White Flower Garden/ Anyone Have One? Or suggestions?

Edulis Superba (3) got them by mistake,since I ordered three red ones. But am mistake I fell in love with - a first year plants! I put all three on my parkway. I love the way it ended up echoing Bourbon rose "Kathleen Harrop', sister of the famous Zephirine Drouhin. I accepted this rose because Zeph wasn't available at the time, and wow am I happy.

Lady Alexandra Duff (1) Another mistake I really love.

And some I don't have decent pictures of, like Paul M. Wild, Tourangelle, Coral Charm, Philippe Revoire.

I have 20 in all. Sometimes because people sent me the wrong ones and then replaced them with the wrong ones!

Donna ~ Wow! Just beautiful. I have (now) Festiva Maxima in the white garden, and a pink tree peony and a herbaceous pink peony. I don't know what their names are. I will take some pictures when they bloom. I am sure I have pictures of past years' blooms in my desktop, when I used a camera before I had a smartphone. That pink one is a beauty.

Roses are easy to root from cuttings. White roses that I have start from cuttings are: Iceberg, Moon Dance, Double de Coubert, Sombriule, John Paul II. There are many white dahlia from tubers. Japanese Anemone is one of those thing that you only plant once and have a lot. So is Feverfew. There are also Dusty Miller, and wormwood that's silvery and looks good in a White Garden.

Mock Orange-my first choice as well as Sombriel Rose, Moon Dance Rose, Double Cobert Rosa Rugosa Rosa and other White Hybrid Tea Roses, White Eden Rose,

Thank you, lancer23.

1. Sombriuele rose 2. Moon Dance rose 3.mock orange 4. clematis"Armandii" 5. Japanese anemone

Beautiful! Thank you.

I just picked up a Bridal Wreath Spirea at my nursery today. I wasn't planning on buying plants today. I was just picking up supplies. It was in a one gallon container so it was just the right size.

This message was edited Apr 20, 2017 12:35 PM

Hey Evelyn!
I hear you. I was just going to drive through the Lowe's parking lot as a short cut to another destination. Then, I decided to stop and see what was on the clearance rack as I was looking for some more Iberis (Candytuf). They didn't have any, but they had Abrieta for a $1 for a quart pot so I bought it.
Then, I checked out the Heucheras because I have been wanting another Caramel. It has really turned out to be an excellent plant. Well, they had those too so I bought one of those. Sigh. Oh well.
Sorry, off topic.

birder ~ Maybe we should start a new thread...."I wasn't looking for it", or something like that. I bet there would be a lot of entries....

Wow, Lancer, where's my shovel? Oh, you're in California. San Francisco. Maybe I can make another trip - I've been there twice. Fabulous.

Well, I thought the Spirea x vanhouttei ('Bridal Wreath') was on topic...adding to the White Flower Border. Silly me!

It is SO easy to get carried away...😊

Donna ~ I am considering a climbing rose. Either White Dawn or Cl. Iceberg. Which one do you prefer? The white Lady Banks only blooms once, so I would put it on the other side of the gate to bloom for the rest of the season. Of course, it will be a while before it grows up since it is still quite small, but they get huge. Would this be a practical idea?

OK, don't laugh but.....

I cannot grow Iceberg. (First picture). I went through six of them. Hilariously enough I mentioned this to Peter Schneider, author of Right Rose, Right Place and the author of the Combined Rose List (every rose in commerce, anywhere in the world) and he can't grow it either. It's a phenomenally beautiful rose.

It may mean nothing, but I can't grow floribundas of grandifloras. I went through 4 Crimson Bouquet and a Jacquelyn Du Pres (second picture), which supposedly resents pruning, died when I cut off dead wood.

White Dawn is descended from the completely reliable New Dawn, although the flowers are very different. It does grow 12 to 20 feet, so stand back.

Climbing Iceberg has an incredible reputation, and it tops out at about 12 to 13 feet.

Both are very disease resistant.

For sheer beauty, I would choose Iceberg. After all, I loved it so much I tried again and again!

Donna ~ That is exactly what I was thinking, but I thought to get your opinion first, since you know so much about roses. I tried Blanc Double de Coubert and they died on me, but I am not sure why. I did not like their thorns, but it is a beautiful rose. That was a long time ago, and I just don't know. I am not even sure that they were alive when I got them, I just thought that they were dormant. I will call Roses of Yesterday and see if they have it, as they only ship own root roses and they are here in California.

Update on White Flower Border

Today I planted out a few plants that I received from Annie's Annuals and Perennials in March. I was unable to plant them before now due to the rain and snow. I would work in between storms, weeding, cleaning and mulching, getting the area ready. My neighbor is supposed to pick up the rest of the strawberries that were left over after I dug out all the others and put them into 2 new beds. So if she doesn't come by soon, I will just dig them up and pot them myself, so I can thoroughly condition the area before any more planting. The strawberries and white violets have been there a number of years, along with deep-rooted weeds. There is only a little bit left to do there.

