Great list. Many of these would be in my top 20 also. I hope you can find lots of them locally. So much simpler than mail order. I'm glad you're relying on Rogue Valley Roses for only one of the plants. They've elevated mislabeling to an art and I never order anything from them anymore. If I ever want a bunch of nondescript shrubs with mundane pink blooms, I'll place another order from RVR. That's all they seem to send me, no matter what I order.

I am so glad I stumbled on to this thread. The title of it caught my eye from the "Recent Threads" section on the ATP Home Page. I love the look of the new to you "old house" and what you have done with the gardens in just one season. Although I love all aspects of gardening, I think the design aspect is my favorite. You've done a great job! I am looking forward to watching it progress.

My place is wooded, so I don't have roses (yet) and haven't visited this forum before. After seeing the photos of the beautiful gardens of your previous place, I really need to spend some time and look around at past threads here. My grandmother had a rose garden and having one of my own has always been something I've wanted to do. I have a sunny area in the side yard that we cleared of trees near the house where I'll eventually put one. The photo of yours a few posts back is an inspiration.

Just for kicks, here is a photo of my grandmother in part of her rose garden circa 1960.

Welcome Terri! I hope you will be a regular visitor. If your grandmother's gardening talents are a family trait, I'm sure we'll soon be seeing lovely posts of your new rose garden too.

Good photo, Terri.

Zuzu, I know you've not been satisfied with RVR; I included them because they are the only online nursery I could find that (presumably) carries Singin' in the Rain. It was consistently one of my longest blooming roses -- remember the photo I took several years of it blooming in the snow on Thanksgiving day here in New York? My only complaint about this rose is that the stamens are quick to turn brown and a little mushy while the petals hold up for a very long time.

Terri, that's a great vintage photo! If you're looking to be inspired to grow roses like your grandmother did, you've come to the right place. The online database we've assembled of individual cultivars is among the best in existence. And there are lots of photographs in the numerous threads showing the members' roses. If you want to see some photos of garden designs, you'll find some of them here, too. (And not to take you away from this resource-filled website, but you can also visit my site at www.lens-work.com and select the photo album for a Hudson Valley Rose Garden to see photos of garden layouts, in addition to rose "portraits".)

Regarding your wooded landscape, several years ago there used to be a website titled A Woodland Rose Garden. I think you can only view the archived version of it now, but you might find it interesting:

http://web.archive.org/web/200...

Gosh, Mike, what a delight for the eye! Thank you for posting the link to your site, I like it very much.

Wow! I agree with Debra; I love your photos and the way your site works! Thanks for the link.

Thank you both. And thanks in particular for the positive feedback on how the site works, as I've given a lot of thought to it and chosen it over other designs. There are many professional photographers whose work I admire, but whose websites I don't particularly like. They often have the same overall look and feel without much individuality. Ironically, the links to their portfolios are often text-based with no imagery until after you click on the link. Then you frequently encounter "flash" webpage technology (no pun intended) with fade-ins and fade-outs that can take too long to "get there." I think it makes it difficult to get an overall sense of their work without clicking numerous links and not knowing what to expect.

I opted for this design's rather different functionality because it makes things accessible relatively quickly using a layered approach. The first layer is comprised of "albums" that can be scanned without even opening them (by dragging your cursor across them). The second layer is the mid-sized thumbnails shown after "opening" an album. The third layer is entered by clicking on the thumbnails to view enlargements or to view a slide show of the entire album. It strives to give the visitor whatever access they want quickly, and with relative ease. I hope it accomplishes that.

Mike - Have you thought about doing a WP website? They're super easy to build. I was able to get mine going in about 1/2 hour. But I do have a slight advantage.. I've been coding HTML since '95. I only have a few websites active right now.. one's for the company I work for & my private "amateur" photography I'm trying to get off the ground.

Toni - I looked at WordPress when I built my site a few years ago, but wasn't thrilled with their templates for photography sites. However, I do like their templates for other types of websites, and they are quite easy to set up from everything I've read.

