Ingrid,

My garden has been an evolution since the beginning. When I select a plant (especially a rose) for my yard, my first and top priority is that it will thrive in my garden with my conditions (no spray, some/no supplemental water, manure for fertilizer, whatever pests that happen to come by.) Some of the roses are doing very well, others are taking some time to get established, and others do not want to be here under my conditions.

My garden is really so different from anyone else's garden that I can't compare it to other gardens. All I know is that I thoroughly enjoy spending a LOT of time in it. I think I work rather hard on it, but the majority of the time I spend in it is simply walking around in it, either with my dogs, my cats, my chickens, or my main squeeze. Life is good there.

Robert

I have been modifying my thinking for years.

I don't need grass. It gets in my way, and always finds its way to the rose beds.

I won't spray, so many roses won't make the cut in my garden.

I want to see the total landscape, not a particular large bloom. Therefore I don't really "fit" in rose shows. I admire my Cramoisi Superieur, but there are no parts that I can display at a show that will reveal its charm. When I tried to take roses to the shows, other kind members would try to tell me how to force the bloom to be upright.

I snap the blooms rather than to cut back to five leaves, so visitors explain to me how to prune, and offer to help me. They only look at an individual bloom. I look at the full effect, and love it.

It's too hot here. I add way to much mulch, but my roses like it.

I am not going to trap and kill the underground critters, so I plant my roses in cages (thanks to Kaye.)

Ingrid, you are correct. Nature rules and always has. The worst problem we have is the sudden hard freeze after weeks of beautiful warm weather. I must get used to the fact that this will kill some roses, and I can't help it. That means that I need to order a couple of roses that I don't need in preparation for the freeze. (Maybe it won't kill them, and maybe it will.)

I agree. I also Get it.

Sammy

Wonderful thread! I am finally getting it too. That's why I am planting 2 more SDLM and may buy still more. I am also going to get another Mrs. BR Cant b/c she blooms all summer, keeps her foliage and grows like a weed. Carefree Beauty is perfectly named. Rosette Delizy and Cramoisi Sup. also thrive and I will probably get another one of each b/c of it. As for companion plants, that dk. blue perennial plumbago always comes back from nowhere and looks great and spreads. Balloon flowers are wonderful as are the Chinese foxgloves. My stokesia grows but doesn't bloom that well so I think I will get rid of it and replace with the foxgloves. Coneflowers are happy here too. Nothing on this earth is perfect. The valleys of gardening ( drought, thrips, late freezes ,103 deg. for days on end) make the peaks ( spring flush, fall flush, a single perfect bloom on Abe) so gratifying.

Good topic, Ingrid, and I hope you will one day see a wonderful garden come out of your work and thinking.
I believe I've been thinking along these lines for a considerable time. Part of the skill I've been trying to acquire is that of selecting and placing plants in my garden so that they'll grow well with just mulch, and water the first year. Part of the art I've been trying to develop is that of making such a garden look right: with the plants and garden methods I have--and the budget--and in the landscape in which the garden is set. It's a decidedly rustic looking garden, and none the worse for that; but if I had another setting, or better soil plus a source of water, the garden would look different.
Sometimes I say jokingly that the chief purpose of my garden is to improve the soil it's growing on. More seriously I think that one of the chief goals of gardening, for those gardeners who are so inclined, is to acquaint them and bring them into a closer sympathy with the natural environment in which they're growing things.
Melissa

Yay for you, Ingrid! Such a simple notion of understanding where we garden can be very elusive and even seem unimportant for so long, and truly, I don't think there should be any judgment attached to it. It's the way of life and maturity. Just as we aren't born as old human beings, we don't start as wise gardeners either. It makes for a very satisfying milestone though, doesn't it? I think what Robert, Sammy and Buff said are all wonderful and true, giving the lie to the idea that gardens are generic. On the contrary a garden is a unique bit of glorious nature tended with the soft hand of the gardener who knows and loves it. And the fact that today it doesn't resemble yesterday is merely testament to the reality of nature itself. A garden is the epitome of going with the flow, but when nature puts her stamp of approval on a particular rose or companion, run with it, make a statement with it, massing several of them in an area. Ninety roses don't have to be ninety different roses, if only twenty thrive for you. A bank of Le Vesuve and a bank of Mme Cornelisson and another of your gorgeous, thriving Austins would be magnificent, definitely showpiece garden material. As they say in football, take what the defense gives you and eventually they'll give you the game. Can it be, Ingrid, that in your gardening journey you're 'almost there'? That is, headed in the right direction anyway.

My gardening travels are on the move, too, I think mainly because my personal sense of beauty and satisfaction are being refined and informed by full-grown bushes, resulting in my deselection of some of the big names of warm-garden OGRs. I've hesitated and hesitated to take out a few of them because it seems to my brain that it's sacrilege to do so, but I'm seeing now that MY garden has no such doctrinal rules. So I'm trying new roses and repeating old roses. Hopefully, the wise gardener in each of us becomes more understanding of this process - sooner than later, thereby removing the burden of comparisons and competitions from our hearts. For even the strongest gardener's heart can only carry the weight of what will grow in her/his own garden. The burden of another's garden is simply too heavy a load.

