I grow roses that will be around 3 to 4 ft snd I can get a lot mor in. I also have several in pots. You can can also layer with tall roses in the back and with shorter roses in front

Great advice !! Thank you so much!

I think a lot depends on your location, what look you are going for, how much time and energy you have, and your willingness to overlook imperfections.

For example, my last garden had 45 (maybe 50? I don’t have my notes handy) roses on a 3800 sq ft lot. My style is mostly English cottage so I squeezed all sorts of plants in with the roses and had lots of overlap. This was my first real garden so mistakes were made but that is how we learn! I loved that garden but it was also a lot of work, I was always pruning and cutting back and cleaning up. Irrigation and fertilizing was constant. I would fill the large green bin every week May through October. There were times you couldn’t get in the front door or walk up the driveway without getting snagged. Yes my roses would get some blackspot but other plants would cover it up until they recovered. Keep in mind though this is in the PNW, Seattle specifically, and our bug and disease pressure is low once summer starts so my roses would generally be back to full health by July and August.

I swore starting over with my new garden on a 5,000 sq ft lot I would design it to be easier to maintain. Almost 200 roses later and most still in pots I have accepted that I just love trying out new roses (and hydrangeas, fuschias, hostas, dahlias, all sorts of natives, and don’t even get me started on my berries…) and so long as I have the energy and it is fun for me I’ll keep at it. Fortunately my husband likes it too and he helps out when he can.

On the other hand a rose only garden like Moses describes has its own pleasures and joy, lots less time maintaining and more time to enjoy the roses 😊

I'd stay away from ramblers and others that get huge. I like the look of roses growing into each other and I like big plants. I don't know how big my yard is but I have 350- 400 roses and many of them are close together. Most grow well. My biggest concern about crowding them in Utah is root competition and lack of water. If you have drip irrigation that would help.

I have some wide beds that I walk in to. Admittedly it is easier not to have to do that. My rose friend has stepping stones in paths through his wide rose garden.

My personal taste is to forego some roses in some areas and make room for some beautiful evergreen shrubs and other plants.

I'd be sure to avoid roses that sucker from the roots.

I might be a winner in the "Number of Roses per Sqft" category! My backyard is very small but surrounded by a fence. Almost all the climbers are near the fence, the next row has tall roses, and the third row consists of floribundas. There's also a technique to plant the same roses in a triangle very close to each other (16-18"), making them look like one wide bush. It's very nice!

This is all really great advice! Thank you, I really appreciate everyone’s help!

I would make sure to maximise your vertical growing space, not just around the boundaries but by creating double sided trellis screens, archways, walkways, pergolas or any kind of dividing walls. Smaller spaces can look much bigger if divided up into a series of zones and you don’t see everything at once. Angled structures or winding paths are good to break up the area if it’s square or rectangular. Consider the orientation and exposure of the garden too, because strategically placed structures can create areas shaded from strong afternoon sun, which many roses (and their owners!) appreciate.

Taller roses at the front on a curve, at a junction or at a dead end can form good focal points, I don’t always subscribe to the tiered design with larger plants at the back! I do like planting smaller shrub roses and floribundas in triangles, I find you get more bloom for your buck per square foot. Rose trees and potted roses on pedestals are also good for adding height without taking up much floor space.

Elena and Nollie, is this the triangle technique that DA talks about but using different roses instead of the same rose? This might be something I need to try my new garden.

Edit: Or maybe you are both talking about planting single varieties in groups?

Edit Edit: I found this older discussion on the topic which I thought was helpful and relevant to this thread https://www.houzz.com/discussions/4579875/do-you-plant-roses-in-threes

And one more, this is amazing! https://outofmyshed.co.uk/2022/02/21/rose-training-with-jenny-niff-barnes/

Heather, three of the same variety planted in a triangle - works well for me with any small shrub or floribunda. No different to a rose tree with three grafts. I don’t grow HTs so couldn’t comment on those. I have Munstead Wood, Lady Emma Hamilton and Julia Child planted this way and am planning to plant 3 Versigny in a similar fashion.

They blend together, support each other and give a more fulsome display in relatively small spaces. I also have a single of both MW and LEH and, to counter the crowding = disease argument, health is no better or worse.

JC doesn’t need to be in a three and I thought at first I had made a horrible mistake, that they would become an overgrown, tangled mess. However they seem to self-regulate and never get too large. Like any shrub, I reckon it's all in the pruning to keep them compact, open and promote airflow.

My garden is not a large one but not tiny either. I have no idea the square footage tbh. But I absolutely tend to overcrowd my plants. It's the only way to have as many varieties as I want in that space! For me it has come down to trying new things and observing closely ever year how things do, when they start to come up, when they peak and how much room they take up, and when can I finally cut them back. Then I take that info into consideration when I'm layering plants together and moving things. I agree with the person above who said it means lots of waves of having to go out there and cut back the things that have finally finished flowering to allow more light and air and room for the things that haven't peaked yet. I just came in from an hour and a half of cutting back clematis and Rocky Mountain Penstemon which had finished for the season. And I haven't even done the cleanup yet! Now there's a lot more room for the things that bloom later on in mid to late summer. This is a constant work in progress for me, about 4-5 years in the making and still going. I love it that way.

