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gardenerzone4

What's a bed, and what's a border?

gardenerzone4
13 years ago

I've been re-reading David Austin's books and he makes a distinction between roses for bedding versus roses for borders on which I'd like to seek clarification. Austin seems to suggest that rose for borders are more "shrubby"--I'm taking that to mean that they're usually larger, more rounded, and well branched--in essence, antique roses. Austin also suggests that since beds are more formal, roses for beds are more "bushy", upright, and hard pruned--like hybrid teas or floribundas--and greater continuity of bloom is required.

Is this the right interpretation of border v. bedding and shrubby v. bushy? How do you apply this in a landscape setting? When are borders used and when are beds used?

Let's say for sake of argument that I have an area in which I could plant either 40 hybrid teas (4 cultivars in groupings of 10) or 21 English roses (3 cultivars in groupings of 7). Would the HT "bed" be more formal and uniform in height than the English "border"? Would one be more suitable for a cottage garden entrance and the other more suited to ...? Help me think through how the two would look and behave differently in a landscape setting and when you'd use one v. the other.

Thanks,

gardenerzone4

Comments (9)

  • mariannese
    13 years ago

    I am not a native English speaker but I have always taken borders to mean plantings with a backing, a hedge or a wall and quite long compared to beds. Beds to me can be any shape, for instance island beds. I have both, and my borders generally have tall shrubs at the back (roses, other shrubs and small ornamental trees) but I do have shorter roses like HTs and floribundas mixed in, at the front. These short roses fill the same function as the perennials, their "rosyness" is not as important as their contribution to the general colour scheme.

    I have one typical bed, a round boxedged bed with a mass planting of "bedding roses", 12 Icebergs, 12 Mevrouw Nathalie Nypels, 12 Jan Spek and Elina and 12 Amber Queen and Bernstein-Rose. They are uniform in height (or meant to be) and the soil is bare before the roses leaf out. Roses in my borders are mixed with perennials. The borders are along the perimeter of the garden, the formal bed is close to the house.

    I also have a hybrid, my largest island bed is surrounded by lawn but it is backed by an inner yew hedge with tall roses in front of it and mixed with tall perennials.

    For a cottage garden look you should be as informal as possible.

  • michaelg
    13 years ago

    Mariannese has it right--in traditional British garden language, a bed would be characterized by uniform height and texture, and the layout of colors might be patterned. In common American speech, any dense planting of shrubs and flowers might be called a "bed."

  • anntn6b
    13 years ago

    Your collection of Hybrid Teas, grown together, almost a century ago used to be relegated to the back part of a garden where they were in a "Cuttting Bed" to provide flowers for the home.
    Many Hybrid Teas have a growth habit that by fall yields tall bushes with blooms only at the top, at the ends of long stems.

    Contrast that with the classic British deep herbaceous border. A rich British friend of mine helped me pick out roses for my first rose garden. He was horified at the lack of scent in the roses available (at Teas Nursery in Houston). He then started talking about deep herbaceous borders and how his home was on a smallish lot and the back yard would only have a four foot deep DHB, and his one dream would be to have a back lawn surrounded by eight foot deep deep herbaceous borders. (He also bemoaned that a mutual friend had put a swimming pool in back of his place in Houston when he could have put in truly DHBs. )

  • Campanula UK Z8
    13 years ago

    yes, bedding roses are a hang-over from the practice of 'bedding out' - usually half-hardy perennials (grown as annuals) where the emphasis is on a summerlong season of colour. Petunias are a classic bedding out plant - infertile, no seed so no deadheading. A border is a description of a place: borders can be mixed, shrub, specific families (monocot borders)or themes - colour, climate specific, native.
    Beds, for me, lack permanence - hence I have vegetable beds but 'hot borders'.

  • littlesmokie
    13 years ago

    gardnerzone4--I think your understanding of bed vs border roses is pretty right on--this is such an interesting thread to me and I love the responses you're getting.

    To answer your query about a group of 40 HT's vs a bed of 21 Austins and formality/which one was more suited to a cottage garden, to me the Austins would be more suited to cottage garden.

    I think of HT's growing in a bed as much more formal, particularly if it is also edged with box wood or lavender. To me a bed like that would be more like what Ann described above, not so much for landscape purposes, but as a way to provide structure for harvesting cut flowers. (I also liked marianesse' description about her HT's growing in a bed with bare dirt, where her borders are mixed with roses & perennials. Yet, she also rightly pointed out that it is certainly possible to have different shape to a bed or roses mixed with other plants within a bed and thus more informal.)