Sherry

In my garden I am reaping the sweet fruits of what others have in past years sown. The soil is willing here, but only because a past owner built the gardens and yard with soil that had been purchased by the truck-load yard. The water is plentiful but only because a past owner dug a good and deep well, and the clouds yield abundant rainfall. This year, anyway.

But there are limiting factors - past the trucked in soil areas of the garden and yard, the soil is thin, covering rock. Past all that there is a hill and native vegetation which creeps out of its boundaries while I sleep, wanting to reclaim my garden. Blackberry vines seek to strangle and conquer every area that has been tended and stolen from its greedy arms.

Gardening when you come down to it is a fight to remold a piece of land into a dream you live with. I'm dreaming of claiming other areas from the blackberry vines and looking for a jackhammer to blast the rock so I can plant and tend other areas. But so far the areas are all dreams. I want an area for gallicas - I long for an area of apricots and cream roses. I want, I want, I want. But how much exactly do I want to fight and then continually fight to maintain?

Your fight is heat and water. Mine is fierce underbrush, rock. On a rainy Saturday morning, I am wondering if limiting my fight to what is easily mine is not the best way to live here. The blackberries will win in the end, anyway. My back is strong now, but still... maybe it's wiser not to try to fight for areas to grow that I won't be able to continually fight for. But still...

I love this quote from Henry Mitchell, "Gardeners are the ones who ruin after ruin get on with the high defiance of nature herself, creating, in the very face of her chaos and tornado, the bower of roses and the pride of irises. It sounds very well to garden a 'natural way.' You may see the natural way in any desert, any swamp, any leech-filled laurel hell. Defiance, on the other hand, is what makes gardeners."

I've ordered bulbs instead of roses this fall. Dreams of daffodils spreading in a grassy area is as defiant as I'm feeling this fall in the rain. Maybe next year, but oh, how I want to plant those gallicas. Winter will feed my greed, I know.

But, Gean, we don't know yet if you 'get it', do we? You're still engaged in the fight, a noble effort to discover how far nature will let you go to steal from it and force your will upon it. Daffodils are great, but I think it's a little early yet to give up the fight for your gallicas which may actually be able to fend for themselves against the blackberries, given their suckering nature. When the paid-by-the-hour jackhammer operator comes, take pictures for us.

Sherry

Sherry, in my peabrain, my getting it consists of my realizing the fight is actually a matter of my will wanting to force itself onto what's here. Nature never tires; it is only us that do. I'm just wondering if wisdom wouldn't point me to gardening in areas that are easily mine and quashing my greed. But I'm tired right now, so I'm thinking of limiting my fight - that's getting it, don't you think? Realizing that the limiting factor is actually my desire to fight?

Maybe I'll uproot ridiculously healthy and blooming Jaccques Cartier and replace it with something less ... pink. Getting what I want within the boundaries of what's easily mine and just keeping the blackberries from overtaking the driveway. No small feat, either, by the way.

The past owner fought for a bed of peonies at the edge of the underbrush- I neglected to pick up the fight and the peonies are covered with blackberries and are heading for the driveway. I would never fight for peonies, anyway. that hard fought smallish strip she conquered is too shady for roses, or peonies either, for that matter. Good area for hostas, a decidedly tasty morsel for the thorny mouth of blackberries and slugs.

For a peabrain you write deliciously, dear Gean. I see now your perspective on 'getting it'. MY peabrain needed it explained. Gosh, I would definitely say you are up against it with those blackberries. What a challenge! Do they respond to RU? hehe. You must want those gallicas real bad to give up Jacques Cartier especially a healthy, blooming one. One angle on fighting the blackberries is that you really must draw the line somewhere (and gird your loins for a real fight) or be overtaken completely. Sounds like you can't give them even an inch or they'll take your whole garden. Get some rest...even though you do write beautifully when you're tired.
Hugs.

Sherry

The problem with my place is it's too big. Terrible dirt, too. I try to start a new bed of something and everything else goes to hell.
I was out there today weeding the garden I just weeded and telling my husband about Jon's garden.
About how it was stuffed full and I didn't see how he got in there to weed it.
"Weeds?" Jon said. "What is a weed?"
So then he sez that Jon probably had terrific dirt and after all, his garden was a hundred years old.
"No. He gardens on a chalk hill. His neighborhood is manmade, but I think it's fairly old."
So I remembered a photo of Jon's garden in winter, covered in snow. Everything was trimmed down and cleaned up. So I wondered if the trick was to garden in fall, not spring and that's what I'm doing, aided by a beautiful Indian summer.
But I think come spring, the milkweed, mullein, thistle, compass plant, dandelions, quack grass, cockleburr plant(beautiful flowers on that) etc,etc, will be back.
I get it, too.

Ingrid, with your setting and views, your garden is already breathtaking. Now your creative side is really going to have free rein. You have been freed from your preconceived notions of what kinds of plant materials make a pretty garden.

