Lettuce/salad mixes sowed thickly to get a nice vibrant green border in quite short time. The seed packets also go a long way towards an entire bed. Quick and easy.

Blue lobelia , chamomile and Pansies were the best , they stayed short whereas all the other flowers grew tall and blocked sunlight .

My neighbors edged their gardens with alyssum but it draws too many bees for my taste.

This year the mature Sweet William grew large deep red velvety clusters, the photo ( bottom right corner ) is from when it was just beginning to fill out. Hummingbird waves " Hi ".

My favorite had to be the Fama White pincushion, they got tall and drew lots of bees-- not the best choice for near the door.

Valerian (all three colors). Of course, the joke is that I am "making a virtue out of necessity" - Valerian has naturalized all over the SF Bay Area, and I could not keep it out of my garden if I tried (I did try once).

Jackie

Also, butterflies like it!

Sidonie with Bachelor's Buttons to the right and front, and Rocky Mountain Penstemon is the tallest in front.

Reine Victoria looks atrocious here but her nepeta companion is in top form.

Sunny Mississippi, I love the salvia and coral rose mix, they work so well! I'm glad you opened this thread, I think it's the mix of textures and colors around them that makes roses really stand out. (Not that they're not beautiful on their own :))

I found that campanula carpatica (blue) grows easy here and works well with any other plant. Below it keeps company to young Bolero. Also further down a pic of my 'in progress' garden with Ballerina rose, a blue salvia, 'Purple Palace' heuchera, and bright green lady's mantle. I like how the blue-green leaves of irises pairs well with roses, also, though they tend to take over the territory.

While I don't have a pic of them in the garden, I am posting my shopping cart photo of this peach color rose (it was mislabeled so I'm not sure what it is) and coral/red delphinium which I couldn't resist buying since they looked like they had to be in my garden, together. (Last photo) So maybe tone on tone is a good mix too :)

Thanks for the topic - my main bed is empty except for the roses. The lettuce idea really appeals to me.

Intwilight, lettuce is great in cooler months, especially the speckled kind can be really lovely to look at, but once they start to bolt in the warm weather it looks... Less nice 😬 But basil is also an edible that happens to look good while in flower and is nice for pollinators, and comes in a few different colors. Plus it smells nice. It thrives in the hot months that lettuce hates, so just another idea.

Sunny, your recommendation for Mystic Spires Salvia was just the confirmation I needed. I had several plants in my shopping cart with Annie’s Annuals and was pretty sure I wanted them… but not quite sure. Then I saw your post and I knew!

Any of you try any of the ornamental oregano plants as rose companions? I have some Amethyst Falls on order for the front of my beds to drape down over my rock walls. I also have my eye on Drops of Jupiter, the one with the chartreuse leaves. I am very fond of chartreuse plants and want to try these sometime. I would love to hear if any of you have tried Drops of Jupiter and what your impression has been. I like lots of blues and purples as rose companions mostly, but a few chartreuse plants tucked in really light things up. Funny, I don’t care for a lot of yellow flowers, but that lime green/yellow foliage really makes me smile.

It turns out if you get plants that are all your favorite colors (pink, purple, white) you end up with lots of happy accidents! This is rose 'Innocencia Vigorosa,' pink muhly grass, and the buds of chrysanthemum 'Emperor of China.' So pretty!

@judijunebugarizonazn8 I've seen the ornamental oreganos in catalogs and they look so cool! I've been trying to focus on adding native plants around my roses though... you've tempted me to indulge though!

Basil definitely. I always grow basil, and think I should plant parsley next year. Considering if a couple dots chamomile would also be nice in the rose beds.

The "lettuce" packet I have is claytonia. Supposedly if I plant in spring, it will seed itself and come up in fall as well.

We moved here in July 2021 and I'm only just now feeling like I have the original flowerbeds sorted out.

Intwilight, just a word of caution, if your garden is anything like mine then "a couple dots of chamomile" is going to turn into a LOT of chamomile. It reseeds very freely and quickly after flowering. Maybe you're okay with that though! I have parsley growing every year amongst the other flowers because swallowtail butterflies lay their eggs on it (and we eat it), I leave it to flower in the second year and hoverflies absolutely love it, and it smells like warm corn tortillas when in flower. I don't find it particularly beautiful but I grow it for all the other reasons above.

Okay, ONE dot of chamomile in the south corner! Chamomile explosion be okay though. The tea roses get tall fast.

Margaret daisy. I plant it in pots and place the pots on low stands in between roses.

I have no favorites since I literally began my rose garden four days ago, and as of now not a single rose has been planted. I did buy three pots of pale pink dianthus to plant in front of the roses when they arrive here on 10/30, and later, if all goes well and my plants don't get eaten by the ground squirrels, I plant to intersperse the roses with some blue and purple companion plants, the type not yet determined, although everything I see on this post looks gorgeous. I'd also like to have reblooming irises as I did in my previous rose garden. Limonium perezii (sea lavender) was also a favorite near the roses.

I have been enjoying Brindabella Purple Prince with the salvia ’Wendy’s Wish’

also Big Blue Salvia that I grew from seed

I planted roses and dahlias and zinnias in my former veg bed thinking the annuals would fill in til the roses put on size. Instead, everything hot huge and it was a glorious jumbled mess.

I left out the big blue salvia. here it is with Tequila Supreme