Rose Gardening Made Easy

Overview

Roses are grown all over the world. Elaborately designed formal rose gardens have perfectly pruned plants with colors and types of roses artistically arranged. You can create a lovely rose garden of your own, without the fuss, by drawing on what the experts know and simplifying it to meet your needs. Choose the right location, the right plants for your climate conditions and provide water, fertilizer and mulch. Your rose garden will reward you.

Plan Your Rose Garden

Step 1

Choose an area for your rose garden that receives full sun. Good air circulation is crucial, but the rose garden should not bear the brunt of harsh winter winds. The soil should be well-drained, rich loam.

Step 2

Plan your rose garden on paper before you do anything else. Decide how many roses you want, what colors, and the configuration of the roses within your garden space. Study magazines and catalogs for design ideas, and also to select the rose varieties that have the easy care characteristics you want. Sketch a design diagram that shows placement and spacing for your rose plants. Design with the color and the types of roses in mind. An easy way to gauge spacing to ensure good air circulation is to plant roses far enough apart so that you can walk between the plants at maturity. Catalogs provide spacing information for different varieties of roses.

Step 3

Choose easy-care roses: Rugosa, shrub, landscaping or old garden roses are the easiest roses to care for. These are naturally disease-resistant types of roses. Their growth habits are rather carefree, meaning that they do not require specialized pruning. They keep on blooming for long periods, providing you with roses in your garden and for cutting. If you are a novice rose gardener, know that hybrid teas take time and attention to grow properly, and they are not considered easy-care roses.

Plant Your Rose Garden

Step 1

Prepare the rose garden bed. Till the soil deeply and add plenty of compost. The soil should be humus-rich and finely textured. Add humus, peat or perlite to get a good soil consistency; if the natural soil is heavy clay, you can remove some of it and replace it with topsoil or humus blend.

Step 2

Follow your design diagram to place your roses in the garden. Prune off any broken root tips. Plant the roses at the same depth they were previously growing. After they are planted, trim any broken branches. Remove the clippings and destroy them away from the rose garden.

Step 3

Install a drip irrigation system to deliver water exactly at each rose plant. A soaker hose or soaker ball system is also efficient. Once you install an irrigation system, it makes watering easy for years to come. Use organic mulch around your roses, but keep it a few inches away from the base of each plant. Besides retaining moisture in the soil, mulch will help camouflage irrigation tubing.

Step 4

Use organic fertilizer with a ratio of 5-10-5 or similar concentrations. Roses are heavy feeders, but they prefer to get nutrients from organic sources in rich soil rather than from synthetic fertilizer. Apply compost very early in the spring as the roses come out of dormancy, and then add bone meal for phosphorus to help with flower development.

Step 5

Water your roses with a soaker or drip irrigation system. Avoid wetting the foliage or flowers, as this creates conditions for diseases to develop. Roses have very deep root systems, and they must have at least 1 inch of deep watering from rain or irrigation per week.