Sometimes it is easier to design when there are more limitations on you. You can still have roses, just make each one the center of attention in the garden. That way you only need a few great specimens rather than 170 hot and tired roses.

In my case, I'm going to keep resisting nature until they pry that hose out of my hand for failure to pay the water bill. :) That day is coming very soon, and I'll be visiting your garden for inspiration and ideas for mine.

Renee

" . . . It will probably never be finished. . . . "

But in fact, it's true that "The garden that is finished is dead."
It should always keep evolving.
After all, YOU change and grow all through your life, and your garden, and your ideas about your garden will, too.
That's GREAT!

Jeri

This is a great post-----I'm enjoying it very much----

Florence

Kaylah,
Jon's garden being stuffed full of plants is probably a large part of why he doesn't have weeds. They thrive on air and water: plant thickly, and their niche disappears. Bermuda grass can be shaded out and even bindweed suppressed. I'm busy right now planting between and under my roses and shrubs with a bunch of mostly aromatic shrubs--lavender, sages, artemisia, and germander are well represented this year--and sticking strawberries, violets, and hellebores right up under the roses and in shady spots. The asters and goldenrod and daisy-ish plants a gardening friend gave me last year are making a wonderful show, and nothing can come up underneath them. Shrubs are great at creating an environment in which weeds have trouble getting a foothold. I know you garden in some of the toughest conditions around, but I think these same principles ought to apply to your garden. Plant lots of plants, woody and herbaceous, whatever will grow in zone 3, and I bet your weeding will diminish.
Melissa
P.S. I wasn't thinking about tall woody or semi-woody plants like blackberries and Clematis vitalba. These do have to be kept out of the bounds of the garden, along with self-seeded trees and shrubs that have to be weeded out. They're plants that are used to coming up in shade and then shading out plants in their turn.

I'd watch it with the artemisia-I seeded my pasture with it from a small patch. Yeah I know that plants are mostly socially well behaved, and will stay out of each other's space except for crown vetch. Never ever plant crown vetch. My problem is the cane loss. I have to crawl around looking for good wood every spring, which takes some room. We got a lot of wood chips, but the weeds like that, too.
The old man said I wasn't putting it on thick enough, so I said, "Do it your way."
That way the bill is his fault.
My experiments with roses in Montana are not anything I would have missed.
These old garden roses are wonderful. This fall, I am finally going to winter protect, so you won't be getting anymore cold recommendations from me.

Hello Kaylah!
I didn't expect to find you up this time of night. Good luck with the winter protection! You're one of the bravest gardeners I know.
If you underplant with annual and herbaceous perennials, in the spring when you need to crawl around under the roses they won't be there, will they? But I get the point about shrubs and subshrubs and having to get through them to the roses. I have a few places that are quite hard to reach, and am grateful for being skinny, though not particularly agile.
These artemisias were given to me and are garden kinds, so I'm hoping they'll behave themselves.
Melissa

From a similar gardening hell, Ingrid, I've come partly towards where you are, and I am working with my garden climate and soil rather than fighting it. But I still want to eventually have it be something I'm proud to show. And it helps to have the attitude that I garden for me, not for anyone else. Hence, I don't deadhead much because I don't care and I can look right past the daylily scapes.

"I'm all about survival, not pretty." Don't give in, Ingrid. I just went to an interesting lecture by an Iowa gardener called "Zoneworthy" in which he made the point that we shouldn't just be happy if a plant survives, we should make our gardens around plants that thrive in our areas (see blog below). Maybe, if you haven't read them, "Undaunted Garden" by Lauren Springer or Plant-Driven Design by the same author will help out.

Here is a link that might be useful: Post on the Zoneworthy Talk on Garden Musings blog

Kaylah, I can vouch for dense spring companion planting as a deterrent to weeds. I can say I have virtually no weeds in my beds (only occasional pop-ups that are easy to see and remove), but a month or so ago I pulled out a worn out annual, leaving a small area of mostly bare soil. Whammo!! Spurge is coming out the yingyang! My pine mulch is not as thick as I would like it to be ($$$) so it must be the shade created by the other plants.

Sherry

professorroush, I've read and enjoyed both of Lauren Springer's books and she's a very talented and trained horticulturist. I'm afraid she's way out of my league in her ability to create a stunning garden in a hostile environment.

"I'm all about survival, not pretty" is what I felt that the landscape was telling me, meaning that, as in your formidable climate, nature is harsh and can be unforgiving. My goal is to have a beautiful place, at least in my eyes, by finding and growing those roses that will best thrive here. It just took some time for me to understand that many things will not thrive, but only survive, and that's why I've discarded many plants in my search for those few that will make the grade. They do exist and I'll be searching for them for as long as I have the strength and ability to garden.

Ingrid

That's the spirit! Somewhere out there is Ingrid's beautiful garden!

