Sunflowers for days!
Cutting from your own garden is a great reward while the roses are in full bloom. Roses certainly steal the show, but what if you wanted to enhance your roses with companion plants that could also be cut? We have a specially selected list to help you decide what annuals and perennials might be suitable for cutting alongside your roses.
While we typically recommend planting rose gardens by themselves, the addition of certain plants is not out of the question!
Coneflower
The first step to consider is how much space you have in the garden for neighboring plants to your roses. Creating a seperate cutting garden of annuals and perennials might be necessary if space in the rose garden isn’t adequate.
Generally speaking the same type of soil preparation and amendments would be suitable for your garden plants, with some exceptions for any particularly “special” plants that may have profoundly different growing conditions from roses.
Purple Cosmos
Next consideration is the “season” in which your companion plants will bloom. For example, daffodils would not be the best choice since they bloom well before your roses. One of the great benefits of our list is that we have selected cutting flowers that will be in bloom around the same time as your roses!
And, of course, the companion plants you choose would have to be tolerant of full sun! So, without further ado, our list is below. It is by no means all inclusive, since there are so many possibilities to choose from!
Late Spring:
Yarrow
Ornamental Grasses make great additions to arrangements.
Monarch landing on a Zinnia.
- Nigella
- Snapdragon
- Peony
- Hydrangea
Summer:
- Sunflowers
- Zinnia
- Celosia
- Cosmos
- Dahlia
- Gladiolus
- Calla Lily
- Garden Phlox
- Oriental Lily
- Yarrow
- Bee Balm
- Red Hot Poker
- Alstromeria
- Salvia
- Garden Mums
- Bells of Ireland
- Coneflower
- Ornamental Grasses
Coming Up Roses 