Hi! I’m David Epstein and this is Growing Wisdom.

And today, I want to take about flower carpet roses specifically in an area next to a walkway. And this particular area right now, grass it’s between two different shrubs. We’re going to take out the grass. And come back in a little while and we’re going to plant some flower carpet roses and maybe some other things here to make this area look really beautiful.

So, as we’ve talked about, we’ve removed all grass here from this area. And now we’re going to plant it and they came up with the little design. And we’ve chosen a nice mix of perennials and small shrubs. We’re going to lay them out, then we’ll put them in, mulch it, and we’ll be done.

I’m using flower carpet as one part of this overall design. And I’ve chosen to use amber because it picks up really great with this little sumac here. The sumac’s new growth has a little bit of that amber color in it and I think this is going to contrast really well. There are so many colors that flower carpet comes in. If you have some existing plants or you’re bringing in some new taller shrubs, there’s definitely a flower carpet color that’s s going to compliment the rest of the garden.

All right, so the first thing I’ve got to do, I’ve got to get all the plants laid out. And I like to do those while they’re in their pots just so I can tweak the design a little bit. Let’s get going.

So, what you’ve seen me doing is laying everything out. And I like to tweak it a little bit, step back, look again, look at it from different angles because from some angles plants look like they need to be separated a little bit differently. But I think basically this is the layout.

The flower carpets are in front. This is going to make a nice approach to the walkway. Of course, we’ve also used some of this wonderful volcano phlox and color flash astilbe. I love the color flash astilbe because it has that great color even when it’s not flowery. And some taller roses for a little more color in the back. And now it’s time to plant.

When you’re doing a design like this, it’s important not to plant everything and then look at it, look at it every few plants just in case you need to move a few things.

Our flower carpet roses are the last to go in along the walkway. And the reason I chose flower carpet, it’s really one of the first environmental roses. It doesn’t need chemicals. You don’t have to prune it. The flowers drop off and disappear.

And also during the winter, I can put the snow on top of the roses and they’ll come back every year. And these roses just don’t get problems like black spot and some of the other molds and melodious that you might get on your roses. They’ve just been bred so that they don’t get them. And just look how beautiful that is. They come with the rose food so you just get to mix this right in the garden.

Remember, as you’re taking the rose out, always a good idea to tease the roots. If the soil is not that great, you can amend it with a little bit of peat or compost but the flower carpets really seemed to do well in almost any soil. They just need about four hours or more of sunshine. And then as you’re done, we want to just water everything in, put a little mulch on it, and that’s basically the whole process.

Well, we’re done. Our amber flower carpet roses were so easy to work with and the color flash astilbe, the volcano phlox, our tall roses behind. They’re all going to work together. And they’ve all created this wonderful design. I hope you’ve enjoyed that little bit of wisdom to grow on.