11th May 2018 – I have started to cut the edges in for the new borders that will form the Centenary Rose Garden. Given it is just 5 weeks till Mike and Chrissi open the gardens on 17th June, I am not sure I will have got much going on in these borders, but at least they will be presentable.
Chrissi would like to plant these new borders up with roses dating from 1914 to 1918. These include Rosa ‘Candeur Lyonnaise’, R. ‘Fraulein Oktavia Hesse, R. ‘Thisbe’ and R. rugosa ‘F J Grootendorst’. The plan is to install an archway the width of the rose garden joining the top bit to the new bottom bit with a selection of rambling and climbing roses growing over the top.
April 2018 – Companion planting goes in
To date the rose garden has been simply roses. There are arguments for and against this. It certainly packs a punch when everything is in flower, and June last year the scent and flowers were stunning. However, come July there is little of interest although there is some attractive foliage.
Mottisfont, holder of the Plant Heritage National Collection of Rosa (pre 1900 Shrub Roses) choses to underplant its rose beds, using a variety of herbaceous perennials. The beds are full and provide interest for much of the year with tall Digitalis, Allium, Campanula, Linaria and Penstemons poking up through the roses as well as clump-forming geraniums, Alchemilla mollis and Nepeta. Some argue that this distracts from the beauty of the roses, and rose gardens should be just that beds of roses.
I am undecided as to what I feel works best. This year the two long beds are fairly bare, with just a few roses in and so I have chosen to plant it up taking inspiration from Mottisfont and some of my favourite ‘Cottage Garden’ plants. A full list can be found at the end of this post. The original bed contains mostly roses, there is some Nepeta x faasennii, Lavandula and some Penstemon. I do intend to move some of the smaller roses to the new beds in the autumn/winter to give them all enough space to grow and so that they can all be seen.
List of Roses and companion planting:
Roses
- Blanc Double de Coubert
- Hansa Red Purple
- White Prfum de Provence
- Boule de Neige
- Reine des Violettes
- Mutabilis
- Louise Odier
- La Reine Victoria
- Rosa Mundi
- Konigin von Danemark
- Madame Hardy
- William Lobb
- Honorine de Brabant
- York and Lancaster
- Ferdinand Pichard
- Charles de Mills
- Rosa chinensis Viridiflora
- Cristata
- Comte de Chamboard
- Ispahan
- Souvenir du Dr Jamain
- Rose de Rescht
- Madam Pierre Oger
- Moyesii Geranium
- Gloire de France
- La Ville de Bruxelles
- Fimbriata
- Rosa de Meaux
- Officinalis
- Frau dagmar Hastrup
- Pink Leda
- Shailes White Moss
- Roger Lambelin
Companion Planting
Alchemilla mollis
Anemone x hybrida ‘Honorine Jobert’
Artemisia ludoviciana ‘Valerie Finnis’
Campanula persicifolia
Campanula persicifolia alba
Campanula sarasto
Centranthus ruber ‘Albus’
Centranthus ruber var. coccineus
Dianthus barbatus
Digitalis
Digitalis purpurea var. alba
Hardy Geraniums -various
Linaria purpurea ‘Canon Went’
Nepeta faassenii
Nepeta kubanica
Penstemons – various
Phlox
Salvia patens ‘Guanajuato’
Salvia pratensis
Verbascum phoeniceum ‘Rosetta’
Verbascum phoeniceum ‘Violetta’