Flowers That Blend With Our Roses

Author: Carolen

2007-09-27 Word Count: 617 Category: Gardening

There are many flowers that blend in with our roses. For spring you can have Snowdrops, Muscari or Grape Hyacinths, winter Aconite, small Narcissus, and Scilla, or the delicate blue and white Chionodoxa. All will do well underneath the rose trees.

In the gaps among the trees Forget-me-nots, Spring Anemones, young Wallflowers, Aubrietia, and Violets can be used. As soon as the Violets and Wallflowers have finished blooming, they must be taken up, especially those of the Violet, as the roots will tangle with those of the roses.

Summer friends

For summer more sober colors should be used, that will not take away from the attractiveness of the rose itself. The brown Wood-Sorrel, Oxalis, which is only about two inches high, makes a very pretty carpet. The leaves are formed like a shamrock, but a rich brown, and it bears tiny yellow flowers which only come out when the sun shines on them. It is easily brought up from seed, and if sown one spring there will be no further trouble, as it comes up every year. It must not be permitted to get too thick, or to get near to the stems of the roses.

If you use the delicate shades of Pansies and Violas, they look happy together with the roses, and they like the same soil. Don't plant them too close, and only last year's cuttings must be set, as the old plants are too big and untidy.

Smaller growing Saxifrages make a nice carpet, and are very good for edgings. S.Caespitosa, S.Hypnoides, and others of the mossy tribe, are very attractive if not permitted to grow too thick. Thrift is another good edging for rose beds. It is only where the beds or borders abut on a gravel path that any edging is needed and turf makes the best frame of all.

Annuals

Some annuals make very good plants for mixing with roses. Shirley, Iceland Poppies, Leptosiphon, Whitlavia, and Godetia, look as well as anything, but care must be taken to see that the color of the annual blends in with that of the roses. The Poppies, if chiefly shades of yellow and orange, should only be planted amongst cream roses or yellow roses, and the Leptosiphon, being rose pink, only amongst white roses, or those of a similar shade of pink.

Round the standards

For rose standards something higher is needed. Salpiglossis look lovely grouped around the stem of a rose, and are such elegant quiet annuals that they improve the beauty of flowers overhead. Coreopsis Tinctoria, which has yellow flowers with brown centers is also excellent for this purpose. The Salpiglossis give flowers of a number of shades if a mixed packet of seed is sown, purple, tawny, terracotta, and many other common shades. Buy the seedlings when a few inches high and the result is more certain.

Japanese Pinks are lovely, and easy to grow. Their fringed crimson and white flowers can be cut in quantities without detracting from the appearance of the rose beds, and they continue to flower right up to the frosts. Statices are much used instead of grasses, their countless tiny flowers are so light and airy, and are produced very freely. They grow from eighteen inches to two feet high, and take away from the bare effect of the rose stems very well. Celosias, too, are feathery annuals to be had in various colors, and not half enough known. The golden colored variety is the most noticeable and has a good effect grouped round some cream standard roses.

If an early show is required, frames must be brought into use or the young plants can be bought.