Lavendar_lass, your spacious yard is incredible. I have cold here too and my roses really suffer. Its a challenge to stick to zone 4 roses but i have found it certainly saves heartbreak later. i was lucky to get Charles de Mills before Northland sold out for the year.

Have you considered St Swithun ? Northland has it. I have not thoroughly checked her inventory of yellow roses, but I can tell you my Alchymist does amazingly well with no die back . it is once blooming but so out

That is an outstanding plan. What will you be growing over the arbor? Did you have to use equipment to dig the beds. I actually came across this forum while searching for potager pics and info. I'd be interested in your book titles. I still have tons of bamboo and other stuff to clear away before I can start, so I hope you keep us updated on your progress. I can't advise on the roses, but if I come across some in my reading, I'll pass it along.

I decided to focus on renovating my rose beds this year as I know I can at least make good headway there.

Edit: just saw your ideas for the arbor. Take a look at Hardy Kiwi, as well. It's dioecious, so you'll need two, but grows easily and gets quite tall.. . My plan is for hops and loofas. I think they'd look great hanging
down from the supports and I use them alot to clean my dishes..You might also consider Aronia for the side beds; it's delicious, native and attractive. In fact espaliered fruit trees would also be great there.

A couple of weeping standards in the corners might also look romantic. I've seen weeping china doll for sale, but I don't know if it's fragrant. Just thinking out loud here. I never considered roses for mine, but you've got me rethinking the whole thing. :)

Forget standards in z4 unless you put them in a garage.

I wonder about Lunar Mist and Colette or Victorian Memory or is it Isabella Skinner?

Thank you for the comments. They've been very helpful. We haven't chosen the large roses yet....but we did get 1/2 off 4 fairy roses! Northland Rosarium has 1/2 off one rose choice every week. I'm waiting for climbers : )

I have some new pictures of the potager. We've been pretty busy and I don't always update my forum threads, so I hope you don't mind if I give you a link to my blog/website.

https://fairytalegardensdesign.com/fairytale-kitchen-garden/

Oh, and I hate ads, so no advertising unless Wordpress is doing it. I'll check back later if anyone has any other suggestions for roses. Thanks again!

Lovely plan, Lavender Lass!!!

Here is my potager (French for a kitchen garden) in progress... I have it covered because we are getting inches of rain for days on end and I don't want to have the landscapers dig in mud. Basically, it's a patio with vegetable planters on it, surrounded by roses!!

I have 3 Crown Princess Margareta against the fence that I just planted...

The largest beds are 2'x3'. The last garden I had was 3'x55' and I got tired of running around it all the time. And 3' is the maximum width for me because it's tough to get to the center of the bed without stepping into it if they are wider.

The Generous Gardener and 2'x2' tomato beds with tall trellis' times 2 are to the left of this photo. The rest of the yard is Arborvitae and grass and roses up next to the house. There will be 2 chairs and a small table on the patio when it's done. Hopefully it will be soon... I've been planning since December and constructing and rose planting for a month.

Thanks for the heads up on Alchemist, Mudpie!! I had it ordered and cancelled it because I thought it might not be cane hardy here.

Rebecca

Bellegallica recently posted this: https://nikkipolani.wordpress.com/2016/04/25/huntington-spring/  and I immediately thought of your potager. Near the end is a lovely yellow climber, unfortunately unnamed. Perhaps someone here recognizes it.

Vaporvac, that lovely yellow rose reminded me of Flutterbye. Diane

Actually you can have weeping standards, ..... It needs to be a very hardy rose (one of the morden roses for ex. grafted on a rugosa).....Granted it needs to be in a protected area.....

You need also a windbreaker, ideally a fence, evergreens, or a hedge of rugosas.

For climbers, these are cane hardy in zone 4:

Félix Leclerc (Canadian artist series) - 10-15' in maturity - Flowers for a long period with maturity

John Davis Short thornless climber/ or Quadra (both explorers) a thorny monster. (scattered repeat with maturity for both)

Above and Beyond or the monster, thorny once blooming rambler Polestar.

Good luck.

I would recommend Morden Sunrise for the standard. What a wonderful rose that one is--big (here), great rebloom, and hardy. It reminds some of Flutterbye. Diane

Morden Sunrise

Thank you for the rose suggestions! Morden Sunrise....how tall does that get for you Nanadoll?

We're still digging away in the kitchen garden/potager. We just have two more perimeter beds left! Hopefully we'll finish those this weekend.

Our garden club is going out to Northland Rosarium next month, so I'll probably find some roses, then. They have the Morden roses....so I'll check on those, too.

Also....my blog/website was posted on this page. Very exciting! Our little plan will hopefully inspire people to be creative with their vegetable gardens : )

http://paper.li/MarkJohnsonFAIA/1290963065?edition_id=e882c470-0cca-11e6-8210-0cc47a0d164b

In my zone 7 garden, Morden Sunrise grows to about 7 feet tall---even as it's shaded by a tree. Diane

I'm sure you've seen this post, but it has a lot of other great possibilities. You have a fabulous space there and I look forward to seeing its progress. So inspiring with its classical outlines.

http://forums.gardenweb.com/discussions/1667179/why-i-grow-ramblers?n=35

If you're interested in ramblers, I suggest you check this thread....

