I'm so glad you were able to make your decisions to suit your new more compact garden! It's a big change from 9a to 5a but you know your tastes, and you can now grow more types of once-bloomers than might survive 9a. We'll look forward to seeing how things turn out!

Cynthia

Rosefolly I cant wait to see your new garden. It truly sounds like it will be a glorious place

hi rosefolly - if you're looking for once blooming cold hardy whites, madame plantier did very well over the winter for me and it was put in the ground around early october. very little time to acclimate, early to leaf out.

Thank you, Josg. At this point I have as many roses as I can stuff into the space without overcrowding it. I have little stakes peppered all over the bed showing where plants are (many are small so easy to miss) or where they will go when they arrive. However I do expect I will lose 2 or 3 over the winter. It is good to have a candidate for a replacement rose. Madame Plantier is one I considered so it is good to hear your recommendation.

also, forgot to mention, it is not once blooming but i have been very happy with winchester cathedral - small and tidy but clean, nice looking the year round, hardy, and generous with its blooms.

This was so interesting to read, can’t wait to hear how things progress for you!

Very interesting; thanks for sharing your gardening experience and plans! I'm glad you're enjoying your new garden and new life.

I haven't gardened in the U.S. for over twenty years, but what you say about the loss in late years of availability of cold hardy once blooming roses sounds convincing. The problem may be less severe in Europe because this continent is so much further north than most of the U.S., and growing conditions here suit these kinds of roses better. It encourages nurseries to continue stocking these roses when gardeners like you buy them.

I should mention that the nursery with largest selection of the once blooming OGRs that I found was Rogue Valley Roses, though not unexpectedly, not all were available currently. And the largest selection of cold tolerant roses I found was at High Country Roses. There may be other sources I am not aware of, but these had the widest selection that I found.

Your description of your new back yard reminds me of a garden grown by a friend in England, near Chester. He was so happy to have a larger home, but "the back yard isn't big enough to have a deep herbaceous bed, so I shall make do." Your making do will even have enough grass to roll a snow man, when nature provides.

Another possible source for cold hardy roses is Corn Hill Nursery in New Brunswick Canada. The have been shipping to the US which they didn't used to do. Glancing at their catalog, they have Carmenetta. I had this rose from Frank Skinner's nursery in Canada which is a lot colder than where you are now. It has a lovely shape without work, but the real delight is the fall color of the foliage which progresses from the oldest changing first and gradually to the youngest leaves. Reds and oranges and deep yellow. Colors that aren't common in Colorado in fall. It was hybridized at the cold hardy program at Morden Manitoba.

Have any local rosarians there suggested using wilt proof or other sprays to keep canes from drying out in winter?

Ann

It sounds like a paradise. I hope you will share some pictures next spring.

White garden sounds great idea. Hope you will post pictures next spring

It sounds so lovely! I look forward to hitting your stride of a smaller garden. I'm definitely pushing my limits with trying more than I can care for. I'm also realizing I'm missing the joy of letting my roses have personal meaning by slowly collecting them for special occasions vs bulk buying everything at once. 🤔

You must show pictures of your new space! My imagination is failing me, and I want to see! 😁

An adventure!

Julie, I can so relate. I'm trying to size-down and make my project more manageable, but I'm not sure how/if it's gouig to work.

Love, love LOVE that bench! as someone who works in a library AND gardens, I think that is perfect! Please do post pictures next year. Always good to see what others are doing!

:)

Dee

Love that bench too! I hear what you are saying. I am having issues with maintaining 3 rose gardens at 3 different properties. I thought you were moving to PA years ago for some reason. Can’t wait to see your new garden photos.

Just a comment - for the past few days I have not been able to get in using a password. Houzz cannot recognize it for some reason, so I pick a new one. Then the next time Houzz cannot recognize the new one either, so I have to get yet another new one. Repeat. I can get in if they send me a new link. Frustrating! I will admit to being a terrible typist, but I don't get it wrong every time.

Summersrhythm, I am originally from Pennsylvania, and I am occasionally nostalgic about it, so perhaps that is where the confusion came.

Diggerdee, like you I am also a librarian, by training at least, though most of my career I had a library-related job outside of a library. My husband and I both love to read. We recently had a couple of large built-in bookshelves added to our new-to-us (old) house. We like almost everything about this house, but adding bookselves put our personal stamp on the place. Redoing the garden is having the same effect for the outside.

StillAnnTN6b, just the other day I ran across Corn Hill Nursery but assumed that I could not order from them. I am done for now, but it is good to know that I can order from them in the future if I need to. Thanks for letting me know.

• Rosefolly, I don't understand why you can't keep yourself signed inh at the end? I am never signed out.

