The Rose Garden

In addition to finishing the front garden we also created a small rose garden last fall. Just like the plants in the front, we purchased most of our plants from Uncanoonuc Mountain Perennials and traveled all the way from New Hampshire with them. We didn't show it off before because it was finished late in the season so there were few blooms left on the bushes. We also used one rosebush that was already on the property, but when we transplanted it, it went into shock and was looking pretty pitiful. The branches were all okay, but the leaves and blooms all shriveled and died as the plant went into lockdown mode to survive the transplant. Now that it's spring midsummer and we can get some pictures of the blooming roses, we'd like to share what we did last fall.

We started with a jungle. The corner by the garage was absolutely covered with weeds and climbing, spreading plants. By the time we started digging things out, there was roughly eighteen inches of some kind of creeping plant, originally from the trellis against the house, covering everything:

We began by tearing out any obvious weeds and the 18" of creeping vegetation, and were surprised by what we found:

This was obviously a well-cultivated area, with some rose bushes, some yucca plants, lamb's ears, daylilies, and a, well, profusion of purple profusion, as well as decorative rocks and other plants and/or weeds. We pulled out and Freecycled the majority of the plants that were good, solid specimens we didn't have an interest in. That included the daylilies, yucca plants, lamb's ears, and the smaller rosebushes. We were able to make some people very happy, which made us (or at least, Ana) happy. Once we pulled out the better plants and the large rosebush, which we would be keeping, we used heavy-duty Roundup to kill the rest, mostly weeds and that purple profusion that keeps showing up everywhere. Roundup does not seem to work on purple profusion.

Once things were mostly dead after two applications of the weed killer, we pulled everything out of the garden, getting as much of the roots as we could, especially for the purple profusion. It seems to spread easily and just doesn't die! We smoothed out the area and pulled out all of the rocks and the random post as well. While they did make a reasonable outline for the area, we wanted a tightly controlled small garden with just the four rosebushes. The grade is low enough that a dark mulch against the street should be as much of an outline as we need, no rocks or bricks or other measures necessary. Hopefully the removal of the post does not cause people to drive over the garden area, but that shouldn't be a problem given the low amount of snow we're likely to see here (update: now that we've had it out for so long - people do not care and drive over the mulch to cut the corner. We need to figure out some kind of "don't drive here" barrier for this and also the corner in front of the house which people drive through despite it being an enormous pothole). When the garden was clear and level, we carefully placed the four bushes, which required much discussion, consideration of how tall and round each bush will eventually get, and a Skype call to Lee's parents to be sure we weren't missing anything regarding plant spacing and had placed the bushes well.

Next was planting the bushes. In order to give each rosebush the best chance of taking root and growing large and healthy, we dug extra-deep and -wide holes to mix compost with the dirt surrounding the bushes' roots. We didn't need to till it into the whole area like with the front garden since we're not planning to have plants covering the space. The soil back here was already pretty healthy. We placed each plant, re-smoothed and -graded the garden, and generously watered the roses and gave them a dose of Miracle-Gro Transplant Solution. We were planting a bit later in the season than we should have and wanted to give our roses every bit of help they could get!

Next, we covered the area in high-quality plastic to keep anything we missed from breaking the surface except for a 3-4 foot radius around each rosebush. We kept large open areas for each bush because they will grow fairly large and we want water and nutrients to easily get at the roots. While digging up the plants we did not want and preparing the sites for the roses, we found a lot of what looked like garlic cloves, maybe garlic, maybe wild leeks, we're not sure. We removed as many as we could, but obviously missed some. Like the purple profusion, they don't seem to care about Roundup. Ideally, we've now dug them all out and should have minimal future upkeep, aside from cutting off the dead roses to keep the blooms going and pruning as needed in the spring (following this guide from Uncanoonuc Mountain Perennials).

Finally we laid mulch and considered it complete:

The three plants from New Hampshire survived the travel and hanging out in pots in the backyard for months; we did lose one (Vavoom) over the winter when a trash bag that was loose in the street got caught in it and the wind cracked most of the canes below ground level. We got a replacement shipped in as an early birthday present for Lee and we now have gorgeous blooms, most of which should keep blooming all the way through until the frost hits this fall.  We finally have a picture that they're all simultaneously blooming in:

We chose four very different roses to give us variety in our small rose garden. The four we have are 'Elena' (large with white blooms), 'The Prince' with amazingly purple blooms, 'For You With Love' with orange blooms (to replace the orange Vavoom), and one random tea rose that came with the house.

All in all, it's an excellent little garden and we're quite happy with it.  The neighbors agree it is far superior to the weeds and as the roses get bigger and more full (and get pruned into better shapes) it should hopefully keep getting better.