhat shaded area. The flowers vary quite a bit from darker pink to a much softer whitish-pink during the bloom cycle .

We would LOVE to know the identification of the rose, even though we think we still might want to plant other roses (or at least more varieties of roses) in the area shown in my original post! Still, it does show again that soft-white and pink seemed to be among the colors preferred by the original owners.

Uhmm, your home is more like an estate...lol. Not only a stunning home but property as well. After you have experienced growing some roses, you should fill them in the rest of the property later on. I love the tunnel of trees to your home. What kind of trees are those? I can envision roses growing against that steel or iron fence all the way. Thank you for sharing a piece of your paradise with us.

Jjpeace, many thanks for the kind words! We feel EXTREMELY blessed to have acquired the property but it was in such poor shape when we bought it that it took a year of major renovation work just to move in, and 3 years later we're still doing touch-up repair work on the home. It was such a huge undertaking that the home sat on the market empty for years. We honestly couldn't have afforded the property if it had been in ideal condition, so the need for repairs was both a curse and a blessing.

The trees that form the canopy are callery pears / aka Bradford pears. They are pretty both when blooming and even when not (thanks to the canopy formation)... BUT... they are relatively short lived trees typically lasting 20 to 30 years and we're already losing some. If you're not familiar with them, they grow quite fast but the growth and their form make them prone to splitting as vertical limbs grow and apply pressure against nearby expanding vertical limbs. Pruning them at a young age can help delay problems but miss a few years as happened before we purchased the property and you've got a huge problem on your hand. My husband has already planted young live oaks along the outside of the pears, though the live oaks will be most stunning long after we are gone.

hey, Pamela, what part of north Fl? I'm in the MacClenny area and have several hundred roses, also, all colors of the knockouts. where are you from me?

What a beautiful property! I'm not arguing against the Fortuniana graft, but surely that's not necessary when it comes to the Peggy Martin rose. Should you be interested in own-root (and/or organic) roses, Angel Gardens is located in Alachua, FL and offers Peggy Martin. I can highly recommend http://www.angelgardens.com/.

I planned my little rose garden for my daughter too. Her favorite colors are pink, purple, and red.. ::sigh:: so yeah..

Voles have killed two of the roses and all but two of the rest have been removed and potted up until I have it resolved.

I haven't read the other replies, but I wouldn't worry too much about color scheme. You can always move roses out as she gets older and you want a more cohesive theme. Since you have a new home, with a small child in N. FL, I would prioritize ease of care, then lack of thorns, then continual bloom. I would want a variety of colors and bloom form and some scent.

I think if you give those hedges a really tidy trim, you will be able to get away with more inside the garden area.

So, I would trim the boxwoods, rip up the grass in the garden, lay out a meandering path and plant various roses that your daughter can touch and smell as well as see. In the areas that a meandering path creates that are too small for a rose bush I would plant companion flowers. Daisies of all sorts, teddy bear sunflowers( my kids love those -very short with gigantic fuzzy flowers), columbine and lupine. I wish I could say foxglove for the shadier side by they are poisonous, but similiarly interesting flowers. Maybe calla lilies or jack in the pulpits if those aren't toxic and can grow there.

Then I would place little garden sculptures, ~ bunnies, gnomes, fairies, etc for her to discover as she walks the path.

I don't know how they would fit into the criteria for thorns, but I would want the Disneyland Rose and The Fairy included. I wouldn't be able to resist tucking a Mickey Mouse and a Bambi under the DL rose.

I would want an arbor and or gate on the openings. I think I would want the entrance to be on the side closest to the house and might consider transplanting/ planting boxwoods over the existing entrances, leaving only one (maybe two) entrances, so that the path lead to a little area with a bench towards the far side.

Congrats on your new home! It's gorgeous!

Hi Pamela,

I've been growing roses for the past 30 years in Gainesville Florida and I work with a landscape company that uses roses. We do not spray our roses in our own yards or plant roses that need to sprayed in our clients yards. We only plant "own root" roses. I volunteered for many years at Dudley Farm Historic site and there some of the rose bushes are over 100 years old and none are grafted.

There are so many varieties to choose from. You would do fine with almost any "tea", not hybrid tea, Mrs BR Cant, Rosette Delizy, Duchess De Brant, Madame Joseph Schwartz, to name a few. I think Belindas Dream is a must. Cecile Brunner and David Austin's Heritage have great scent. For reds I would use Louis Phillippe or St. Davids. Most roses from the "noisette" class also do well here. For the orange color I would suggest Westerland, Lafter or Honey Sweet. I would not grow Knockouts, just because they are not as good as the afore mentioned roses.

