Tuesday, June 5, 2007

more roses

When we added a screened porch to our house 10 or 11 years ago (replacing a deck), I decided to make this corner into my rose garden. It gets south and west sun, so perfect for roses. Of course, since then one of the ash trees has grown so much that it now barely gets enough sun for roses, but... what're you gonna do!

I have 6 rose bushes in here and that lovely anemone peony, plus delphinium, clematis, veronica, lilies, asters, sedum, siberian iris, mountain bluet, wild geranium, mallow - and, gosh, who knows what else! This is the fountain garden and behind it I have another rose plus a hibiscus and veronica and some coreopsis. So when it all fills out, it's really pretty.

In the above photo you see Carefree Beauty on the left (back) and Nearly Wild on the right. They are nearly the same color - but Beauty is a lovely double and Nearly Wild is a single - so they play off each other fairly well. Nearly Wild will have good bloom for the rest of the summer. Beauty will have another mild flush of blooms in July and then heavy blooms from August through a killing frost. This was one of the first roses I ever bought, and I still love it.

This is J.F.Quadra - I put this in last year, so really my first year with blooms. It's looking really promising right now. It's filling out and getting taller - and has more blooms opening every day. The blooms seem to be lasting quite awhile - and they are a great deep red that softens just a little as it ages. The blooms are fairly small (at least so far), but I have a good feeling about it.

Here's another container I did - finally perking up a little! Just a ton of petunias, so nothing special - but I love these two colors together (a deep purple and a magenta). At the base of it is Johnson Blue geranium - really going to town! And to the right is a spiderwort.
When we bought this house, the woman who lived here left us a lot of stuff - kind of like anything we agreed to have left!! She left a great iron bench and two of these iron urns. They were rusty and I cleaned them up and painted them black back in 1980. But now I'm totally into the rusted iron look, so they are slowly aging into a really great look. Thanks, Dolly - I still absolutely love the urns and bench!
P.S. A THERESE BUGNET UPDATE: I stopped at the Norenberg Gardens today (fabulous place - I'll have to do a post on it soon). They had a group of Therese Bugnet roses - they were all well over 6 feet tall - maybe more like 7-8 feet tall. They were a beautiful shape - like a bouquet - skinny at the bottom and full at the top. The bottom would have been easy to underplant - and they were loaded with gorgeous blooms. This is much taller than I thought they would get - so if any of you are thinking of getting them, just wanted to let you know!!

7 comments:

Diana LaMarre said...

What garden treasures--those urns. I love the way they have aged, too.

That color scheme of magenta/purple is one my town used last year in all of it's hanging baskets. It was just stunning! Your urn looks great with the J.B. geranium and the spiderwort. You need some of that magenta spiderwort, too. I noticed that I have some of that blooming now.

What I just realized is that I have not seen my J. B. geranium. Hmmm...wonder if it bit the dust? I will have to go out and look for it IF it ever warms up. It's 37 rigt now (of course it's only 5:30 a.m.).

Love the deep red of that rose, too.

Kitt said...

Nice urns! The last folks here only left me a window air conditioner, which I'm happy about, but it doesn't have quite the charm ...

kris said...

Thanks guys - I do love the urns. I've added a couple more over the years - not sure urns fit my very informal gardens, but I love them - so that counts, right??

Zoey, I do have a magenta spiderwort on the other side of the urn, but would have been better planning to break up the two purples. I noticed today that I have 2 purple spiderworts right there actually - one a very dark purple and one a tish lighter. Pretty sure my gardens could become overrun very easily with some of the stuff I have. A lot of self-seeding going on!

Kitt, bet when it's super hot and you're trying to keep cool, your a/c will have a certain panache!!

Karen said...

Kris, I just love visiting your gardens. I hope you don't mind, but I referenced your site in one of my posts. My rosebushes are small potatoes compared to your stuff. I can just imagine how much pleasure you get from seeing your gardens grow! They're beautiful!

kris said...

Thank you Karen! Of course, I don't mind if you link to here - what a nice compliment!! I just looked at your roses and they are very pretty! There is something about the gardens - the working, planning and just enjoying - that is just good for my soul. It's like I garden because I can't imagine not gardening!

Anonymous said...

Just found your blog and am reading with interest as I too am from the Upper Midwest and am curious to see what you're doing in your garden.
I just tried spiderwort for the first time. The leaves are nice but I'm getting no blooms. When does it normally bloom? Do you have it in part-shade?
Also curious about your J.B. geranium. I have the cranesbill and that is really slow this year and it's in full sun. Very frustrating!

kris said...

Hi Beth - welcome to my blog!! My spiderwort is blooming now. Some I have in full sun, some in part sun/part shade. My experience is that the plants themselves do fine in shadier areas, but the best bloom is in more sun, if you keep it watered (with less water, my leaves start to turn brown). Mine usually bloom for quite a long period of time in early summer. Having said all that, I wouldn't be surprised if you don't get very good blooming until the 2nd year. I HATE to wait, but patience does usually pay off! :)

I have several kinds of geranium or cranesbill. I have one that was sold to me a zillion years ago as simply "wild geranium" - and it happily blooms away in the shade - the clumps growing larger each year. Others, including J.B. seem to do better for me with a little more sun - altho not full sun. And having said that(!), I do have some of the "wild" blooming in the lakeshore garden that gets the hottest sun all day long - but its feet are probably wet! Yeah, pretty frustrating!!

I think my best advice is to be patient - but don't be afraid to move things. There are some really great gardeners blogging (check out some of the sites I have listed in the right-hand column)- and you can get some great ideas and suggestions. I hope you'll stop in again - thanks for leaving a comment! (Hope this was a little bit helpful!!)