Here's mine.. I thought it was simple enough.

http://catsonkeyboards.com/

& my friend's site is even way better IMO. I should change it, but too lazy.

http://www.mindbend.org/

Do you ever feel a rush of excitement at some kind of revelation that could be the starting point of a new endeavor? Well, that is what I'm feeling this morning after looking at the link for a woodland rose garden. Someone on DG mentioned a few roses for shade once, but honestly, it never even occurred to me to incorporate roses in to the shade conditions of my woodland. I still love the idea of a traditional old fashioned rose garden, but this new idea of also using them in my existing Hillside Shade Garden has my mind a hummin... Thank you so much for sharing that info Mike!

I really enjoyed the photos of the rose garden on your web site too. It makes me wonder why anyone who doesn't like or want gardens would buy a place that has such beautiful gardens with no intention of keeping them. Reminds me of one of my neighbors that bought 10+ acres of woodland and then proceeded to clear cut all of it. Boggles my mind, but to each their own I guess.

So this season the focus was on getting your plants relocated to the new place and the initial gardens established. What will be next? I can tell from the photos of your previous place that this is just the beginning. My husband isn't the gardening enthusiast that I am, in fact he doesn't quite understand the passion, and he always asks me when it will be done. I always respond that it will never be done, that working on it year after year is half the fun LOL.

Terri - Isn't that the truth? When you *think* it might be done, you find a million more things to do! Or, it's taken you so long to get "done" that you feel the need to change it all over again! My yard has been a work in progress for 5 years and this year would have been the final year in the front yard, but winter killed a LOT in the front (and back) and so, while I'm not at square one, I'm having to rethink & redo a lot! So it'll never get done!!

Mike - Earlier this year, I was faced with the prospect of having to move. And not just down the street, but to another state almost 1000 miles away (from Denver to Dallas). And I was sooooooooooooooooooo dreading that concept that I pretty much gave up on gardening this year. I knew that no one would want to take care of a tangled mess of a yard that I have and so had almost resigned myself to letting everything die and replacing it with grass (how BORING!!). The move didn't happen, thank goodness, but I lost a lot of valuable time (my gardening window is SOOOOOOO short here in CO and this year it's even shorter! Snow was spotted in the mountains already, so winter's coming.. my grow year has been about 3 months this year ). Next year I'm hoping to get my garden back in order and I'll take heart on seeing your beautiful scaping! *sigh*...

The gardens will also change as interests change. While Roses do and will make the foundation and border plantings for me, my perennial interests leaned heavily toward Daylilies. This year, have developed a deep interest in Iris, along with a wane in Daylily interest. Have rehomed several dozen Daylilies and brought 100+ named Iris (mostly through trades and for-postage gifts). Who knows--maybe in three or four years I will want to convert most of the front from flowers to herbs and vegetables. Change and whimsy makes it fun.

Terri, the person who discussed shade-tolerant roses on Dave's Garden a few years ago was me. American Rose magazine had published a list I compiled of roses that are known to bloom well without the customary 5-6 hours of direct sunlight per day, and I reposted the list on DG. For the sake of clarity, "shade tolerant" doesn't mean that those cultivars will bloom in complete shade; their tolerance for shade is along a continuum, and most of them still require a few hours of direct sunlight per day. I think I stored a copy of the list on an older laptop that I'll dig out of the closet, fire up, and repost it here if it would be useful. But I prepared that list some years ago, and since then I've noticed that some of the major distributors are doing a better job of labeling their offerings for shade tolerance. However, to be honest, I've been a bit skeptical of just how many roses have been getting labeled as "shade tolerant," and have wondered if this is just a marketing ploy in some instances.

Your best best is probably to ask members here in the forum which species they have successfully grown in partial shade. My first recommendation would be Cherry Parfait (and I've never seen it labeled as shade tolerant, but in my experience, it's does very well in a wide range of lighting conditions, and is a consistently reliable rebloomer). I have also found the hybrid musks to do well with only morning sun, altough if you let them grow really big like I have (i.e., 10+ feet high) they behave a bit like OGRs in their blooming habits - one big show in the spring, and incidental blooming thereafter.

