It will definitely be beautiful, but I do wonder about root competition and your ability to supply appropriate levels of water. Now, were you able to have automatic irrigation... Otherwise, it should be gorgeous.

Thanks, Kim. Well, I do have drip there and this is one bed that I am sort of planning to keep watered. Climbing roses, ramblers and trees, etc. are supposed to get by on solely rainfall in my garden, once established, and so far it seems to work, but I don't think that floribundas can handle that sort of treatment. So my (vague) long-term plan would be to delegate two beds to floribundas which I would keep watering even after they are established. The rest of the garden would continue on as it has been doing since I started out about 25 years ago-water first season and then they're on their own. This year, btw, is going to be something of a trial year. I had my left hip replaced on May 20th and won't be able to do anything for quite a while yet. My darling DH stepped up and took on the watering, but there's only so much I can demand of him,especially since he has to go back to work tommorrow. He's only watering the floribunda beds,but there are quite a few new implants (mostly trees) scattered about the garden that will not be recieving water until I can get back. You see, the hip thing came on extremely suddenly this time. I had already planted out all these things way before my hip suddenly went AWOL on November 22. Luckily we had good rain throughout fall and winter and the beginning of spring though now, sad to say, i fear we're done So all I can do now is hope.

The thing is that I definitely want to mix perennials , etc in with the roses. It's just that I've had trouble so far getting herbaceous perennials like creeping phlox, aubretia, etc to establish.It's also very hard to estimate bloom time-I'd like something that would bloom with the roses (with the loropetalum this wouldn't be an issue, since to foliage is as much a part of the show as are the flowers). I think I have to get the roses off to a really good start, and then concentrate on the perennials.

Instead, the loropetalum ought to be a tiny shrub,and I'd just water it as if it were another rose. I also don't think that loropetalums are necessarily famous for liking dry conditions. One reason that I'm leary about putting, say salvias or cistus or baptisia in with floribundas is that I'm afraid the "drought tolerant" plants would bully the roses ,like ceanothus did. Does that make any sense to you?

Which reminds me-gotta start a thread on salvias...

@User yes ma'am, it makes sense. I hope drip works better for you there than I've ever seen it work for roses.

I don't suppose you'd consider violets for at least some of the space? The native sweet violets are very tough, I think are evergreen, fragrant. I've likely mentioned in the past that you can get cultivated kinds for greater variety: they seed, and offspring tend to resemble their parents. And I doubt they'd overrun even Floribundas. Nothing else comes to mind at the moment.

A' propos of nothing, Bart, do you grow any clematis? Many of them are amazingly tough in my garden: I was surprised today to see one I planted a decade ago, and always knew as a thread of a plant, barely hanging on, had grown all through a large escaped rose rootstock and was putting on a fine show. There's a texensis hybrid next to it, likewise thriving, and C. 'Durandii' further down the row. Forms and hybrids of C. viticella, an Italian native, seem particularly well suited, but others survive and grow.

About your ground cover for the Floribundas, I also keep thinking of small bulbs like scillas (native), snowdrops if they grow there, grape hyacinths, small daffodils, and cyclamen. I have all these, and generally they resist animal predation pretty well. Cyclamen have lovely winter foliage, are native, and increase if they're happy: C. hederifolium is the one I'm thinking of.

Thanks, Melissa. I'm not just looking for groundcovers here, but for companions that will bloom with the roses and add interest to the bed. Violets, -at least the wild ones-bloom way too early in the season to be a candidate,plus, they are ...well, the phrase "a shrinking violet", used to describe a shy person that tends to prefer melting into the background is well-founded.I think that you grow some non-wild cultivars of violets-could you tell about them please? How do they compare with the wild ones, for example?

The bulbs, too, flower too early-scilla has proved to be very aggressive in my garden. Messy foliage is all that's left by the time the roses kick in..

I agree with you about clematis- some varieties at least do indeed seem to be amazingly tough. I have several that I plan to add next autumn.

