Let There Be Roses!

I’ve been thinking for some time now about what to plant in the two beds in the back–one is along the back porch and the other along the back side of the house on the other side of the back screen door.

Along the way I noticed that landscape roses do really well here. I’ve been seeing them planted in the islands in the middle of roads–and they were blooming their heads off. Most of those plantings were the red ones. I had started adding landscape roses to my Maine gardens.

I wanted orange roses, as I’m partial to orange, but there weren’t many of the orange ones at Lowes, and what was there didn’t look very healthy. The red ones, however, looked healthy and strong. So home 6 of them came home with me, along with fertilizer for the centipede grass, fertilizer for the roses, and another nozzle and a shut-off for one of the hoses..

I started digging left to right, and at first it was fairly easy. There was a nice mixture of good dirt with sand and some clay. About 4 roses in, I hit really bad clay veins and went to the garage to get some potting soil to augment the clay. Plants do not like being in a clay bathtub that keeps their feet wet, and there was no sand.

The really interesting piece of this hard digging was that much of the clay was a bright, clear blue. I’ve never seen anything like it–and part of me wonders if it was some sort of augmentation the builders did in the process of creating the foundation. A passing neighbor said she ran into the blue clay too. ????

So, here are the six red landscape roses–in no time they will fill in the spaces between each other. They won’t get higher than 4 feet–which is about to the white wood on the screens.

The leaves are so pretty:

But wait, I need three more to wrap around the porch.

I picked them up this morning and will pop them into their prepared holes this afternoon.

Here’s a view from the inside of the porch. If they thrive, they will be so pretty from early spring to a fall frost. They will be light and airy and will not block my open view.

And, some of them can come inside to smile at me.

Now to figure out what to plant on the other side of the back porch door. It is deeply shady in the morning and has really strong sun in the afternoon. I’m not sure how hydrangeas will manage. But now I’ll go to a good local nursery and get some advice.

The longarm comes tomorrow!!!