Loved for their large blooms and sweet fragrances, roses’ timeless beauty and charm are hard to resist. A rose garden uses these show-stoppers to transform your landscape into a cheery, romantic space full of impact and a joy to spend time in.
Formal rose gardens were the norm in the past, paying homage to the classic elegance of roses. However, modern gardening practices have resulted in rose garden designs that incorporate annuals, biennials, and perennials together with roses for a sleek, contemporary look—this also helps prevent rose sickness.
Whether you’re growing rose varieties specifically for attracting pollinators, their fragrance, ease of growth, or their blooms, the following rose garden ideas will help you combine all your favorites for a fun-filled, colorful space.
Take a look!
1. Incorporate a Garden Bench
Your rose garden wouldn’t be complete without a seating area from which to enjoy the view. Of course, comfy garden sofas and loungers are preferred, but a simple garden bench will give your space that classic English garden look.
Include other cottage garden plants among the flowers for a pretty garden retreat filled with fragrance. This is the perfect spot to enjoy an afternoon cup of tea while reading a book!
2. Use Raised Edging
A rose garden is an excellent way to establish colorful foundation planting along the base of your home. The raised rock edging in this idea helps the rose garden feel like an integrated part of the home, while various colorful roses lining the wall create a vibrant display.
Combine various flowers and shrubs that bloom in spring, summer, and fall to have a colorful landscape throughout the year.
3. Define Areas
Rose gardens may be suited to relaxed, cottage-style layouts but can also work in more formal ones. In this idea, roses cultured as hedges pair nicely with the neat lawn in this contemporary landscape.
Go for neutral shades to give a pop of color while remaining calm and understated. White, yellow, blush, and red varieties will provide the best impact.
4. Use a Trellis
Utilizing vertical space in your landscape with planting adds instant impact and will always draw the eye. With a trellis, you can achieve this with your beautiful roses.
Whether it’s climbing or Hybrid tea roses, this idea will create a lavish look and be a lovely addition to your backyard.
5. Take it Higher
For a full-on spectacular display, cover your ground with roses and utilize rambling and climbing roses to obscure unsightly structures while adding height to your garden.
You can use different shades for your groundcover roses, but for a uniform look, use similar ones on your arbors and pergolas.
6. Make it Eclectic
There are no limits to how many roses you can plant in your rose garden. The procumbent roses in the above example act as ground cover, concealing bare soil and suppressing weeds.
Most of these roses have single or semi-double flowers with nectar that will attract pollinators. Planting roses on sloppy land is also an excellent idea for controlling soil erosion.
7. Build a Fence
With smart planning, you can easily create a border using roses in your landscape. Plant roses in clusters, but ensure they vary in height to create colorful layers.
8. Keep it Subtle
You don’t have to be extravagant with your rose garden design. Even a small flower bed of roses like this can create an eye-catching feature in your yard.
Go for roses with a bright color to draw the eye and have a significant impact on your landscape.
9. Add a Water Fountain
The rambling roses on the arbors in this example bring height to the mixed borders of roses and bushes below.
These roses will surely fill your space with a beautiful fragrance, and incorporating a water fountain will bring quintessential elegance to any rose garden.
10. Bring Color to Xeriscaping
Take a more informal approach to your rose garden and incorporate xeriscape plants and hardy perennials to bring color and height.
There are several hardy roses varieties, such as Katy Road, Belinda’s Dream, and Redleaf roses, and they’ll add beauty to your dry garden.
11. Charm with Roses
Plain hedges have a neat look in a landscape, but blooming hedge roses are much more fun to have! The row of dense red rose bushes in this idea creates an attractive hedge that adds beauty and privacy to this landscape.
12. Plant on Top of Trees
Growing your roses through trees will make a knock-out combination and a gorgeous-looking feature in your rose garden. One advantage of growing roses and trees together is that they won’t require maintenance, so you only need to admire and watch them shine!
13. Grace the Pathway with Color
Training climbing roses over arbors or pergolas along a pathway can make entering a home truly magical.
Choose different rose varieties for each arch to create visual interest. Some of the arches have been left bare to add dramatic effect.
14. Garden Borders
To elevate your garden design, try using rose bushes as the garden borders. Mix your rose bushes with compact climbers trained along the fence to create a beautiful backdrop to make your relaxing and outdoor entertaining exquisite.