    It seems you're after a casual cottage style garden, if so you probably want a mixture of plants: bulbs, perennials (my favorite is perennial cranesbill geranium Rozanne) shrubs, small trees, etc. While there are some HT's that can certainly work in a cottage landscape, I feel generally floribundas and shrubs (like Austins) better lend themselves to an informal cottage style bed or border. You might want your bolt upright accents from plants like iris, allium, or brazillian verbena, but not from hybrid tea roses ;)

  • Mountie
    9 years ago

    gardenerzone4,

    I'm glad that you have posed this question, because I have long wondered the same thing. I believe that we sometimes use these garden terms (bedding, borders, hedges, bushes, shrubs, etc) interchangeably. The definitions seem unclear. I don't know what they mean, exactly, but I will tell you, below, what they mean to me.

    A "border" must border something, as the east coast borders the U.S. It is the edge or the perimeter of something. (More on this below).

    A rose "bed" means a group of roses, or a mixed group of roses with annuals or perennials, in any shape that we wish, enclosed by edgers (such as landscaping timbers, bricks, stones, etc). When I think of bedding roses, I think of low-growing varieties such as David Austin's The Countryman or Sister Elizabeth, especially if it is to be a raised bed. I might choose to plant several Bishop's Castle roses and watch them elegantly dangle over the edge of a raised bed.

    Roses used as "shrubs", on the other hand, do not mingle with other plants and are not enclosed by edgers. They are free-standing. For example, I might plant 3 Queen of Denmark roses in a triangular pattern and allow them to grow together to form what appears to be one large, rounded shrub. For my own garden, I would choose a once-flowering variety as a shrub. That is just a personal preference.

    A rose "hedge", in my mind, does not mingle with other plants and would not be enclosed by edgers. Hedges are roses of the same variety, or similar varieties, closely-spaced to create a border or a boundary. I would like to have a hedge along the property line, as a boundary between my yard and my neighbor's yard. If I needed 9 roses, I could choose 9 Harlow Carr, or 3 each of Harlow Carr, Lady Salisbury and Mary Rose, and keep them trimmed to a height of 4 feet. I would select repeat-flowering varieties for my hedge. That is just a personal preference.

    So now I ask myself "How is a hedge different from a border?" Perhaps the hedge would be more of a limited mass, where the border would run along the entire perimeter of an area to enclose it. I'm not sure. This is unclear to me.

    So my answer to you is "I don't know" and "I am still trying to figure it out". If you get it all sorted out, please share the answers with me! I hope your garden planning and your visions of next year's roses will pull you through the upcoming winter, until we see those beautiful buds again next spring! : )

  • buford
    9 years ago

    I always thought that a boarder was the outer edge of a bed, where the bed meets the lawn or a path. The bed would be a larger area where you were planing something other than lawn.

  • vasue VA
    9 years ago

    Pulled out Shrub Roses and Climbing Roses ('93) to check on Austin's definitions from the included Glossary.

    BUSH. I use this word to describe closely pruned bedding roses, as for example a Hybrid Tea.
    BUSHY SHRUB. A rose of dense, rounded growth.
    SHRUB. A rose that is normally pruned lightly and allowed to grow in a more natural form, as opposed to a bush which is pruned close to the ground.
    SPREADING SHRUB. A shrub on which the branches tend to extend outwards rather than vertically.
    UPRIGHT SHRUB. A rose in which the growth tends to be vertical.
    ARCHING SHRUB. A shrub in which the long main branches bend down towards the soil, usually in a graceful manner.

  • seil zone 6b MI
    9 years ago

    In my head a border is usually a narrower strip backed by something else. It "borders" a fence or wall of a house or even a walk/drive way. But it's not too wide and is usually longer in length than depth. Usually the taller plants are to the rear of the viewing angle with shorter ones in front. If it's free standing along a walk or drive way where it can be viewed from both sides you can put taller in the center with shorter on either side.

    A bed can be anything else, square, round, free form, big or small, whatever shape or size you need or want. It can be free standing in the middle of a lawn or against a house, building or wall but it's deeper than a border. It can be uniform in height or it can also have taller focal points in the center or a key area surrounded or filled in with shorter plants. Whatever allows the plants to be seen unobstructed and at their best from the viewing point, i.e. good curb appeal!

    I think either one can be formal or not depending on what you put in them and how you arrange it. I don't particularly like a too formal look to my garden so mine are pretty much a riot of different colors, textures and shapes. I tend to over fill them (because there;s always something else I want, lol) so they look a bit big and blowsy. That's the look I like though. Nothing too neat or rigid for me. I like a more relaxed and natural looking arrangement of plants. Only humans plant in neat little rows. Mother Nature never does!

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