Here is a link that might be useful: Garden Musings blog

Ingrid, I have long thought that the roses that do best in a particular area are the same roses that were bred in that area, or in a very similar climate zone. That is just a byproduct of the selection process by the initial breeder -- he/she chooses seedlings for introduction with regard only to what is doing best there, and throws out countless seedlings that have one or another "flaw" for that climate. That's why I have to spray nearly everything that was bred in the Pacific Northwest or back east -- they select for blackspot resistance (not a problem here), not mildew, a major problem here.

For your hot/dry conditions, you can't go wrong with most roses bred by Ralph Moore in the central valley, and I particularly would recommend My Stars to you. It's a great rose that with a little better marketing would have had the same level of success as a KnockOut or an Iceberg, I think, but with a more interesting rose.

Kathy

Here is a link that might be useful: My Stars

Methods modification is often required to make it more rewarding. Clinging to long held but invalid cultural approaches is common and may often be the root - so to speak - cause of failure. Garden Web hosts a changing yet recurring cast of characters who insist on the proven value of amended planting holes and so on; the same topics could, it seems be argued over and over in perpetuity.

The Truth Shall Set You Free.

Here is a link that might be useful: Horticultural Myths

Ingrid I think you get it but not intirely. I think you have a tendency to become discouraged and think somewhat in black and white when you feel down. I do that too. I mostly don't show it before it goes away. Four years is not a long time in the life of a garden and of a gardener who is still developing skills and learning about her own unique environment. I believe it is possible for your garden to be wonderful(pretty if you want). The love and intention is there in your heart. That's really important. Patience and persistence are absolutely necessary. These are the traits of a successful gardener. Becoming intimate with your surroundings is one of the greatest things you can do. After many years now I know all the little micro-climates, the soil, where the light hits when. It's an adventure that never ends.

bboy, you got that right about those recurring characters. And just what are your credentials anyhow?

John 8:32

ah, Ingrid, how lovely to have a rewarding epiphany. Gardening forces us to be flexible, looking at the world through many different lens. No garden exists in isolation, context is all. You have been engaged in en epic battle to impose your vision in a landscape which already has it's own austere but splendid beauty, Where once your main choices might have been essentially aesthetic, the plants which made your heart beat a little faster (those light-headed moments of transcendant joy), after immersing yourself fully in your garden, you are sensitised to subtle (and not so subtle) elements such as rainfall, humidity, perspective, proportion, balance, weather, even history. Such limitations do, I feel, give us helpful guidelines in a bewildering array of desirable options. Paradoxically, although we do have limitations, we compensate for this with an everchanging, evolving sense of 'rightness'. Your post, Ingrid, resonates with an expansive spirit of outward looking and curiosity which will only increase. Mendocino Rose is quite right - your garden is still being formed. Although we pay homage to nature, gardens are still pure artifice and you can determine, to an enormous degree, exactly what sort of garden you want.....but it will take time - the rest of your life, in fact. Because you are brave, even slightly ruthless (the removal of many roses testifies to your willingness to go only forward), you will have the emotional rigour to challenge your environment, accepting the failures along the way. because there will be more successes, even spectacular ones. NO garden which is truly loved and used well will ever be bad. Although you may have an ultimate goal in mind, I sincerely doubt you will ever actually feel you are truly 'there'. How could you? Gardens are always dynamic, mutable, perpetually hovering close to anarchy....and yours is still in its infancy (and prone to the extreme waywardness of all infants) But hey, exult in such moments of revelation and grace - you are creating order, harmony, beauty.

Ingrid, I feel reluctant to bring up this subject - water in California, and if I'm totally off base, just tell me. It seems to me no matter where a rose is growing it needs a minimal amount of water to keep leaves on its canes (I found this out the hard way). Perhaps you simply have not discovered what that minimum is for your conditions. Perhaps your roses have just been receiving insufficient water which may have nothing to do with which variety they are since all roses are water hungry, especially until established. I found that when I watered by hand with a hose I used more water than after I put in the micro irrigation system which basically mists the whole bed for half an hour and is sufficient until the next morning. For all the water I used to put on my roses by hand I was not helping them because I generally did not water much beyond the planting hole and the extra gallons of water I used just drained away through the sand, leaving them ill equipped to deal with the heat that followed the next day. I don't have your extreme heat and I do have humidity (which must mitigate heat a little), but I can not get past the bone dry conditions that your roses live in. I'm just amazed that they survive at all. Maybe you should ask other Californians how much/often they water in the dry season. Maybe a micro system could be set to run twice a day in your garden. I seem to remember reading Pam or Rosefolly say their irrigation ran "all day" in dry times. I could be terribly wrong on this, but my inner rose-voice has been poking me in the ribs since you posted this thread, "Tell her, tell her about the water. They need water." Hugs!

Sherry

My dear rose friends, your responses have been incredible. The eloquence, insight and intelligence you exhibit simply awes me and so does your support. I wish I could be half as skilled in expressing myself as a Sherry or a Campanula, but I'm content to just enjoy your posts and count myself lucky to be the recipient.

