A New Bed Out Front.

I realized last week that there are no roses on our property that are visible from the road … not the best situation for a rose nursery, don’t ya know. The first roses that anyone can see is the garden of antique hybrid teas by the house or the OGR border along the side fence between the front yard and the pasture. With all the roses here that are trapped in pots, surely I have some to plant by the road for passers-by to see.

It would be lovely to plant roses along the entire front fence, but there’s only a small area with full sun. The south end of the fence is shaded by oak trees, and the north end is behind the magnolia tree.

I decided to make a small semi-circular bed and plant two roses at the base of the nursery sign: Cadenza, a bright red climber, will be trained to wires on the fence, and Sunshine Sally, an arching yellow shrub, will grow at Cadenza’s feet.

Here’s what it looked like after the herbicide I sprayed last week did its job ... and all the grass and weeds are dead.

Cardboard is the perfect thing to put under mulch. It keeps just about everything from growing up through, worms love it, and it degrades over time and feeds the soil. (We happen to still have a few moving boxes lying around, saved just for this purpose.)

All finished! It’s going to look a bit threadbare till the roses grow. I have to resist the urge to pack more into this space … once these two get bigger, there won’t be room for anything else.