The climber Zephirine Drouhin always gets mentioned as a shade-tolerant variety, but that has been disputed. I've grown mine in shade and although it bloomed occasionally, the canes were floppy and thin. My ZD survived the move, and I have replanted it in a sunnier location and it's doing well. Of course, I had to cut it way back, and you know the old saying about climbers: In the first year they sleep, the second year they creep, and the third year they leap! But mine has already put out a few blooms this year.

Debra, you are so right about the way in which gardening interests evolve. At my former home I made use of cottage garden designs, with a very high ratio of roses to other species, and would always pack my plants in "cheek by jowl" with no space to spare (you could hardly see the mulch). But then I would see more "strucutred" gardens and think to myself how attractive they were with their neat appearances, and would think to myself that I might like to try that some time.

So that's what I'm doing here at the new house. I'm leaving more open space and breathing room between the plants, and making more use of shrubs to "anchor" the garden, give it some variety in terms of structure and height, as well as give it some winter interest for when the perennials die back. And I hesitate to admit it, but my ratio of roses to other plant varieties is lower than it used to be. (I'm not sure how I feel about that, but I've enjoyed getting to know more about shrubs and dwarf trees).

I'm already seeing a difference in plant health. With more air circulation around the plants, I have a lower incidence of black spot among the roses, less rot among the Lamb's Ears, etc., and don't have to spray fungicides as often. Also, since the roses are in a much less tight formation, I'm having a much easier time managing / preventing Rose Midge. (Pray you never get this microscopic flying insect in your garden... imagine hundreds of roses with lots of canes and an abundance of healthy foliage, and not a single bloom in sight. That's a Rose Midge infestation, and there is no organic or contact insecticide that will remedy the situation. Only the nicatoids and a select few other systemic insecticides can combat this insidious pest, and I hate to use them given their non-selective impact on beneficial insects.)

All that being said, I look back on the photos of my former garden, and have to admit that I miss the riot of colors and forms that looked like a "spilt box of crayons" as one visitor described it.

I'm not sure I'll ever be satisfied.

Mike, to me, one of the great things about setting up gardens in the way you are approaching them in the new house is that you can get them established and decide if you really do like the more structured, less crowded beds. You can also set up a controlled chaos bed in the periphery, too, I'm thinking.

That situation would be heartbreaking. I hope we are too far south to be in their range, as I have not heard of or experienced that kind of problem, here. Which is a good thing because we have plenty of pests that eat my flowers already!

Mike, the Fed Ex guy described my yard as a "skittles explosion".
I too leave no bare spaces in any beds. It cuts down on weeding and also keeps moisture in, but the look is messy.
This year I've bought quite a few more specimen conifers and miniature trees. Gingkos are a new passion, and hopefully they will survive our climate better than the Japanese maples did.

Love that one, Cindi.

Mike, I missed your listing of shade-tolerant roses on DG, but I'll do a search for it. I had bookmarked the one I saw from the Shady Gardens forum by BlissfulGarden back in 2008:
"I have several area of partial shade/dappled sun that are currently graced with roses. I can verify that the following varieties can stand up to our Louisiana heat and humidity as well as perform well in partial shade: New Dawn (climbing), Marie Pavie, Mlle Cecile Brunner (climbing), The Fairy, Sea Foam, Iceberg (climbing white), Burgundy Iceberg (newer variety), Autumn Splendor (miniature in large pot and EXCELLENT!!!), and Baby Katie (also miniature in large pot)."

I'd like to start with a few that I could get some recommendations on, and try them out. In the end it always comes down to trial and error. I like the look of the Cherry Parfait you recommended. My color palette tends towards the cool shades of lavender, pinks, whites and although Cherry Parfait looks more red than pink, I think it would add the right tone for a pop of color. I would start with the areas that are on the edge of the woodland (open towards the small clearing around the house). Although still shady, those areas do get partial sun at various times throughout the day. Is it too late in the season to plant any now? I'm such a novice, at first I thought OGR was a reference to "ogre" aka that the rose gets huge, but then I realized you meant Old Garden Roses The OGRs really appeal to me in general, and so does the David Austin roses that have the OGR look.