Should I start the entrance to the garden with the arbor and end with the swing? What are your thoughts, pictures would be most welcomed!

How big is your space?

Sherry

Jeri

The third picture, taken in the springtime before roses bloom, is of the arbor that leads to the vegetable garden. Tends to draw the eye, and the visitor, from the lawn to the entrance to another garden.

Catrose, my property is a half acre, but my purse strings is not that extensive to fill the entire property with roses. :-(

I was thinking on working the grounds directly adjacent to the kitchen window and deck. This is where I go most often when the weather cooperates. I would like garden rooms all eventually connecting with one another. Hope this is possible.

How well drained is your soil? You could dig some holes and fill them with water, and see how quickly it drains. In my clay soil, drainage is an issue, and I worked on grading and drains before planting. I dug in about four inches of compost, and mulched with wood chips. I'm a big believer in mulch as a way to attract beneficial organisms and eventually improve the soil. Where I've mulched heavily for the past five years, the soil is actually friable.

Definitely, you can connect your garden rooms. Starting with an overall plan, even if sketchy, is a good idea, and planting in the areas you'll use most is a great approach. Pay attention to where the sun is (it's going to change throughout the year, so try to figure that out, too). I measured my yard and put it on graph paper, and ran copies of it to sketch upon.

If you can propagate, you can fill all of the half acre with roses eventually, no matter how limited your purse. However, I like some variety - my much smaller lot has an Asian corner,

some raised beds for veggies, a little patch of lawn (for my husband), a shade garden with many ferns, and perennials. I crammed too much in, but couldn't resist.

I'm really big on vertical elements - archways, arbors, trees, narrow shrubs, roses on fences, tripods, whatever. It's so much nicer to be surrounded by plants.

I really wouldn't plant in August in Sacramento, not just because of how hard it would be on me, but the plants are pretty well dormant in our heat. I'd definitely wait a month, at least.
Anita

Oh, and you know we would ask about the climbers, I too want to know about the ones in the last photo, as well as that big pink one in the first.

Eric

I did a drainage test yesterday by digging a foot deep, filled in the whole, came back 30 minutes later, still there, came back 30 more minutes, and water was gone. So is this good drainage? The soil is heavy clay with caliche beneath. My plot is slightly sloped so this may have helped with the drainage. I then tilled the area about six inches deep. I could have gone deeper but I remember reading somewhere that I'm not supposed to till too long to pulverize the dirt. Since I'm creating raised beds, would tilling six inches be sufficient?

To all fellow pot ghetto landlords, I've completely gone overboard! I went to a nearby nursery yesterday and purchased more roses!!!! 25 more, in addition to the 12 I'd purchased the other day. The nurseries were having a 1/2 off sale so I couldn't resist. Also, I've never been a patient person to wait until next spring to enjoy some blooms. Now I'm more determined to get a design for the beds and get the babies in quickly!

Thank you all for sending pics and advices. I've been reading the older threads throughout this forum and have gained a lot of knowledge. Though I don't know ya'll personally, I feel like I do from the posts that ya'll wrote. I've been able to interpret your sense of humor through the posts, and it warms my heart to know that there are others out there just like me! I aspire to be like ya'll someday :-)

I thoroughly enjoyed your link though, thanks for your generosity!

Pattie

The climber to the left in the first picture is Phyllis Bide. On the other side is Narrow Water. Phyllis takes some whacking to keep in shape on the arbor, but I do like the rose. It's next to its parent, Perle d'Or, which pleases me. Narrow Water is much more mannerly, and really lovely, floriferous and fragrant. Also in that photo are coral bells (an especially big cultivar but I don't know the name), geranium maxima (that's the blue flower underneath White Pearl in Red Dragon's mouth), lots of California poppies, and a foxglove. To the left, under Archduke Charles, is geranium sanguineum and lamb's ears. The poppies will grow in Ohio, I know, because my mother had them thanks to me sending her seeds now and then. We sowed them in the spring, but sometimes they self-seeded too. In California, they pop up in the fall and I pull out the ones that I don't want, and then pull out the plants altogether in early summer. My garden is full of volunteer forget-me-nots in the spring, too, but they don't really show up in the photo.

In the bottom photo, that's Zephirine Drouhin on one side and Crepuscule, which looks rather white in the photo, on the other. My good friend Vivian says that yellow and pink stink as a color combination, but I like it fine, especially since the colors echo Mutabilis which grows into the purple-leaved plum next to it.

My garden is more overgrown this year, partly because it's getting some age, and partly because I haven't been here much. The last photo is misleading because the garden was pretty new and things looked deceptively orderly. The vegetable beds have eight-ft-tall tomatoes right now, which certainly makes it feel more crowded.

Bouquet, I love your garden. It's the sort of casual, inviting, cottage-y look that is my favorite. Karenforroses, yours is more formal, but I love it too, especially envying you your lush grass and surrounding trees. We sure do have a lot of different conditions, and a lot of different styles! It's fun to see people's gardens, not just shots of individual roses.
Anita

Ingrid

Allison

I'm adding a couple of pictures of my garden because I enjoyed looking at everyone else's so much. Really pretty gardens,thanks for sharing. Garden shots are my favorites. Gean

This is the back garden

Front garden

This is a side garden with a number of first year tea roses; you can see my vegetable patch on the other side of the picket fence in the front yard.

My best advice is to make the garden yours and not a copy of anyone else. Put your heart into it and it will be beautiful.

Just think, an American created one of the most famous gardens in England. I'd love to see it someday. Adding it the list of dream travel along with the rose gardens of France....

Denise

Ingrid

Mike

I love this site so much! Sometimes I can hang around, reading old posts that I tend to forget to eat. What a great way to lose weight! Reading about roses and working out in the garden -- I can do the latter more if only my body was younger :-(

Thanks again for all your help with ideas and advice. It's really nice to know I can go to the forum for support and inspiration. Okay, out to the garden to lay those paths!