Here is what I planted today:

Bellis perennis
Linaria purpurea 'Alba' (3)
Agrostemma githago 'Ocean Pearls'
Delphinium elatum 'Double Innocence'
Lupinus regalis 'Gallery White'
Scabiosa caucasica 'Perfecta Alba'
Nemophila menziesii 'Snow White'
Nicotiana alba grandiflora

I noticed that I left one out. I had been holding it back in case of frost, as our last frost date is said to be May 15th.

I am still growing quite a bit from seed, but they are quite tiny. I realized that I should have started in January, but I did not. Previously I had sowed some sweet pea seeds in the ground and also some white morning glories. Nothing has emerged yet, but this is the first warm day in a while.

While I was there, I did a bit of weeding. This border had tiny weeds, but the adjoining border's weeds weren't so tiny. Previously I really did weed that bed completely and mulch. I will be doing that again as well. There may be more to report tomorrow.

Oh, I did plant one plant yesterday, and then came in because of the cold wind. It was the one gallon Spirea Vanhouttei 'Bridal Wreath'

Here is the picture of the Spirea. It is just a one gallon and look at the blooms!

Very nice Spirea.
You are doing a lot in your gardens. We have had 80* + weather and today it's only to get to 50* something. Wind Chill right now is 43* and rainy. I have actually welcomed the reprieve.
I have a lot of seed on racks in the house but they are slow. The weather has been too unpredictable to do much seed sowing outside. Our latest average freeze is April 15th.
I've also been doing a LOT of digging up plants and potting them up for our MG Plant Sale. They needed to come out of the garden. They were crowding other plants. It feels good to purge my gardens.
All of your white plants sound really nice.

What kind of racks do you have? I am running out of room in the house.

It's a stainless steel metal rack I bought from a store that was going out of business. It has five shelves counting the top of it. Hubby put some poles that has a lot of holes in them so I could lower and raise the lights which are LED florescent shop lights. He put aluminum rods that he cut in pieces to hold the lights up from the plants.

Clever husband!

Hi Evelyn,

If you're looking for a white rose... I'd suggest Glamis Castle (an Austin rose of great beauty).

Some other white plants that I really enjoy and would recommend are Valerian (which has a wonderful fragrance and lovely white flowers) Omphalodes linifolia (Venus's navelwort) - very prolific, but easy to thin out if they become a nuisance - I love how delicate they look... penstemon Huskers Red is a lovely plant - hummingbird magnet, ......and a new favorite is Cenolophium denudatum - Baltic Parsley (butterflies love this plant), white heliotrope... which I highly recommend for the flowers as well as fragrance... -:)

Also...do you have room for a passion vine? There are several white varieties that are gorgeous... this is the one I grow. - Nancy

Thank you, Nancy for your thoughtful suggestions.

I LOVE Glamis Castle. I had one at my former home. Now I have 2. The only caveat is that I have to preemptively spray it for blackspot. But it blooms all season, and has a lovely scent. The first picture was taken in 101 degree heat, after I had been away for a few days.

Donna and Nancy ~ That is a beauty! So Glamis Castle is better than Iceberg? I only have room for one, which is inside the fenced garden area, due to a heavy deer population.

Having grown both, I think that Glamis is far more sumptuous. When I moved, I reestablished roses that really worked for me, and instead of doing them in singles, I did multiples. I ran around looking for places to put this rose.

I also think that the form is better. It looks lovely all by itself. I was trying to use Iceberg to accompany a rose. Glamis is a star all by herself, and I wouldn't put her in a supporting position. The flowers have far more petals, and it forms a better shrub, fuller and less linear. And as you can see from the first picture, she did wonderfully somewhat neglected in 101 heat. I got out of my car, in which the thermometer read 101, and walked over to the rose, which was next to brick hardscaping on the south side of my yard. I took a series of pictures because I couldn't believe it.

Evelyn honey,

I just ran across a question of yours on another thread. Alliums are not biennials. They are primarily perennials. I have tons of them, and they come back every year if they are hardy in your zone (which 90% will be.).

Allium karataviense
Allium christophii
Allium All Summer Beauty
Allium caeruleum
Allium oreophyllum

And there are more!

Purple Sensation
Ramosum (fall blooming)

I have all the ones I have mentioned so far and have had them for years.

And probably some in your zone I couldn't grow, like roseum.

http://www.whiteflowerfarm.com/329003-product.html

Avoid the cultivars that cost a fortune. Those hybrids don't come back true from seed. Add avoid chives. If you plant them, you will have nothing else. They seed insanely!

In some pictures, Glamis Castle seems to be pink, and in other pictures, cream. I was hoping that Iceberg is pure white.

Glamis Castle is definitely pure white. Sometimes it is described as white with cream shading. I saw one picture with pink shading, but that's misleading.

Donna ~ Thank you very much. Since I have not actually seen one, I was looking at pictures which were deceiving.

I saw the pictures you saw, and you are right, the rose looked pink.

