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Flowerbeds with conifers and roses are decorative landscape compositions widely used to decorate gardens and parks. In garden plots, low-growing species and varieties, which are easy to care for, are more popular.
Roses and conifers in landscape design
Gardeners' love for roses and conifers has a long history. The beauty of rose bushes does not need advertising. Most varieties bloom throughout the warm season, and the variety of shades allows you to select compositional solutions to suit every taste. Conifers, in turn, organically complement decorative landscape compositions, attracting with their valuable qualities:
- unpretentiousness to climatic and soil conditions;
- the ability to provide shade and absorb dust with a thick crown;
- improve the health of the surrounding air with valuable aromatic substances that repel many pests.
The crowns of low-growing and tall conifers combine perfectly with masonry walls, natural and artificial ponds, and small groups of trees and shrubs. With their help, they not only decorate existing flower beds, but also outline the boundaries of paths, create hedges and other compositions.
Combination of conifers with roses
It is good to plant rose bushes and conifers together in the same flower bed, not only because both are perennials. This is an excellent combination from the point of view of the same plant preferences for soil composition. Even in a very limited space you can achieve an impressive result, because roses and conifers can feel great in tubs.
The most popular types of coniferous plants for creating such compositions are:
- Juniper. Low-growing and dwarf varieties with a height of 10 to 70 cm are ideal for edging flower beds. Among them: Blue Star, Blue Carept, Echeniformis.
- Thuja. Its most valuable advantage is its good responsiveness to formative pruning. Thuja can be easily turned into a ball or cube. The best varieties: Hoseri, Danica.
- Fir. Dwarf varieties, for example, Brilliant, Oberon, Silberlock, look amazing in flower beds. An adult plant grows only half a meter in height in 10 years.
- dwarf pine. The varieties Pug, Pumilio, and Mugus are popular in landscape decorative compositions. An important advantage of this type is its strong, pleasant aroma, which goes wonderfully with the scent of roses.
- Blue spruce. Usually this tree reaches a very impressive height, but breeders have developed the cutest dwarf varieties: Lucky Strike, Montgomery, Glauka Globoza.
- Yew. The red bark and light green crown are a real explosion of color, especially next to the roses. Scarlet berries look incredibly picturesque.
Rules for creating compositions of their conifers and roses
When designing an individual composition, it is worth taking as a basis time-tested solutions that evoke admiration for their beauty. Photos of conifers with roses in landscape design can be a source of ideas. A flowerbed in which both types of plants are simultaneously present can be composed according to the following principles:
- Compact – the most popular, usually placed near a fence or facade. Conifers are placed in rows or circles, and their sizes are selected in increasing order - from the edges to the center. The shortest growing crops, such as juniper, are planted at the edges. The middle row is filled with dwarf trees, such as pine trees. The center of the composition is given to an ephedra whose crown can be formed, for example, into a thuja. Roses fill the gaps.
- Bunk – it is created from conifers of the same species, but of different varieties, including height. For example, the outer tier of a flower bed is formed from dwarf fir, and the inner tier from ordinary fir. Roses between the tiers will create additional contrast with their flowers and leaves.
- Curly - the most picturesque. For it, plants of different heights are selected, planted side by side, without forming strict lines. On the contrary, the greater the variation in height between neighboring trees and bushes, the better. Places next to the largest species are given to roses and various ground cover crops, such as mosses and lichens.
The idea of creating a flower bed with conifers and roses in itself should not be implemented spontaneously. Typically, such work consists of standard steps to increase the chances of success:
- Draw a drawing or diagram of the future composition, which indicates the location of each plant and the distances between all participants on a scale.
- The perimeter of the flowerbed is filled with the selected material: brick, borders, curbs, large crushed stone, etc.
- Mark the planting sites for all bushes and trees and dig holes of appropriate sizes for them. A small layer of drainage made of sand or small pebbles must be poured onto the bottom.
- Roses and conifers are planted, and the holes are filled with nutritious soil mixture. The trunk circles are mulched with pine needles.
Caring for a garden with conifers and roses
The most unpleasant thing that can await a gardener who has lovingly planted perennial conifers and expects an excellent result is the yellowing of the needles, which should delight the eye with a lush green or smoky blue hue. To avoid burning of needles on trees and bushes, which occurs in the spring, when the soil is still frozen but the sun is already very bright, protective screens are installed in front of the young seedlings. But it is better to carry out intensive watering in the fall just before frost. Another reason for unwanted yellowing is snowless winters, when the soil freezes to a greater depth than usual.
During the entire warm season, conifer seedlings are watered rarely - 2-3 times a month, but very generously, adding up to 15 liters of water for each. Planting trees and bushes in flower beds is fed with vermicompost or compost, adding 5 kg of it per square meter. The emphasis is on potassium and phosphorus, but not nitrogen. Sometimes yellowness appears due to a lack of magnesium, which should be added as a preventative measure.
Another mandatory measure for caring for all types of conifers in flower beds is regular formative pruning. How much to cut depends on the type and variety, so you need to check with the planting material supplier.Caring for conifers is simple, it requires only a few hours a month, and the results are truly amazing.
Roses react poorly to dominance weed, therefore, the open ground around them is often strewn with fine crushed stone or gravel to save their own energy. The technique is also good because it will prevent the soil under the bushes from drying out too quickly on hot days. Conifers respond favorably to such proximity.
Tender shoots of roses are susceptible to invasion by aphids and other pests. Insects can also damage young needles of neighboring bushes and trees.
Roses are pruned in spring. Remove shoots that have frozen over the winter and generally shorten the crown by a third, and the tallest varieties by half. Roses in flower beds need fertilizing every month. In the first year, organic matter is added, and in the future you can limit yourself to spring and autumn applications of complex mineral fertilizers.
Roses need watering to a greater extent than conifers. If trees and bushes with lush needles can be watered only a few times a month, then water is poured under roses when the soil dries out. The preferred time is morning or late evening, so as not to harm or burn the delicate petals. Showers are arranged only in arid regions, and where it is cool in the mornings and evenings, only root watering is practiced.
Photos of roses and conifers in landscape design
As picturesque samples for creating your own masterpieces in your garden plot, you can use the following photos of a combination of roses and conifers in flower beds performed by professional landscape designers.
Conclusion
Flowerbeds with conifers and roses are the pride of a gardener who has chosen a time-tested, elegant combination of plants that attracts admiring glances. For many years, a well-chosen composition of trees and shrubs will only become more beautiful.
