Roses are my favorite flowers, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love other plants, too.  Roses have several big flushes during the spring, summer, and fall.  While they are between flushes, (even though there are always some roses in bloom), if you spot in some summer bulbs and perennials, your flower beds will always be a riot of color!  Here are some of my favorite varieties of floral companions for roses.

Old-Fashioned Farmhouse Hollyhocks

When we moved to our Queen Anne Victorian five years ago, I stood on the south side where my rose cottage garden is now and looked up, up, up!  Ours is a very tall house!!  I felt I needed some height at the back of the garden beside the house and immediately thought of my grandmother.  Thirty plus years and three houses ago, she had given me a plastic bag full of hollyhock seeds.  She said, ‘Marce, just throw these around in a sunny spot and they will come up and make you happy!’  And, they are Victorian flowers.

Four years ago, I bought twelve hollyhocks on line that were guaranteed to be perennials.  (Many modern powder-puff hollyhocks are biennials, and I don’t have a desire for plants that are foliage the first year, bloom the second, and then expire.)  My grandmother’s hollyhocks grew about 7’ tall and put up two or three sturdy stems.  My new hollyhocks put up 5-7 stems that grow 9-10’ tall!  They begin their bloom cycle during the roses’ first flush in June and continue until it’s time to cut them back in the middle of August.

Reseeding

They produce a gazillion seeds, and reseed themselves easily.  I had bee-pollinated hollyhocks this year that bloomed in baby pink, pink lemonade, red, lavender, soft yellow and deep rose.  I love them!  Good news:  plenty of seeds and plants to give to friends and family!  Once you have hollyhocks, you will always have hollyhocks.  They are the gift that keeps on giving.  My friends and neighbors love to come collect seeds and dig plants, and that puts a smile on my face.

Fragrant Floral Companions: Oriental Lilies

I love lilies of all types, but I especially love the giant Oriental Lilies.  Their fragrance is totally intoxicating!  I planted a dozen of them the year we moved in here and they are absolutely gorgeous.  They are so showy that I planted them in the front gardens right in front of the porch railing for my neighbors to enjoy.  We have a privet hedge right by the sidewalk to edge the front yard and it is right next to the sidewalk and close to the front porch.

We are a walking community here on South Main Street, and when the lilies add their intense fragrance to the roses, my neighbors always get all swoony from the headiness of it all!  I almost always have my small pruners in my pocket, so I’m happy to cut a stem or two for folks to take home and perfume their house.  Lilies bulbs last for many years and multiply underground.  Last spring, they were crowding the roses in the front beds so I dug some and gave them to my neighbor, Jean, for her garden.  This is their second year there, and I think they have made her happy!

Echinacea, or Cone Flowers

Cone Flowers grow into large clumps of what looks like daisies on steroids with a big, cone-shaped center!  They come in the most incredible colors these days.  I have red, electric orange, spicy orange, deep yellow and a couple of color-changing varieties.  I popped cone flowers into my garden when a new cultivar named ‘Rainbow Marcella’ came on the market.  Then, ‘Yellow Rainbow Marcella’ was introduced, so I had to have that one, as well…while Marci is my nickname, my big name is Marcella!  I felt they were named after me.

Coneflowers are incredible perennials.  Their colors are amazingly bright and they are splashy and showy plants.  They have done nothing but add to the beauty of my gardens and are very popular with beautiful little bumble bees. Next year my plants will be big enough to divide, so I’ll be sharing them with anyone who is interested.

Decorative Dahlias

Here are gorgeous flowers to grow with your roses.  They sprout from tubers that you plant in the ground when the soil warms in the spring.  There are many varieties of dahlias from bedding size (10” tall with 3” blooms) to the large-flowered dinnerplate dahlias (4-5’ tall with 8-10” blooms) and every size in between!  These are probably the most elegant non-rose blooms in my garden.

I love to float a big dinnerplate dahlia in a footed antique glass compote.  The smaller decorative dahlias (4-5” across) are also gorgeous and all of these come in a myriad of colors!  The bloom in the photo above is lovely ‘Eveline.’  She looks so delicate but lasts up to ten days in a vase.  Dahlias also look gorgeous in mixed bouquets with roses and greens.  Mine began blooming in the middle of July and will continue until the first hard frost, which will kill the foliage.  (Dahlias are not winter hardy in my zone 6 garden.)

Pruning

At this point, I will cut off the dead foliage and use my garden fork dig and lift out the tubers.  I wash off all the soil and pebbles and leave them in the garden to dry out for a few days.  I will then label the tuber with a Sharpie and put it in a covered plastic container with dry potting soil, along with all the other dahlia tubers from the garden.  Then they will winter in a cold room in my cellar till planting time next spring.

There are many plants that will make great companions with roses, from annuals to perennials to spring bulbs to those I have described here.  I love gardening with roses and other flowers!  I also love sharing with my friends and family.  Try this yourself and I guarantee it will bring you much joy!