The planting of roses along with other types of flowers might be a better choice for a garden than just planting roses alone. Having only one species of plant in a garden is often frowned upon as a “monoculture,” and for good reason. A single species that gets hit with a pest infestation or some kind of disease could be entirely wiped out, leaving nothing in the garden at all. Floribunda roses might be hardier than, say, hybrid tea roses, but it’s still not a good idea to plant the garden with just one type of flower. You’re safer to put other flowering plants in as well.

When you think of planting roses along with other flowers, though, you have to take new factors into consideration. One of those will be height. For example, floribunda roses generally don’t grow much higher than two or three feet. You likely wouldn’t want to choose petunias as their companions, unless you pick a variety that grows along the ground, because you’re likely to get nothing but a big mash-up of flowers. You might prefer to put something like alyssum below the floribundas instead.

You could put together different configurations for the bushes also. For example, by placing roses more closely together and clipping the leaves in certain ways, you can produce a rose hedge. If you line your sidewalks with hedges like these, even going out for a stroll would feel (and smell!) like strolling through a bower. Planting roses to climb a fence in back of some shorter annuals in beds around the edges of the property could also provide additional attraction to your garden design.

When setting annuals between and among your roses, you might create a rose garden design that’s different from what you’ve been prone to do in the past. You could place more shade tolerant roses along walls where you’ve never had them before, and show off the colors of your roses by creating a contrasting background color with your annuals.

You can experiment with all sorts of companions and configurations when planting roses with other flowers or finding creative ways to arrange the roses themselves. You can help reduce the risk of all your roses succumbing to pests or disease, and create a lush arrangement of many different types of flowers at the same time.

Rose gardening is considered to be a little more difficult than some forms of gardening. But rose plants can transform your garden and you will have fresh flowers whenever they are blooming.