When homeowners consider redesigning or renovating their property’s landscaping, we’re often asked to install flower beds and rose gardens. Though we’re not all blessed with a green thumb, through careful planning and plant selection we can deliver a garden that’s well within your comfort zone and capabilities to maintain. We’ll give you time to grow a green thumb. For those who enjoy gardening as a hobby and appreciate the classics, we can also install rose gardens with your favorite varieties.
While most backyard flowers, whether perennials or annuals, have relatively simple care requirements, roses are known to be more challenging. Due to this, we’ll save you some time and share our advice on how to have a successful rose garden in Minneapolis.
Picking the Proper Location for a Rose Garden
Thanks to the rose and its stubborn requirements, picking the right spot to grow your garden is critical. If you choose the wrong location, no matter how much effort and time you put into the project, you won’t have the outcome you envisioned. To avoid this, keep in mind that roses need to have:
- Six to eight hours of sunlight each day.
- Some sort of protection from unnecessary weather and water. Gardens are meant to be rained on, but they don’t do so well if you have them under your roof’s overhang or near the downspout where they’re hammered during rain. Picking a place under a large tree (where they can still get sunlight) or near trees is often good to help protect them in both summer and winter storms.
- Well-drained soil that’s organically rich. Since most yards don’t have the perfect soil, to begin with, we’ll combine nutrient-rich soil with your existing yard for a nice blend.
Also avoid north-facing areas of your yard that receive little sunshine, if any, during winter. Those brutal conditions of being frozen in ice all season hurt roses and much more.
Intended Use for the Rose Garden
Once you have your location chosen, you need to determine any additional elements you may want for the space. For example, some homeowners want a bench, a bistro table with chairs, or even an outdoor water feature installed. For these cases, you need to have these items planned out and often installed before the plants, so consider the following:
- Will there be a walkway or pathway through or around the garden? If so, will they be paver or stone steps, a crushed rock trail, or concrete?
- Will the garden be the focal point or is it complementing another element such as a waterfall, water feature, new koi pond, or sitting area?
- Can you tend to the flowers easily or do you need to install a watering station, new irrigation, or more spacing between plants for ease of navigating between them?
- What ground covering will you have – rocks, mulch, topsoil, etc.? Will that require trim edging or be fine without it?
As you can see, it’s much easier to identify these specifics by envisioning your intended uses before the thorn monsters, I mean roses, are planted.
Picking the Right Type and Color of Roses
That’s right! Not all roses are created equal and for those of you that don’t know, Minneapolis-St. Paul is considered a 4b planting zone but you could play it more safe by focusing on the 4a varieties that may be even more resilient. There are a ton of wonderful roses in this range, so your best bet is to figure out what you want and if it’s available. Naturally, we help where we can but some varieties can be harder to locate than others.
Now that you know what zone to peruse, make sure you spend some time picking the colors that will be best for your long-term goals or vision of the property. While roses can be problematic, they can also be long-lasting and regal installations that are quite timeless. Since we’re optimists here at the Landscape Guys, we like to encourage our customers to pick either classic colors or ones that compliment the home’s other attributes nicely. Dark homes can benefit from pops of color like white, yellow, and pink, whereas lighter homes can enjoy more rich tones such as purples, reds, and hybrid blends.
Calling the Landscape Guys to Install Your Roses
If you’re adventurous and willing to learn, you may choose to tackle installing the rose garden alone. But you may want help from guys who have created a lot of opulent rose gardens and enviously smitten neighbors.
Contact Landscape Guys today to discuss your goals and get an estimate. We serve the entire Twin Cities area and beyond.