Whichever one you choose, you can't go wrong. I love them both. The fact that I went through five Icebergs tells you how fond I was of that rose.

Donna ~ Glamis Castle isn't a climber, is i?. I was looking for one side of the arch, to go over the Lady Banks rose as she only blooms once. That's why I was thinking of climbing Iceberg. Is there a better climbing white rose? Sally Holmes, White Dawn, Mme. Alfred Carrier, Long John Silver, Aimée Viberi (really nice!)...there must be more...

No, Glamis is not a climber.

I have never seen the point to a climbing rose that only blooms once. There are surely some very nice climbing white roses but there are a lot of issues. Rebloom, thorniness, disease, vigor. And you can consider a lot more roses than I can because of your zone. You can use noisettes, teas, chinas. There are some gorgeous roses in those categories, and I have looked at them and thought, oh wow, but I have no experience with them, and I never recommend anything I have not grown or worked with in a client's yard because growers and vendors hype roses - something that early believers in David Austin's hype will tell you. He recommended Glamis Castle, and then when he wanted to introduce white roses that were patented and therefore more lucrative he disavowed it. I saw how well it did in my climate in Austin and ignored him. Then he recommended it again.

When I was looking for my first red climber, which had to be a "mannerly' climber, I went through a process in which I went to the library, went on line, went to garden centers, and examined the data on at least 50 roses before I picked Dublin Bay. Then I had the information I needed to know to pick other red climbers, which I needed to offset the pink/white/blue theme in my garden. I found Tess of the D'urbervilles, which can be grown as a shrub or climber (I have it as both). My best find was Quadra, which I needed for a big trellis in my zone - it's zone 4. I have it working its way up a light pole.

It would probably be best to take your time and do some research. Growing and training a climber is a process that will take you at least three years - the first year you just let it grow, and between the 2nd and third you begin to train it, and as it continues to grow you train it some more. So you want to get the right rose.



This message was edited Apr 29, 2017 5:51 AM

Donna ~ Thank you for your insight and counsel of this matter of choosing my white climber. Are you a landscape architect or garden designer?

I don't think that the white Lady Banks is an official climber, but since it is so vigorous I think it can be trained as so. It is really spectacular (IMHO)!

You are right regarding thorniness. I don't want to be all scratched up every time I have to deal with it!

Hi Evelyn,

I have been a Master Gardener for five years now. I had the bones laid for the garden of my first house and had basic landscaping put in. It was in full sun with a very high ph (7.9). I learned a lot about the mistakes landscapers make, mostly planting plants with a low ph in high ph soil (so they become chlorotic), planting things too closely together (so that one plant dies), planting trees delivered in wire bags without removing the wires the wires out into the ground (they sucker over time and many die), and planting things at the incorrect depth (I lost six of seven viburnums trilobums because they rotted). I then took charge.

I started out reading, reading, reading. And planted tons of stuff. I started going out of state for my plants since I lived 40 miles from the Wisconsin border, and found I liked plants that were different (they were also 20% cheaper and if they planted trees for me the Illinois sales tax was waived). Then I moved to my current home, where the ph is fairly neutral and I have 40% shade. And where the previous owners of 20 years had planted almost nothing (which is a real blessing) but put leaf mulch everywhere. So I got to design essentially from scratch. People liked what they saw and started asking me to design their gardens. I am on my third one. I love finding out what people like, what their needs are and what their dreams for their gardens are. Because I don't have a relationship with a nursery I might order a rose from Colorado or a plant from Washington or what have you. I like the approach of bringing some to my garden (which is sort of three gardens in one) and asking what they like, instead of imposing upon them the same plants everyone else has. And often, if they really like something I have (geranium 'Bevan's Variety is a big hit) I simply dig it up and take it to their gardens.

I have been doing it since 2012, and designing and maintaining gardens is the biggest blast imaginable. I can't believe people pay me to do it.

Here is a shot of a portion of my first garden. Everything to the right of the grasses is actually the easement. I asked if I could grow stuff on it and they said yes, so.....

The second picture is of my parkway about 3 years ago. My community is very cool about letting you take over the parkway if it looks good.

So I took it over. The last three are from last year. I filled it with roses and peonies and perennials, including grasses.

Donna ~ That is just beautiful! And so is your story!!!

Yesterday, my neighbor finally came to get her strawberries. The only problem is that she only took half of them! So yesterday I dropped what I was doing, dug the strawberries for her, and then immediately started digging a new bed for the balance. I have all of that area cleaned weeded and mulched, except around the old pine tree stump where all the
strawberries are/were. Today, I am amending the new bed, and then will out the balance of them in there. I am looking forward to having the rest of the area clean and ready for seeds and plants.

Then, I can focus on cleaning out the other beds, so the enclosed garden area can look nicer, as the other beds are now full of weeds, some more than others. Also 9 Square Foot Gardens need to be ready for the tomato seedlings, which are growing nicely. The big pots I have already cleaned out.

OK, I need to get back to work!
😀