Pam, you're quite right about my tendency to think in black and white when I'm down. You've seen examples of this more often than I care to remember. Not this time, however. I believe I see things very clearly and the final acceptance of my conditions has been a very liberating experience. This morning, as I drove down the driveway on the way to work I saw that my baby Madame Lambard, in spite of a high border of thorny branches, had been chewed down to the nubbins FOR THE THIRD TIME. I doubt it will survive this, but I just shrugged and let it go. I did the best I could and that's that.

Campanula, I've already read your post three times, as I have Sherry's, because there is so much to ponder and savor. Thank you both for understanding and expressing much more vividly what I tried to convey in my post.

Sherry, please don't ever feel that there's something you can't ask me about or mention. I'm not at all sensitive in that way and your question is a very valid one. Fortunately water here is not unreasonably expensive (and in fact there is a reservoir very close to us). I've mulched the plants with leaves really well and have watered every day and in some cases even twice a day. I've also taken your advice from another post about drenching the whole area and not just watering the holes where the roses are planted. I can stick my fingers down under the mulch at any time and the soil is moist. But, here I have to water lavender as much as the roses or they'll dry up and die! Xeriscape plants struggle at my house whereas a mile away, where it's flat and the elevation is lower, I can see great-looking specimens with no discernible source of water. That's what I mean about this garden being really unique. The few houses that are around me have no gardens at all. The neighbor has an orange grove but that receives constant moisture from an irrigation system. An irrigation system might work better for me too but I'm not sure that the water would even penetrate the mulch all that well. With hand watering I can be certain that it does. I do think that your humidity has a considerable influence on how your roses perform in the heat. Lots of people have heat here but they don't live in an amphitheater with another 100 feet of boulders and bare hillside above them in a semicircle. It's the reflected heat which makes this place so uniquely challenging.

The bottom line is that I'm tremendously happy living here and that I DO have a garden, and that I know with time and thought it will continue to do better. I have 14 roses coming soon and I know some if not all will be wonderful here. There's always going to be something to look forward to. I'm at peace with myself and this wonderful, challenging place.

Hugs to all of you,

Ingrid

Well, if your ground is moist under the mulch, it's probably a wonder you haven't lost your mind, Ingrid. In fact, I suspect this sudden mellowness may be a danger sign of some sort of dissociative mental disorder. BUT all that aside, how about CAGES for the bushes!! Squirrels have been chewing through the elbows on my half-inch poly (even on the 4-way brass hose manifold!) so after replacing them I wrapped them with hardware cloth. Let the buggers chew through THAT!! I wouldn't care a wit about aesthetics. I'd wrap my roses in hardware cloth and rebar until they put on some size. Shrugging wouldn't get it. I would have shed lots of angry tears with swearing and foot-stomping in the front yard, unfortunately for the neighbors.

Thank you for tolerating my deep-seated need to "fix" things. (I'm an eldest. Can't help it.) And thank you for the compliments. You always are very complimentary and I never say thank you. Modest to a fault, I guess.

I give you credit for persisting. Of course, the alternative of no roses isn't really an option, is it? Could I give up roses? Don't know.

Sherry

Ingrid, this post has been rolling around in my head for the past few days. I've long admired your pictures, the colors in your garden and your desire to create the garden in your mind, your perseverance and thoughtfulness. I really do get your dilemma of finding what will grow in your climate.

The challenge I'm finding here in growing a garden and roses is not the climate or the rainfall - this in many ways is rose heaven. I'm surrounded by lush vegetation, blackberry vines, enormous trees, ferns, native shrubs I've still to put a name to. Inasmuch as there is so much that grows here, my challenge is in removing plants to replace them with roses. How do you remove enormous trees, shrubs, ferns, creeping, thorny deep rooted blackberries that are in their own element here? And should I even try?

I wrestle with the physical stamina it would take to uproot all of that underbrush but more than that - I'm struggling here to put this into words - does a landscape like this afford being altered to accommodate a manmade garden - it has its own grandeur and I think that what petty garden effort I could make here amongst the trees would be like a kleenex flower in a bowl of tea roses.

Pam's garden looks as if it belongs in her California hills, your garden complements the colors of your dry surroundings ... a garden has to look as if it belongs in its setting. I don't know how to improve on the trees and am not wanting to wrestle with acres of blackberry roots - this whole area, miles upon miles, is filled with them. I can't use round up because it simply would not work to kill it - I've tried and it comes back with a vengeance. I've tried pruning it back into bounds and it comes back stronger.

But even beyond that fight, which I am not really unwilling to tackle, I am not sure that what I produced would improve on the setting. So what is defeating me is not climate, rain, but my own lack of will to fight what I am not sure can be improved upon.

We all have limitations of sizes of gardens or sun or climate or whatever. What I find most aggravating is that there is land there that's ours, but it's like it belongs to itself and not to me. That probably sounds really obtuse or odd. Anyway, I'm tired of thinking about it so decided to leave it until next spring to think about. My sunny area that I'm adding daffodils to naturalize is also the 6 foot strip that is my buffer zone to keep me from falling off the side of a cliff. It's not workable to add anything more than grass or some bulbs there as I've run off that driveway too many times already in the dark.

