Border Planting Design - how to work with roses in the border

Plus: the best climbing roses for wildlife

Using roses in planting

Hello everyone, and I hope you’re managing to keep cool

We’re back to looking at border planting design today, with some gorgeous pink roses to sink into. A reminder that our Zoom meet-up is on Thursday 21st September at 7-8pm UK time - I really hope you can make it. In it, we’ll be taking the opportunity to look over the steps involved when it comes to designing borders large or small in your garden, and we’ll also have a chance to look at your small garden designs. The invitation to this Zoom is at the bottom of this article.

Today we’ll also be taking a look at a reader’s question, which I’ll start a Chat on so that you can add your thoughts and share photos if you’d like to. I know you always have ideas! And, as it’s still warm, a reminder that you can find hints on Gardening in a heatwave here.

And what’s coming up next week? In this coming Wednesday’s post, as promised, I’m going to be including the list of plants in the video below, which are still doing really well in September. We’ll also be looking at more spring bulb collections following last week’s narcissi and hyacinth collections.

Today, we’re taking an initial look at how to use a sometimes-forgotten friend in planting: the flowering shrub.

I can’t begin to tell you how useful this group of plants is: roses bring height, form, structure. And they bring the magic: the pow and the pizzazz of a planting, you miss them when they aren’t there. There was, you may recall, a stage in the 2000s when these border-essentials turned into the poor relation, pushed out by the supermodel novelty of ornamental grasses, slim and elegant, exuding exotic glamour in the face of the solid shrub.

But that’s the point. Shrubs are bold by their very nature. Woody stems are determined and present, not waving in a breeze in the manner of grass stems. Don’t get me wrong: I do love an ornamental grass - remember our cheeseboard of grasses we’ve discussed when looking at August planting? But in late winter when the grass stems have turned to mush and there’s not much else around, even the bare stems of a shrub carry just a little bit of hope. Specifically, today I’ll be talking about how to use roses in a border. We’ve talked a lot about different varieties of roses for different situation, and you can find those articles in the Roses section here.

So, the roses:

Read on for rose varieties and how to use them

Let’s say you’ve already chosen your roses for your garden. Perhaps you’ve gone for almost-edible shades of rich plum and mulberry. Maybe an elegance of white. Today, I’m going pink. If you look at this photo, you’ll see a pink rose. But how do you choose the colours to go with it? Well, here’s how: