roses and lavenders?

I'm planning a lavender garden for planting next spring. I intend to use rose bushes for backbone. Roses are heavy feeders and relish lots of water; I'm told lavenders are more austere and not only need less water, but don't do well when they're well-fed and -watered. Is my rose-and-lavender garden doomed?

That's the first question. My 2nd is, what would you suggest for other companion plants for this garden? The lavenders would all be shades of blue, and if they're no-go I can use Russian sage (Perovskia atriplicifolia). The roses are lavender, purple, and yellow; I'm thinking of also planting irises, daffodils, daylilies, naked ladies (Lycoris squamigera), and Jerusalem sage (Phlomis, which is yellow). For non-spiky things I'm considering cranesbill geraniums but they're all in the blue-to-pink range, and I want some crawly yellow stuff so the area's not overwhelmed with that color range. But I want to say away from red & orange, and white is out of the question: the wall the bed's against is white, so white flowers just disappear. The area has about 6 hrs of sun (plus the reflection from the white wall) and, well, I'm a rosarian first so it'll get all the cultivation the roses will need. Also, the roses are non-recurrent, i.e. they'll bloom in June and then stop. So plants that will take the show into the late summer and fall are what I'll really need.

You're right about the lavender, particularly in the summer they'll tend to rot if you give them too much water. They certainly don't need a lot of fertilizer, but I'm not sure what happens if you give it to them. The water will definitely be a killer though, especially if you have clayish soil. Perovskia, lavender, and Phlomis are all drought tolerant, so if there's a way you can group them together in a berm or something which will drain better, then plant the roses, irises, daffodils, etc in a lower area where you can water them more, that'll be ideal.

For a yellow groundcover, you might consider some sort of Hypericum, I'm sure there are some that are hardy in your zone.

i know it's an oldie, but a bit of plastic lining to work as a buffer bettween the two rows of plants shold work well, also if you mulch under the roses and not the lavender you'll find the moisture will drain out to the roases (don't ask me how this works but thats how my nan does it). Also if you plant the lavender on slight slope to the roses it would also help. Try not to furtalise the lavender as the plant doesn't obsorbe it well and on the chance it does you will probably find the poor plant will rot from the bottom up.

Thanks!

In my reading (Eliz Sheldon, Time & the Gardener) I was reminded of Mazus reptans, which is a purple crawly but very nice, and Lysimachia nummularia aurea (golden creeping jenny), which is yellow and rampant & may suck any excess moisture away from the lavs. The bed will run E-W and slope downward slightly to the E. Although the roses will be all along the N edge of the bed, I can concentrate the lavs on the W side and the daylilies etc on the E side, and then the slope can distribute the water to everyone's satisfaction -- do you think?

I swear half the fun of gardening is dreaming about the future.

I grew roses and lavender side by side at my last house with no problems. They were in a 2' tall raised bed filled with mostly pine bark soil conditioner and cow manure. I never babied my roses and found them to be extremely drought tolerant. I could only find one picture of the two together but it's just good enough to see the Hidcote lavender planted just to the right of a Tropicana Rose. The bed had six roses and five lavender plants total and they have coexisted there for at least six years. The key is, don't overwater and don't over fertilize.

plantfreak, that is a beautiful rose bush!

Roses and Lavender are a very old and tried mixture in Rose beds, the Roses go bare in the fall/early spring and the skeletal shape of the Lavenders help to hide the Rose stems, the way to do it is to add as much Small grade gravel to the area that you want to grow the lavender, this gives drainage, and where the Roses are to be planted, add as much animal manure/compost to the Rose earth before planting, this will help the Roses to retain the moisture they need and feed them also, when you need to feed the Roses as you will each spring, all you do is add a handful of Rose fertiliser around each bush and fork or rake it in the top inch of soil, this will not go near the lavender as you wont be planting them that close together as you need to allow for the lavenders to fill out over the years, Lavenders are classed as short lived Perennials, however, if you give them a haircut after flowering is over, then they will last a lot longer, just dont cut into the grey darker hard part of the stems as they wont send out new growing shoots from that and the stem will die off, I grow pink lily's beside my Lavenders and some Roses but the deer eat the roses if not protected, and they do fine, the lily's do need a bit of feeding, but again feed around them like the Roses and it wont reach the lavender as they are not planted that close together, in two to three years, your lavenders will grow to about 2 feet tall and the same wide so that will tell you how close to the roots you can plant other things, hope you go for it as it really is a wonderful combination and the perfume is to die for on a nice balmy summer evening or when you brush past the lavender, Good luck. WeeNel.

Thanks, WeeNel and all! My house was built in 1918 and I believe at one point the owners had put a gravel path down the side of the house, i.e. alongside where this rose bed will go. The entire area is very gritty, unlike the marvelously loamy clay elsewhere in the yard. I hope to till it up in early December.

If you do manage to get the soil tilled in winter, that is the best time for planting roses as the spring/summer can make the soil too hot for the new roses, if you dont get frosts too deep into the soil, you can plant your roses now, they need plenty time to get there roots deep down into the soil to be able to cope with hot summers, when I plant roses in winter, for bare rooted stock, I stick them into a bucket of water for about an hour before planting so they take up a good drink, cut away any damaged or broken roots so disease cant set in and bury them so the neck in just below soil level, I also add a rose fertiliser or bone meal to the planting holes so they can get food to the roots, then I cut the bare stems back to about six to eight inches so they dont get wind rocking them about till they get settled into their new bed, once they start to show signs of growth in spring, I add a handful of the same feed around each plant and gently hoe or trowel it into the top soil for the rain or watering to take it down to the roots, they are hungry feeders so when you do have to water them, make sure you absolutely soak them deep into the soil as they will grow roots upward to the surface to get water if done too shallow, better to water that way in hot summer 2/3 times a week than just a trickle every day. If you have to cut or prune your roses, then always cut at an angle away from the new buds so that rain/hose water cant sit on the new buds as this will rot them, watch out for green fly and earwigs which love the leaf and flowers, some washing up liquid added to water in a hand spray helps to keep them at bay. good luck, send in some pictures of your new rose beds with the lavender. WeeNel.

We're already getting hard frosts overnight (22 this AM), and besides, I'm buying the roses from Pickering in Canada and they very sensibly don't ship this late in the year. I like to plant them in mid-April, and although I never expect them to bloom the first year I'm not going to gripe if they do. In Apr '7 I planted one each of 'Applejack' (an eglanteria hybrid), 'Dr. Eckener' (a rugosa hybrid), and 'Alchymist' (a nearly-antique shrub rose); Applejack produced something like 50 blossoms before shutting down for the winter, each one of them delightful.

Next spring's honeys are 'Tuscany Superb' and 'Hippolyte' (both gallicas, and the first is my if-you-could-have-only-one rose), R. glauca, R. hugonis, and 'Harison's Double Yellow'. High Country Gardens has a lavender sampler of 10 different varieties, which should fill up the 5x20' bed very nicely. Then I can spend a few years adding things like the Phlomis, crawlies, and of course crocuses and daffs and irises et al.

I get bags of composted manure, and in addition to mixing a good lump in each rose's planting hole, I put a double handful into the water in which I'm soaking the roots. I firm the soil well as I fill the holes, and water them until air bubbles appear -- that means the soil has washed completely over the roots. I wait about a week before further feeding them, as I don't want them to race out of the gate until they've had a chance to settle in. This spring's trio are the first roses I've grown here in NW Missouri, so I don't know which plagues are most common, aside from the Japanese beetles. Fortunately I also have moles, who keep the J.b. population down. I didn't see any aphids this summer. I did see honeybees at the 'Applejack' blossoms -- some got stuck between the petals, which I have to say I've never seen bees do that before. Are Missouri bees just dumb, or is it part of that terrible hive die-back disease, or is 'Applejack' so fragrant they get lost? Who knows? I prod them gently with a twig and they bumble out again.

I've been watering the lawn via sprinkler 3+ hrs at a time once a week or so, and my neighbors have even stopped by to ask how I get such a lush lawn. The rose trio is on the edge of that lawn and they've gotten watered at the same time, which seems to have suited them. I plan to run soaker hose along these 5 roses, which will not be within the lawn sprinkler's range, and to run it concurrently with the sprinkler. I also like to mix the Miracle Gro rose food in a bucket and give each rosebush a couple buckets of that, 2-3 times in the spring and early summer.

January is my time to prune, and the trio will get a little trim then, along with my Heptacodium miconioides (aka Seven Sons), which I intend to train into tree form. (I'm also considering planting a Seven Sisters rose under it, just for laughs.) I also have a young Cladrastis lutea (yellowwood) in the back yard, which gets pruned for crossing and low branches in January. And January '9, maybe I'll be pruning raspberry canes! Yum! There's a variety called 'Caroline' -- literally a plant with my name on it. So I'm going to have to grow it.

Hi Carrie, you seem to have everything under control and are doing a great job, maybe send some pictures next year so we can all admire you hard work, another good mixture for any climbing roses or rugosa, is clematis, they flower at different times and give some colour onto the rose stems either before or after the roses, I have a lovely yellow climbing rose called here, Golden Showers and scrambling up that is a nice lilac flowered Clematis, so even when they do flower at the same time, it really does look lovely, As for your bee's, just leave them alone, they are probably over loaded with pollen and need a rest, they help pollinate all your flowering plants for you, if not resting, they are trying to get out the hot sun, they wont harm your flowers in any way, in fact, they are the gardeners friend, without the birds and bee's, we would have very little flowers in our garden, other insects do the job and the breeze, but he bees get right into the pollen sacks for us. Your quite right to delay your planting if you have frost, it is too cold for the roots to take up any moisture and the could go into shock, you sure have the gardening bug, hope you have a wonderful display next year and you have many more happy gardening years to come, best wishes. WeeNel.