I've probably written more than anyone cared to read, but it has helped me to define in my own words what is bugging me so badly. I get way too verbose when frustrated. Thanks for letting me vent - your thread and question really triggered something in me!

Happy gardening... I am sure that your garden will eventually become what your dream of, Ingrid - I am going to have to start dreaming in shades of green, I'm afraid ... Gean

Sherry, you are always so sweet to me! Thank you, hugs back, Gean

This is just a thought, but aren't xeriscape plants known for sucking in tremendous amounts of water--when it's provided--in order to withstand drought? In other words, the only reason they can tolerate lack of water is their innate ability to drink a lot of it when it's available. Perhaps pairing them with your roses is robbing the roses of the water?

Gean, how about ramblers growing into your trees? I've been looking for photos and can't seem to find the right one. Paul's Himalayan Musk Rambler is one. I have Francois Juranville that's a gorgeous pink double flower that I'm hoping will go up into my trees. You could cover your green with any color flower that your heart desires. There are so many Wichuriana ramblers.

Sherry

hi, Sherry,
thanks for the idea - I've actually looked for some spots to plant a rambler or maybe gigantea. So far I haven't come up with any place suitable, but I'll keep looking. I'll post pics sometime of what this place looks like and maybe you all will have some ideas for me. Ingrid, sorry for posting all this on your thread! Thanks, Gean

California vegetation in our areas is not usually cactus or succulent (the water storers), it's twiggy scrubby stuff that has very few leaves to lose moisture: native 'buckwheats', coyote bush, creosote, white sage, stuff like that. So it's not that native plants are sucking up the water.

The problem with Ingrid's property, and to a much lesser degree, with mine, is not lack of water. It's heat. It's too hot for too long. It does not matter how much water you use, stuff just cooks from the heat.

That said, I find that my garden does much better with sprinkler irrigation than with hose water or drip. That is because the entire area gets moist, so roots can grow out further, and stay cooler. The more water I use, the better and faster everything grows.

I only have a few roses because most can't take the heat. Double Delight is next for the compost pile- nice shrub, but the flowers are always burned. Will I replace it with a Salvia Clevelandii or a Matilija Poppy? NOT! A nice Marilyn Monroe or an Iceberg, maybe...

Renee

Gean,
I was thinking of tree climbers for you too: twenty-to-thirty foot tall plants of 'Alberic Barbier' and 'Treasure Trove', and naturally Sherry's picks. About the brambles, could you hire someone to come and weedwhack them to the ground every month or so, and then dig them out when conditions are favorable? Do it a patch at a time. I do think that in such a landscape as you describe the garden plants need to be on a generous scale.

You express an idea I've had as well: property doesn't always belong to its legal owners. Our shade garden, as we call it, started out as the former owners' burn pile and dump, located in an old slide zone that was rapidly turning into brush. I wanted to put a garden there for the simple reason that it's the piece of ground closest to the house that we have, but when my husband discovered the garbage, he wanted to stop right there. Fortunately he listened to me when I said that we would begin cleaning up the site, because the ground could either belong to the garbage or belong to us, and I wanted it to belong to us. Eight years later we're still chronically behind on maintenance in the shade garden and it presents design puzzles that I've yet to solve. But take it on a sunny day in early fall, and it's the sweetest place on earth.

Melissa

Nope, as living in the country where the North sea is just a minor nuisance for a farmer to increase the property, I disagree. ;)

I saw the map of the area where we live from 15th century or so. My roses are growing where there was a sea bottom back then. I am rather certain that it would count as a slightly more harsh environment that what you have to deal with, considering all the lack of air, salt and fishes. It is amazing how the humans can reshape the environment, if they set their mind to it.

Then there is another example, where I come from we have continental dunes. There are not many things that grow on pure moving sand, even in more moderate climate. Add frost for a couple months falling as low as -20F and you can wonder who in their sane mind would settle there. Yet, my family have a lovely garden there, even though their ancestors had to move the village a few miles, because dunes burred the old one under the sand... It also is amazing how much can be achieved by just planting pine forest to control erosion and addition of the composted material to form somewhat more rich layer of soil.

Thing is, you can garden almost anywhere and grow almost anything. It may require extensive pampering (as for example growing tropical plants in the cold climate), but it is doable. You might be a better off with more desert like plats than the roses maintenance wise, or less roses/different kind of roses than you would like to have in a perfect case, but then again, the places where everything grows well are rare (and often plagued by the war, be that the actual conquest or the corporate one).

Okey dokey Renee. Just goes to show that things can be SOOO different from one place to another that it's hard to imagine conditions that are so diverse.

Here, we have ungodly humidity. I can't even imagine the dry heat & what it must do. It's so bad that I have to run dehumidifiers indoors during summertime.