You all have good ideas, but I don't see anyone posting advice that gardens in Utah's dry, zone 7A conditions. I see Pacific Northwest, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Spain among the locations of gardeners on this thread. So, Roseann may not have disease problems to worry about, but water probably is a big issue. And her roses may grow so large, so fast with proper water that planting in groups of threes would be out of the question. I do grow roses in very dry, hot conditions where water is a huge issue and disease is not (desert hills SW Idaho zone 7A). And Utah is a neighbor to the south east of us. I don't have a lot of advice, but to go slow and realize you don't need a big collection of roses instantly. For me a cottage garden look with lots of perennials and shrubs, anchored by large roses is what I'm after. I don't want a collection of little soldier roses all in a row so I can have one of every kind. I like to have multiples, in fact, of my favorites in different parts of my garden. But do take it slowly. Diane

Wonderful advice everyone! Thank you! And Yes! It’s supposed to be 96° today! Watering is a big issue. I’m going to install a drip system this week. It’s just so hot and dry.

Heading for 100F here. Diane

Idk I feel like my experience is relevant to the OP's conditions, though of course we get quite a bit colder here in winter. I have a regular overhead sprinkler system and I also hand water from the rain barrels, my garden would be impossible to maintain without watering, for sure.

I would encourage planting Hybrid Teas--they can be grown much closer together.

You mean traditional hybrid teas from the 50s-80s, maybe? I grow Ascot, Twilight Zone, Dainty Bess Wild Blue Yonder and others, all considered to be hybrid teas, though some are called grandifloras, which are just big HTs. A sort of fake category that Europe doesn't acknowledge when I last read about it. And just growing traditional HTs is pretty limiting. No Austins for sure. No floribundas. No shrub roses of any kind. Boooring. Diane

In response to Roseann's original question, as someone who has routinely fit wayyyyy more roses than should fit in an average suburban yard, I don't think my experience is something that should be necessarily emulated. Until I lost them all to RRD 2 years ago, I had over 850 roses in a less than acre lot (that includes substantial space for a house and lawn space). I have a larger back yard than front yard because I live on a circle and have a wedge-shaped back yard, but my front yard is mostly suburban average.

I achieved these ridiculous numbers of roses by:

- planting roses that were not suited for my yard so they were scrawny runts (including some teas)

- using every available bed and vertical surface for roses as possible (along with other perennials and a few annuals)

- planting them way too close together so they didn't grow to full size and had more disease susceptibility

- not feeding or watering them enough so they continued to be substandard size for what the rose could do

- killing off a lot of substandard sized roses that didn't survive my winters so I could plant more roses and repeat the cycle

I realized that I can do better in my zone after visiting a lot of gardens of people in my local rose society who have monster sized bushes that I could barely keep alive (like Angel Face, for starters). Some of them had minis that were shoulder height and far bigger than my average HT/grandiflora. They had roses they didn't winter protect with canes as big as my arm and only fertilized them once a year.

Now that I have had two roseless years to ponder things, I am now:

- planting roses suited for my climate (which fortunately is now zone 6a so I can cheat more)

- making good use of vertical fence space for roses exclusively and planting more non-roses in one mostly shady area where roses really weren't happy

- watering them much more consistently, and planning to feed them next year (they're all first year plantings this year)

- planting grafted roses or growing them on in pots longer so they have a better head start to survive our winters without protection

You'll - um- notice one notable missing element not corrected from the previous list. As I plant roses back in my yard, I'm taking a more careful look at how much realistic space they are likely to take up, but I'm still planting them more closely than any of the books say they should be planted. I continue to strive for "rose chaos" as my ideal and I have a dry enough climate that disease pressure of mildew or rust or even too much blackspot is low enough that I can cheat on spacing a little. OK, a lot. Yep, cheating a lot, but planning how I cheat and for which roses. Quadra, Sunrise Sunset, Guirlande d'Amour, Edgar Degas, Olivia Rose Austin, and all the Canadians get their own spaces the size of a minivan (horizontal and vertical both) with no crowding allowed. Peach Melba is astonishing this season as a huge and lovely space hog I hadn't anticipated (new to me from Palatine).

Bottom line for my plans - as far as I actually plan these things - is that I'd rather have fewer roses that look like Diane's than dozens that look like my previous scrawny runts. Not likely to get there, but if I strive for that it might keep my rose addiction in check to some extent. Yeah right, ha! Well, maybe, but I'm not admitting to how many roses I've already planted in all those large empty roseless spaces this year. I'll only admit to three months of rose planting and I'm not quite through my pot ghetto. I'm not back to where I was in rose numbers but I'm ... well... let's just say I'm still certifiably rose addicted and not wanting to be cured. Just reformed a bit.

Cynthia