BTW, @roseseek-Kim, I totally believe you about drip not being ideal. But in my circumstances,my garden and I literally need all the help we can get. I can't get out to my land at all now while I'm recovering; my DH (God bless him) has been trying to get out there twice a week to water at least the 2 floribunda beds, but he prefers watering direct over using the drip system. I don't blame him-it's easier, more straight-forward. But when it's just me, and I'm trying to water ALL the new implants, the drip is the only way to go. I don't think it's adequate, but it's SOMETHING.

Bart, you're perfectly correct about the timing of these various plants. I wasn't thinking about coordinated bloom, possibly because nothing really comes to mind. Obviously some things bloom at the same time as roses, but generally they wouldn't fit in your space: peonies, for example; possibly tall bearded irises. I was thinking instead of sequential bloom, which is generally the case in my garden (and I don't have to worry about coordination), which gives me a long season of interest; practically all year. I'm in ecstasies about the violets, then along come the narcissus, and then the roses get going. All very satisfactory, but not to the point for what you're looking for.

Cultivated sweet violets look much the same as wild sweet violets. Once the bloom is done, you have the foliage, which is generally pleasant.

I might suggest some wildlings like field poppies and anthemis, also lady's bedstraw, perfectly lovely plants, if difficult to guide. But I suspect they wouldn't make a good impression in the staidness, as I imagine it, of a bed of Floribundas with their highly cultivated character.

P.S. Bart, how's your weather? Here I think it's just getting actually hot, and fairly sticky, though nights have been comfortable up to now. I think that may change soon. And it's dry, though groundwater levels look good. I would love some rain. How is your convalescence coming along?

Hi, Melissa. It's turned hot, here, and no rain is in the forecast, ; the summer weather always depresses me so much. My DH has been going out to water about twice a week-mainly only the 2 floribunda beds,though he got sick yesterday and so I don't know when he'll get back. All this stuff with me, and work, etc, has obviously been a strain on him, too.

As for me, this time around things are going much slower than they did for my right hip-my recovery from that was practically miraculous, lol! This time I worked too hard and strained the entire leg too much in the months preceeding the operation,and that is setting me back probably.

I'm glad your garden is doing well,though I struggle against envying you,lol! The fact that you found a VALID ASSISTANT!!!!!!!!!!! and the fact that you are clearly a much more sensible person than am I!

Eventually I hope to get more into the "sequential bloom" concept, too. Or rather-extending the season of interest a bit beyond rose time,since I already have been working on spring interest. I intend to continue that, of course (and planting stuff to provide precious shade); at this point my new project is the whole "coordinated bloom" thing. It's hard, because the roses tend to be a bit different every year,and, in case you've looked at my "Comparing Blue Salvias" thread,perennials are not a whole lot different; it seems that , at least with salvias, any given variety can bloom and behave differently according to location.

Iris are great, and I'd like a lot more. But peopnies bloom time seems just so brief that I don't feel much urge to get into them...

Hi, Bart. Sorry to hear that your recovery is going slowly, and that your convalescence coincides with the start of hot weather. I don't love summer either (a good swimming hole would help no end, but, Ha), though up to now we've been fairly comfortable, which is not a bad run of decent weather. But we don't live in a town.

Believe me, I know how lucky I am to have a good helper, especially after two years of watching the garden get more and more out of hand, and I less and less able to do anything about it. This is a great relief. And oh, I just love seeing the garden become more and more of a garden. I'm nursing a hope that, if we get the garden licked into shape now, keeping it up won't be as much work as this phase is. Actually, I think it says good things about my planning that the garden hasn't completely fallen apart in the last two years.

I don't know how long my helper will be working for me; not forever, but some months at least, I hope. Long enough to get through the fall planting.

Thank you for your good wishes, Kim. Yep. recovery is being slow ths time around... I'm so grateful for my DH.

Melissa, I, too, have the impression that my garden has been getting more and more out of hand, and I, too, can do less than before. You've always been ahead of me as far as helpers go-I remember you had people in the past, and your DH helped out, too. For me, this is the first time that my DH has done "drudgery" jobs like watering, so maybe I'm making progress?

Actually, we're comfortable in the house, too, for now, but it just depresses me to get up every day with the same weather, the only difference being that it just gets hotter, and no certain relief in sight for the next few months. SO tedious!!!