Roses are the star plants of the garden in spring, and even longer for the remontant varieties. By choosing wisely, you can dress the base of your rose bushes in a durable way, creating a splendid setting for a good part of the year.
Why dress the base of roses?
Some shrub roses can become a little thin at the base, especially as they get older. Medium-sized plants will fill in this visual space and enhance the beauty of the roses, while taking over from the blooms during slower periods. Another advantage: they will shade the base of the shrub, keeping the soil cooler for longer.
Some plants even provide protection against disease and pests, while others create a contrast of colors or textures, so don't be afraid to plant!
The best plants to dress up the base of roses
The perennial geranium is undoubtedly a first choice plant to dress up the base of bush roses. Very hardy, it can remain in place in the garden without fear of frost, and comes in many varieties. Among them, 'Johnsons Blue', the best known, whose deep blue color enhances yellow, pink or white roses. Also in blue shades, think of campanulas, these robust and easy to grow plants that are at home in most gardens, or nepeta, which blooms abundantly from May to November in lavender blue spikes.
Very graphic, large irises accompany the flowering of roses in spring, in beds or in mixed borders; their colors, whose palette is very wide, adapt to all shades of roses!
Lupines also work wonders at the foot of roses, especially varieties with large white spikes that will contrast perfectly with red roses. Here again, you can vary the pleasures depending on the color of the roses, creating scenes with similar shades of pink and mauve, or on the contrary, creating flashy contrasts with orange and blue.
Think also of penstemon to give a little wild side to your beds. These very easy to grow perennials bloom for many months, in clusters of bells, sometimes pastel, sometimes bright, depending on the variety. There are so many varieties that you won't have any trouble finding a color that goes perfectly with your roses. In the same style, the gaura, gives a country note from May to October, all without any particular maintenance or effort from the gardener. White, pale pink or fuchsia, gauras bring lightness to beds or flowerbeds.
Gypsophila and its myriad of small, vaporous flowers, whose pure white color is a perfect match for all shades and styles of roses, is widely used by florists to enhance rose bouquets. Do the same in the garden!
To combine business with pleasure, plant decorative alliums at the foot of your roses. They will protect them from cryptogamic diseases as well as from certain parasites while magnifying them thanks to their large mauve pompons.
Finally, think of plants with decorative foliage such as heuchera, which will be happy in the shade of your roses, forming splendid shades of color, or santolina, mugwort and lavender with silver foliage, which are always very easy to combine with all the colors of roses.