I don't sign out either. But when for one reason or another I turn my computer off, everything is signed out. Also, sometimes when my computer gets sludgy I delete history. That signs me off all my sites as well. Clears up the sludginess though.

It must be a setting. That is how I helped With my writing by changing settings. Let's see if we can put our heads together because I don't think you are the only 1 with this problem. Not that we wouldn't help if it were just you! LOL!

For sure when you clear history/cookies, it will lose all of your automatic sign-ins. But just shutting it off or restarting shouldn't lose them.

It depends what you select when it asks you whether or not you want to go back to where you were when you come back on. If something is wrong, the answer might be No.

Back to the garden -

3 of the 4 roses I ordered have arrived and are now in the ground, April Moon, Gentle Persuasion, and Paloma Blanca. All three are Buck roses. I am still awaiting the arrival of Snowdrift from Nature Hills Nursery. I got all excited about High Country Roses redoing their website, thinking that perhaps the 3 roses on my wish list would now be available to order, but alas, this was not the case. Probably it is just as well, as it is getting late in the season and I understand frost can happen here at any time now. It is hard for a newcomer to believe, considering how warm the weather has been here in northern Colorado.

My bulb order from Old House Gardens has arrived. I will be planting tulips, regal lilies, and hyacinths this weekend (along with the white liatris I ordered elsewhere). Next week I will plant the white Spanish bluebells (aka squill) and white daffodils (Thalia) in the front woodland border. Once those are in the ground, along with Snowdrift, I will be done planting until 2025.

Does everyone know about Old House Gardens? They are THE specialists in heirloom bulbs. If anyone here is as in love with other heirloom plants as they are with heirloom roses, they will find OHG to be a wonderful source. The catalog is packed full of historic bulbs, many of which are becoming rare as gardeners follow the lastest trends. Sound familiar, rose friends?

Hi Rosefolly,

I am very interested to see how your garden grows! Looking forward to your spring report. We have successfully put in rose bands through Aug. but have never tried to plant anything later than that.

High Country Roses usually announces the opening date for their spring inventory through their newsletter. I think I saw that it was going to be Jan. 10th again this year but I can't find it again so maybe I'm thinking of last year.

Is this your first winter in Colorado? I see you are from Pennsylvania so you will probably like it alot if you are. Very sunny and lots of relief days with warmer weather in Jan. I feel like the really cold arctic freezes are usually in Nov./Dec. But the spring is very late in coming vs. the midwest. Lots of March/April snow storms that crush everything.

My rose garden is starting to get it's fall blooms. We neglected it quite a bit through the summer so haven't dead headed like we should. At this point were probably going to just let them be and enjoy what blooms come. At this time of year we usually stop deadheading anyways.

I'm very interested to see how your selections do. I don't have any overlap with your chosen roses but a few of them are on my wish list.

A couple of pictures:

The Fairy this morning. We've neglected this bush for 20 yrs and it still does well. :-)

A new band from this year, Smoothie. We recently removed it's cage so the sign is crooked. I'm tempted to leave it there since the bush will be bigger next year. We have been really impressed with this rose's continuous blooming. If it winters well I may get a few more.

I'm excited to see how your garden progresses! And that bench is simply adorable. :) :)

Rosefolly - I can't wait to see your photos of the garden next Spring! Question - how long is the "growing season" where you live now? It has occurred to me that many cold hardy once bloomers may bloom long enough to take up most of the growing season in areas with cold climates. Just wondering..

Jackie

Jackie, certainly shorter than California, but not all that short. The last average frost date is May 7th and the first is September 23rd. However - just like California - weather can be variable here. We are having a warm fall and have not yet had a frost. It is finally starting to get cooler so that should change soon.

One rose that I ordered two months ago has not yet been shipped due to the heat wave the entire country has been experiencing. I assume it will arrive any day now. I should call them again to check on it. Now I am not sure it will be safe to plant it. I used assume that plants were safer in the ground than in pots, but I don't know if that will be true with such a late-planted rose. Perhaps I should cancel it altogether.

Thanks for the input on additional rose nurseries in the US Rosefolly. I like Corn Hill and they have some Canadian roses not available elsewhere here. Glad to hear they ship to the US!

I checked out Nature Hills Nursery and other than the Snowdrift you bought, the prices are sky high compared to other nurseries! They have the usual suspects of HTs and floris like Memorial Day or Ingrid Bergman, plus a lot of Drift and Easy Elegance roses. There were one or two like EE Funny Face I haven't seen elsewhere, but my word the prices! $129 for an ICEBERG rose? $79 for Drift roses?? And those are the sale prices...