I don't know if any ramblers will work well for us. There's more wind in the kitchen garden, so zone 4 is probably the best we could do. The Alchemist is very pretty, so that may be a possibility.

And the Morden Sunrise looks beautiful, although it might be shorter in our area. Any fragrance? Even if it doesn't get tall enough for the arches, I think we'll have to add a few in the perimeter beds : )

Baltimore Belle is definitely worth a try. I found Alchymist to be surprisingly non-hardy. Around here, it seems to be more of a zone 6 rose.

Any of the setigera based ramblers are probably worth trying, just at this point Baltimore Belle seems to be the easiest to get.

If the area is windy, and you don't have a windbreaker (fence etc), your choice is limited to the ones I mentioned before or Lillian Gibson. It blooms once and the jury is still out on her fragrance. There are many threads on garden-web touting her merits.

They might have it at Corn Hill in Canada. You have to contact them. The shipping is expensive, though. (50$).

There is also, White Mountains but I've found no source for that. Apparently it roots easily. You follow my drift....

Apart from Baltimore Belle, that MG mentioned, none of the others are very fragrant. You need to supplement that with other types of roses. Such as a hedge of rugosas etc.....

I have Morden blush, it has a faint scent. I believe it's the same for Morden sunrise....

Wondering how you did at Northland Rosarium -I wish that I could get there to see what the roses look like before purchasing.

Researching more of the roses they sell, there are a few David Austin zone 4, you can browse their website for a peek.

These are some other rose possibilities:

I've grown none of them, so I can't say much.

William Booth
William Baffin (or it's light pink sport, Lucy Irene/Blushing Baffin)
Alexander MacKenzie
Captain Samuel Holland
John Cabot
Champagne arches (found rose) once blooming by High Country roses

Isabella Skinner/Victorian Memory

Gallica- That's good to know! The main reason I was thinking about Alchemist is that it's supposed to be so hardy.

True blue- I have four John Cabot roses, but they haven't gotten as tall as reported online. No 7' but a nice 4'-5', maybe they'd get taller if I tied them to the arches?

Mudpie- We're going on the 26th of this month....and I'll let you know about the David Austin roses : )

It's a question of maturity. How old are your John Cabots?

Our neighbor had an 8' tall one. But it was at least 12-5 years old.....

Check AnneCecilia's post on this thread about plant sizes :-)

My Morden Sunrise is the first to pop a bloom in my garden, just today! And it's ready to go with many more. I'll try to post a photo or two tonight. I will check again on scent, but I don't believe there is much. Diane

I found another climber. Ames climber, white, once blooming, thorn- less and I think scentless. Though good luck finding a source for it. Here is a photo at the BrooksHorticultural Center Rose Garden, zone 3b Alberta, Canada.

Thank you, True Blue, for remembering my list of tall zone 4 roses in that old thread, but I just want to caution that the original poster of that thread was asking for tall free standing shrubs. Some of the roses I mentioned would take quite a bit of effort to "train" in a mannerly fashion to an arched trellis - especially a place where people will be walking through and not want to get snagged. ;-)

Looking forward to seeing the finished potager, Lavender Lass - I really like your plan.

Today is the day! Thank you for all the wonderful recommendations : )

We're going out to Northland Rosarium and pick up our fairy roses (we ordered a few months ago) and to find our kitchen garden roses. So excited! The garden has just started blooming (they said, when I called to check) and it's a wonderful day to go out.

In case my pictures don't turn out, here's one I found online....

Are you getting Marianne ? Of all the Northland that would be at the top of my list . It might do well in a protected area to winter.

If you have a chance read the comments about Marianne on HMF, there is an amusing story that talks about it as a rose of universaal appeal.

Ooooo, your Colette is so Opulent Diane ! It must be wonderful to go out in the yard and bask in the beauty.

I was really hoping to hear how the Rosarium shopping trip went , but I bet there is a lot of digging and potting going on tonight until dark.
Next year I hope Northland will carry Colette. I missed a couple roses
that I really wanted. Variegatta di Bologna sold out while I was trying to plan a trip there. I should have pre-ordered.
Well, day is almost done, I'm happy with my roses that I have. I can't imagine having more rose work to do than this, but I really like to hear about everyone elses.

Thanks so much mudpie. I love your pansies--beautiful color, as well as your rose. What is the rose? Diane

It's the Alchymist rose, next week I hope it will start to puff up and turn pink before the petals fall.

Such beautiful pictures! Thank you all for the comments...so many possibilities.

We had a wonderful time at Northland Rosarium. So many roses! I ended up bringing home 2 fairy roses, 2 belle de crecy and 2 belle virginie. Mom brought home a lovely La Reine.

We'll go back later this month for our 'corner roses' in the potager. A good excuse to see more beautiful roses!

Here are some of the pictures we took. So pretty...