My 'windmills' are the mass of tree roots that stretch from fence to fence in my backyard. We're finding out now, after digging in a few areas, that someone must have cut down a few trees, ground down the stumps, and then hastily filled the holes left behind. That explains the network we're finding a few inches down, and the reason why the ground is undulating and FAR from level back there. Very painful to strike a root with the spade. Did that over & over again last Saturday.

i think elemire does make a good point which is that you CAN alter your environment but it takes time. maybe fast growing pinus radiata as windbreak, get some structures up and cover with vines for shade but mostly, allow yourself the time to experiment, shrug off failures and rejoice in success. I guess you have read many book and listened to a lot of advice but, to a large extent, only a little bit is relevant to you since your garden is unique, responding to observation, judgement and hope. Keep taking pictures and astound yourself when you look back, season after season. Unless you are about 93, i think you will reach a very satisfactoey and equable solution. Those plants you loved so much will look different when they are dwarfed and struggling whereas even a common buddleja looks fantastic against your backdrop, shining with strength and vigour. Beauty is not only percieved by the eyes but by the head and the heart. Courage, my dear. I sense you are moving into a new stage of gardening, one with much deeper resonance for you, your home, your environment, based upon a more holistic appreciation of what is around us all.

Your responses continue to be overwhelming. I just can't express how touched I am and grateful for your support and friendship.

Gean, your comments touched me deeply and no, they were not off-topic in the least. You are struggling, just as I have been, and I think to an even greater extent, with the question of what place roses have in your garden. I think only you know your surroundings well enough to decide what should be in your garden. Even if you could bulldoze the blackberries (and I really think some sort of machinery could do the job), your greater question seems to be the rightness of introducing roses there at all. Roses have grown in hot, dry places like Persia for many, many years and I think that is why they don't look odd in my environment if used judiciously in terms of variety, color and placement. I truly don't know what I would do in your place. I imagine people can and do grow roses in places like Hawaii but I don't believe I could bring myself to do so.

Campanula, I think you have a deep understanding of a place you have only seen in pictures. I believe I understand what your message to me is and it's one that I can fully embrace. I spent much of my free time during my life in the wilderness of the western mountains and deserts and that has never left my heart. I think that feeling will be reflected more and more in my garden as time goes on. Thank you for your wise and kind words.

Ingrid

Ingrid have you ever spoken to Cliff Orent? He's growing 6,000 roses in an environment that's got to be at least as harsh as yours. I'm thinking he would have some good advice.

Pam, I did talk to Cliff quite some time ago. As I recall, he recommended the polyanthas as being the toughest roses, and recommended some he thought would do well. I would think his climate would be much worse than mine and yet I have to wonder. A previous owner here planted about 60 oleanders along the edge of the property by the road. When we moved here 59 of them were completely dead. If we were millionaires we could afford to hire someone to grub out these eyesores, but there they stand, a testament to someone else's fond dreams of what will grow here.

I forgot to mention in my post to campanulas that the buddleias she mentioned, which have been watered right along with the roses every day, have lost at least half of their leaves. They have a lovely thick mulch of their fallen leaves but even that hasn't helped to stop the shedding. I'm sure they'll be fine in the cooler months to come and even now look reasonably presentable. As I walked outside this morning I thought again how wonderful it is to be here. My tiny Mrs. B.R. Cant had put out a lovely little bloom again and the tea roses as a whole are blooming nicely. Through trial and error I'm slowly finding out what can be happy here and how to cope with the elements and the creatures. I would rather have these conditions than to have to endure Japanese beetles, blackspot and rust, or terrible rocky soil, and I can truly say now that I'm at peace here. I want to thank you for all your encouraging words along the way; they've meant a lot to me.

Ingrid

Hi Ingrid, I have been reading this and haven't said anything because I don't GET IT. I started out smarter than I am now. I was only looking for roses that would survive my climate when I started (about 3 1/2 yrs. ago). Then I started researching (a dangerous thing for some of us). I found that there are so many beautiful roses that I wanted and, it wasn't fair that I couldn't have them. Then I read about the MNtip. I thought problem solved. Well, as the rose burial season approaches, what little common sense I have is telling me to listen to all of you who have advised me to plant what will thrive here. If I want to continue to feed my rose addiction, I won't be able to bury hundreds of roses. My Dad once told me, when I was complaining about whatever not being my dream thing, "Well, change your dream." I hate when he's right. He's only partially right because I also believe if you want something badly enough you can do it. O.K. I'm trying to GET IT.

Enough about my issue. I look at your garden and think it is so pretty. I would never have guessed that you had any problems. I'm glad you are feeling better. It really helps to talk things out or, in this case write them out. I hope some day I will think my garden is as pretty as yours and I feel at peace with it. Thank you for being so open.
Kitty

Kitty, thank you for your lovely post. I don't imagine there's an old rose garden (or any other kind of garden) that doesn't have some sort of problem or where the gardener's reach isn't beyond his grasp. I prefer now to think that it sharpens the mind and encourages one to think in a more focused way when choices are limited for whatever reason. The end result just might be better than if you were able to plant everything under the sun. I prefer to think that my limitations given my garden a certain cohesiveness. I'm flattered that you like it and I hope in the coming years to like it more and more now that I've learned to live with what is instead of what I'd like it to be. I think your Dad was a very wise man, by the way.

Ingrid

I'm no where near "there" yet. I don't know enough about gardening at all to even not kill things that might do fine if I knew how to garden well enough. Does that make sense? Like two of my chinese foxgloves are thriving and one died. No idea why. All in the same area.