15. Rose Clusters
Planting various rose varieties en masse creates waves of color that bring drama and high impact to a space. You can choose a palette of corals, hot pinks, jewel tones, or pastels—the choice is ultimately yours!
16. Utilize Container Gardening
If space is at a premium, skip the formal backyard rose garden and go for rose varieties that can grow and flourish in containers. Such a rose garden will add a pop of color to your porch or patio and is an excellent solution for small backyards and apartments.
Plant traditional roses in large pots or raised wooden gardens to beautify your deck, then use miniature roses in smaller pots to create a tiered garden that will bring height and color, like the one above.
17. Mix with Perennials
In the past, roses were grown primarily in beds dedicated to roses only, but nowadays, growing roses with companion planting has become normal.
Mixing your perennials with wild roses will create a relaxing tapestry of texture, color, and scent. A repeat-flowering shrub like the Gertrude Jekyll featured above is an excellent rose variety for such. Just be sure not to overcrowd your plants since roses need good air circulation.
18. Perfect with Monochrome
Go all in for a significant impact with a rose variety you love most. This rose garden design uses a row of vibrant white roses to infuse this front yard with a cheerful explosion of color.
A monochromatic rose garden will become your landscape’s focal point all summer and instantly boost the curb appeal.
19. Go for a Clean Look with Pavers
If you want your roses to be the stars in your rose garden design, create several sections divided by a lawn and brick pavers.
Pavers will lend your space a contemporary feel, while roses accenting them will bring the splendor of Versailles to your landscape.
20. Space it Out
Arbors are always a lovely addition to a rose garden. Similar types of roses have been used on these arched structures, creating uniform, fragrant canopies that also provide a striking focal point.
Leave a clear space between the two structures for an informal and abundant look.
21. Rivers Of Roses
Planting numerous roses of the same variety is a common practice in formal rose gardens and can create a show-stopping look.
If you plan on doing this, ensure you plant in odd numbers and use them as borders weaving through your landscape, as shown above. Mix floribunda, Hybrid tea, and shrub roses for a truly unique look.
22. Intermingled Plants
Give your rose garden a rustic feel with circular metal trellises. These trellises add a luxurious and stately feel, while the bourbon roses create a romantic cottage garden ambiance.
Pair your climbers with lavender if you want your roses to have an even more significant impact.
23. Combine with Boxwood Hedges
Create a lovely first impression by pairing climbers on arbors with boxwood hedges along a pathway for a dramatic entrance.
The floral-covered arched structures here make an impressive impact, while the green hedges give this pathway a lovely look. To create a focal point and add a dramatic effect, incorporate a sculpture at the end of the path.
24. Keep Your Arbor Design Simple
Frame your home’s entrance with a simple arbor design employing greenery vines and colorful rose climbers. The green vines in this example provide a subtle background, allowing the high-climbing vibrant roses to stand out.
Complete this look with low-growing roses and other plants for a refined appearance that will have your guests and neighbors asking for design tips!
25. Lovely Colorful Bush
Planting your roses as a hedge or a large mass grouping will give your contemporary home garden a luxe look.
Go for roses that produce an abundance of delicate flowers while being unfussy, such as damask and bourbon roses, and stick with neutral tones like blush or white—yellow and orange will also help give a pop of color while staying calm and understated.
26. Make a Big Statement
No matter the size of your rose garden, it’s worth considering how to bring blooms to every level for a complete and sumptuous display.
Use obelisks and walls to train ramblers and climbers to provide much-needed height, and standard rose bushes to offer interest lower down.
27. Accent a Stairway
Standard roses, whether in-ground or planters, have a traditional yet playful aesthetic and are excellent accents for staircases.
This tiled stairway has been surrounded by soft ground cover plants that blend beautifully into the landscape. Pick roses in similar shades for a soothing result.
28. Utilize a Lattice
Growing roses on the side of an arbor using a lattice can really make a feature of an entryway. The roses in this design add a little color to the white arbor and gate.
Consider leaving parts of your arched structure bare to create a serene, uniform look.
29. Enliven Your Outdoor Chit-Chat
Surrounding your gazebo with a rose garden can make a spectacular focal point in your landscape.
Climbers spruce up the pathway to the above gazebo, while vibrant rose planters surrounding it add a whimsical touch. The sweet fragrances will surely refresh your outdoor conversations in such a setup!