We space roses 4' to 6' apart depending on the variety. We use "spot spitters" (and an Amiad filter if you are on a well) for irrigation, you can find these at an irrigation supply house.

We seldom do beds with just roses but would interplant with robust perennials, perennial salvia, bush daisy, evergreen dayliles, walking iris, African iris, lantana to name a few.

What size is the flower of the rose in your garden, does it repeat bloom and does it cluster. It looks like La Marne, but I would need more info to know for sure.

Good luck and have fun

Can't possibly thank everyone enough for the responses. In regards to location, we live near Tallahassee, putting us in zone 8b. Unlike south FL, we do have a bit of a fall season and see a few frosty mornings each year, but spring still kicks in blessedly early for us.

As a bit of an update my dilemma is that while I don't like the "legginess" of knockout roses, nor do I love the more frilly/full look of many of the English roses that do well here, especially since our yard has numerous camellia trees with similarly full flowers. Knowing full well that the hybrids will cause us (honestly my husband) more work I'm still drawn to them knowing they'll take much more work and will make for turnover in plantings as time goes by.

So with the above shared, we have made two picks thus far and have the garden now about half full. One was definitely more of an impulse buy (but with at least a bit of cell phone info review before buying!) while the other was a bit more deliberate.

The impulse buy was three "Miracle on the Hudson" rose bushes from our local Costco. They simply looked stunning in the store, with with every customer walking by them stopping to admire them and verbally praise them. The rose itself has what I feel is a bit more richer red than with knockouts while still having a relatively simple flower, while the bushes are not as "leggy" as knockouts and have attractive dark foliage. Quick online reviews showed it listed as highly disease resistant. We'll see.

With the "Miracle on the Hudson" a fairly bold / vibrant choice for the garden, we wanted the next rose to help transition to lighter shades / other color options, and with the interior of our home a yellowish shade of paint (Corinthian White), we acted on Irisgal_z9's advice to pick a flower that would look good on the dining room table and choose "Double Delight" as the rose to pair with the Miracle on the Hudson rose.

We planted these roses in the half of the space closest to the picture window so will be looking for lighter color roses that are no taller to fill the other half now. We're thinking that with the Double Delight helping transition, we can now go with very soft shades of yellow, pink, or white in the front half of the rose garden area. Absolutely WELCOME any continued recommendations for what might pair well with the space we have left.

Ut2nc, I didn't likely explain my vision very well but our goal was to create a pretty view out from the picture window in our daughter's play room more so than to create an interactive garden in the limited 9' x 15' space.

That shared, the property actually has an equally empty / neglected larger english garden area laid out with brick pavers and gravel paths that is likely about 30' x 30' and far enough from the exterior of the house that we could make it a much more fun / colorful area and we'll definitely keep the fun rose recommendations in mind! :-)

Val O, the interesting thing about the mystery rose bushes are that they sit in a fairly shaded area against the east of our house UNDER the canopy edge of a fair sized crabapple tree and still survive and flower with little care from us. The flowers are on the smaller side - approximately 2" diameter, maybe even a hair smaller. The bushes are taller than wide / somewhere between 5 to 6 tall and between 2 to 3 wide. The bushes are full of the small flowers now, with small flowers dispersed from the bottom up, though I don't know if I would call them cluster patterned. I'm almost sure they repeat bloom though my husband has lightly pruned them / deadheaded them a time or two. I'll try to share a pic of an entire bush as soon as I get a chance!

One final fun update, turns out we actually made another mystery rose growing against the trunk of a live oak in one of our fields... from just a bit of online searching guessing this might be what is known as a "dog rose?" Love that it's growing wild in the field and also love its simple form.

Will look for the pics of the pink rose. If your other mystery rose only blooms once a year and climbs over everything, then I could say that it is almost certainly the Cherokee Rose. I love the marking on the trunks of young tung oil trees.

Val O, you are MOST DEFINITELY correct with the Cherokee Rose identification! Many thanks! As for the other mystery rose (smaller pinkish rose growing well in the shade) I started a thread to help ID it thinking it might get more focused visibility as a unique topic thread. The address for the new post is:

http://forums2.gardenweb.com/discussions/3822673/north-florida-rose-id-request