My flowering cherry tree, sometime this summer, it's leaves gradually turned brown starting with the tips and then they all fell off. Now it's sprouting new green leaves. I have NO IDEA WHY. (threatening to call an arborist actually, because the landscaper who put them in is an IDIOT. He made little wells around all my lavender. *___* Lavender rot well enough without little wells around them thankyou!)

Anyway,... the roses are very kind to me. I think of putting in more evergreens, but I almost killed two camellia... and so I'm scared to. So the roses will be a bit barren this winter... but our winter is short, and the rest of the year they are happy and hard for me to kill. I don't think I've had any diseases or deaths in the roses while I struggle to catch the whim of other plants in the garden. I don't know whether others die because I planted them wrong, or watered them wrong, or if they just "dont like it here". So I think it will take me a few years to figure that out.

It took me two days to dig an area big enough to amend to plant my descanso hybrid lilac. TWO DAYS. At one point I had to stop, not because of the heat, but because I was afraid I might topple over in exhaustion (its actually pretty cool out). because my soil is so hard-packed clay with rocks that even with a pick-axe I can only go an inch or two at a time.

I grew up in South Carolina which has soft dark soil and planting things is easy. Worrying about something getting enough water, or how much to water something or how long, etc... none of that is something you deal with in South Carolina.
Here, it's like some special magical puzzle or something sent to torture me. haha. At first, I was frustrated by all the plants I loved (that I knew of) being water guzzlers, so then I got discouraged. All the advertised California-style and drought-tolerant gardens I saw were a lot of cacti and succulents and looked very desert-y,... which didn't make me feel better, either. (I wanted a romantic english-style garden!)

and then I learned more about drought-tolerant plants and 20 books later, I found a great many of them and natives that are just as romantic as ones I previously loved that used a lot of water.

but then, a lot of the drought tolerant plants need really good drainage and I have heavy clay soil, so then like half of them rotted.
and then my irrigation system broke and half my plants didnt get water for like 3 weeks and I didn't notice.
and and and....

bottom line, I learned a lot this year, but I have a long ways to go to even know why a plant dies.
and at least the rocks I dig out are mostly pretty and I place them around the garden. and I suppose I'm getting a bit of a workout.

Ingrid, if you think of your place in the context of your surroundings, I think it seems all the more beautiful. Think of it in the context of where you are, instead of comparing it to some perfect English garden somewhere with perfect conditions. your garden is like an oasis or some alcove touched by fairies and it blends in with your surroundings. I think you are too hard on your garden and yourself. Just because your surroundings are harsh doesn't mean that what you've created isn't pretty.
What you said about not having to endure beetles and blackspot and rust is true... and think of those who live in really cold conditions who have to turn their roses sideways and bury them in the ground to overwinter them! (like Kitty, probably) agh... so much work.

As usual, Henry Mitchell said it, and as well as it can be said: "It is not nice to garden anywhere. Everywhere there are violent winds, startling once-per-five-century floods, unprecedented droughts, record-setting freezes, abusive and blasting heats never known before. There is no place, no garden where these terrible things do not drive gardeners mad." This is from the opening essay of his book "The Essential Earthman".
Every garden site has its limits and its potential. As I see it, part of the task of the gardener is to learn both, and exploit the possibilities of the garden to the fullest possible extent (assuming that that is the gardener's desire, of course). I am blessed in my garden site. I have mild winters, abundant summer heat with low humidity, about forty inches of annual rainfall, clay soil (for water retention) and a sloping site (for drainage). Really, who could ask for more? this is a Paradise. Except that we have landslides in rainy winters, and the ground is so steep that access is on foot and by tractor only; and the soil is so poor in organic matter that areas of it could be quarried for adobe bricks, and every summer we go two to four months without rain, while we have limits on the amount we can water; and the site is open to full beating sun and the winds that roar down the valley, while the hedges and trees we plant for shade and shelter grow a few inches, at best, a year. And now I return to Henry Mitchell (same essay): "I detect an unwholesome strain in gardeners here, who keep forgetting how very favorable our climate is, and who seem almost on the verge of ingratitude." That's me. I just need to remind myself how extremely lucky I am, because in fact I'm the most fortunate gardener around, stop grumbling, and return to my task of patiently figuring out how to grow all the beautiful plants I can, in the most beautiful garden I can create.
Melissa

I think acceptance and gratitude go hand in hand and since I started this thread I've been feeling much of both. Sharing your own challenges has been a comfort and an inspiration to me, and I feel we all stand shoulder to shoulder in our desire to make the best of whatever we've been handed in our gardens. Thank you for allowing me to express my feelings and responding with such wisdom and understanding. As I come to understand the vagaries of my garden situation more and more, and accept them, I believe I'll become a better and more tolerant gardener, which will translate into a much greater enjoyment of what I have and hope to have in the future, and much less teeth gnashing about what is unavoidably not feasible. Henry Mitchell knows whereof he speaks.

Ingrid