Welcome, elaerstelle! It's always nice to have a new rose enthusiast among us.

Welcome to the rose forum, elaerstelle! Where are you growing flowers?
Toni posts beautiful pictures of her roses that she grows, against all odds, in high altitude in Colorado. My roses are challenged by extreme conditions in Kansas.
It just amazes me how roses can be grown in so many different climates. People on this forum come from all over!

elaerstelle, jump right in!

elaerstelle said:

the rose is awesome, How beautiful it is!

I think the reason why I grow roses here is because I was told I couldn't grow them.. that they wouldn't survive. Things that are native to Colorado like Lupines & Delphiniums & Coneflowers drop dead the same year I put them in, but I have a ton of zone 6/7 roses, and one zone 8 that keeps chuggin' along.

!! Check your Acorn stash & get some microbadges!! Put some info on your profile so we can know where you live & oogle your area!

Got some pictures of some different roses this morning. Early morning light (about 7am), completely overcast (stratus clouds, but they blew away about 8). I still stink of Deep Woods OFF... not that it deterred the skeeters 100%.. feeling a skeeter fly INTO your ear is something I don't want to do again!! Yuck!!

http://cubits.org/bluegardens/...

Love the yellow combo of the Shockwave rose and blue Caryopteris, always a great color scheme!

Roses and Black Eyed Susans are blooming in my garden.

I still have lots of color, mostly from new bloom flushes from the roses.



My 7 ft. Caramella


Graham Thomas is reblooming next to the bench and FINALLY, I have a vine Cross Vine (Bignonia capreolata) growing up a pole that I envision eventually covering the satellite dish. It's been agonizingly slow waiting for something to take off on one of those poles.


Aloha

You have a lot of color. Just beautiful!

Beautiful, Sue. My roses haven't started their last flush yet, and I still haven't gotten caught up with the weeding !

Your garden looks wonderful.

Smiles,
Lyn

Sue, once again I am amazed at the gorgeous new garden you have created in such a short time. Impressive!

I agree, the garden is outstanding.

Thanks ladies!
It surprises me too how fast it filled in, I look at my older blog photos and am amazed by the changes. The weather and soil must be good here!

I wish I could say the same .......

You've done an excellent job in creating a place of beauty.

Smiles,
Lyn

Thanks Lyn! After living all my life in the city with a tiny garden, with over half my plants in pots, I am finally able to plant large things and have space to get everything into the ground. I still have large sections to plant so you are only seeing maybe a third of it in the photos

Sue - Your garden is .. well, words here cannot describe it. *sigh* I'm so jealous... gonna turn Shrek green here. It's amazing and I'm so very glad that you're sharing it with us. What you've gotten to grow in less than 2 years is more than what I've been able to accomplish in over 5. Definitely a major difference with weather, isn't it.

Yes and I know it's the soil too, it's probably one of the reasons we have so many nurseries up here too.

Sue, it is the soil !

When I bought my place, the whole property was covered with snow. I didn't know that the garden area where I planned to put my rose garden was dead soil. It was covered with weed barrier and decorative rock. Of course, the owners were in their 90s and weren't gardening any more. When I removed the decorative rock, weeds would not even grow in that area. The parts of the yard that I have not cultivated still won't grow weeds !

I got the roses planted and for years it looked like all I grew were roses and weeds

This year, I was finally able to start planting other plants. It's going to take a few more seasons before I have what I call a garden. It's a four hour round trip to a decent nursery, so even getting the plants is a challenge.

Your garden gives me hope. Mine will never look as lush, but it will be more than roses and weeds.

Smiles,
Lyn

I am sure the soil is a contributing factor, but the main reason for the fantastic garden is SUE. Remarkable vision and industry, congratulations!

Ahh, thanks PPal!
Lyn, that must be frustrating! It's nice when your hard work eventually pays off.
I had a lot of fill dirt dropped off for free and have spread that around, just got another huge load last week, it's currently sitting in my driveway waiting to be wheelbarrowed into the garden to raise some areas.

Doing a flashback: I just found these old pictures, taken April-May 2011 a month after we moved in. Thankfully the pathways were already there. Shows part of my large collection of over 600 potted plants we hauled up here truck load after truckload.


And here a couple of weeks later we just had all the large overgrown shrubs removed. Opened up the garden and allowed us to see the row of redwoods out back in the greenbelt which extended the feel of the garden.


I planted a few things but worked on a lot of other areas so many things stayed in pots the rest of the year. This was taken Oct. 2011 New lawn area going in with sprinklers and covered in hardware cloth to keep out gophers.


I took this on March 15 2012, things were just starting to grow and I remember thinking as I took this shot that I hated the just planted look with all the dirt showing and that it would take forever to fill in.


This is exactly 2 months later, May 15, 2012, standing in almost the same spot!


I try to mix things up, not have the same types of plants right next to each other so that there is always something of interest, either in bloom or with foliage. I personally don't care for the rows or groups of one type of plant like daylilies, iris or roses all planted together. I have one section that has several daylilies and iris all clustered together. When they all finished blooming, it was just a bunch of foliage, ugh, boring, so I will be moving some plants around and add other perennials for a more extended color interest.
It's a big learning curve for me, often quite overwhelming, even now after 2+ years, having this much space after years of tiny lot living. But seeing how fast things fill in here makes me grateful everyday that we found this place and I live here!