If you buy enough bulbs to plant 100s, I buy them wholesale. By far, if you want volume of bulbs, the best companies in the US are Colorblends and Netherland Bulb Company. Both will ship on time and what you ordered for a reasonable price. You have to buy most bulbs by the 100s (some bags of 25 or 50) and they have a minimum shipment that I don't have trouble meeting. If you buy by the 100s, each tulip bulb is about 32 cents and daffodils are about 50 cents each. Other wholesale bulb companies are resellers from other producers, but both of these companies grow their own tulips etc. to sell.They don't have most of the exquisitely lovely heirloom bulbs in the companies you listed, but they have some of them and they make an effort to distinguish bulbs with perennial tendencies (like Darwin tulips) from those with less long lasting tendencies.

Just feeding additional addictions for everyone beyond roses. You can't have enough plants, eh?

Cynthia

Just for the fun of it, here is a picture of my garden as it is today. Well, mostly it is a picture of our garage, but you can get a glimpse of the planted area. It is larger than it looks - an 8 foot border around the grassy area, about 100 feet long. Any large plant you see was there before the garden became mine. Rocks are a big deal in Front Range gardens. I inherited them, but I quite like them. You can see the book bench in place. Of particular interest to me right now are the 4 cubic yards of bagged bark mulch. I investigated getting a delivery of bulk mulch but to my surprise there was not much price difference. Spreading it will be my task in the coming week. The little stakes mark where I planted things so that we could see where the irrigation was to go. Next spring I will pull them up and replace them with PawPaw Everlast plant tags. I do love a garden with the plants named. It is a learning tool for me, and also saves me from embarrassment when someone asks me what a plant is and my mind goes completely blank!

Looks wonderful Rosefolly! You've already got a great palette to work from and a good space to indulge your rose acquisitions. In addition to the bark mulch, now that you're in deciduous tree country, you might consider saving leaves this fall to spread in the garden to enrich the soil. I collect them all fall and spread them around the roses in the spring, underneath other forms of mulch like the bark you mention. Leaves are great soil conditioner, easily broken down by the worms, and entirely free. You can reduce how much bark mulch you need in subsequent years with leaves. It's fine to add the leaves onto the existing mulch and then add a little bark mulch to hold it down.

Just a thought, but I'm a lazy gardener at heart and prefer spending as much money on roses and saving on mulch when possible.

Cynthia

Cynthia, I've thought of that in my own lazy way, but it is very windy here. Leaves whip around like crazy. I'm not sure that leaves would stay where I put them. However, a fair number of leaves are being buried under the bark mulch I am spreading now. I do like leaves as a component of mulch.

My front garden (next year's project) will be a woodland planting under the existing street trees. In a sunny area along the side yard I plan a small area of native shrubs and a few native perennials. That is my bow to being environmentally correct. There is plenty of mulch there but it is hardwood gorilla hair. I hate gorilla hair but I will leave it for now. The hardwood stuff does not seem to be quite as nasty as the redwood stuff we had in California. It will have to come up temporarily so that I can remove the nasty landscape cloth someone put down under it a few years ago. I'm hoping that by next year I will know where to source some good arborist mulch. It is good for the soil and also it tends to be cheap. I usually could get it free where I used to live but I don't know if that is true here.

I am so glad to hear your enthusiasm, Paula. Your garden will be wonderful and I'm sure satisfying. I haven't been able to let parts of my garden go as yet, though I've been enjoying the areas close to the house more and more. I have plans for the future to plant drought tolerant, easy care plants farther out, keeping the pathways.

Landscape cloth will be at home in hell.

When you wrote " an 8 foot border around the grassy area, about 100 feet long. " I laughed in delight at the eight foot depth of the border. A British co-owner of the company I worked for had bought a new home near Chester. I was taking him through some gardens in Houston and his posh British accent was gushing about the size of the Azaleas (and the Junior League who were sponsoring those gardens were eating his accent up) but back to herbaceous beds and their beauty: He was sad that his new home didn't have enough space to have deep herbaceous beds (deeper than six feet). Eight foot deep beds with a fence at the back are going to be a magnificent thing and may inspire your neighbors, as well.

Thank you, Ann! I'm sorry to say that the neighbors will not see the 8 foot flower be because it is screened from the street by a tall wood fence..

I've wondered if painting a fence bright white would increase the "daylight" getting to the plants in front of it. I never got to try that in Houston and wish I had.

I have no idea. A white fence probably would reflect light. My own fence is stained a light brown and I plan to keep it that way. Paint is a lot more maintenance than stain.

I laughed at your comment about landscape cloth. I loathe the stuff.