A good garden should extend your living space and your lifestyle. Whether you look to your yard for privacy and solitude or for entertaining and dining with family and friends, a Rose Room can be created to accomplish this.

Size the space. First determine how you want to live in your outdoor space. Having goals in mind eases the design process. How large a space do you need for outdoor dining or entertaining? Private spaces should have a more intimate scale. Perhaps your goals also call for kid- and pet-friendly spaces. Also, consider how outdoor and indoor living spaces can be blended together. Foundation plantings and decks and patios help provide a border between the two.

Shape with plants. Plants fill four roles in creating outdoor rooms: background, focal point, filler and channeler. Background plants help define the space. They define boundaries and create a sense of enclosure. Hedge roses such as SimplicityŽ or climbers trained on an arbor or wall work really well for this.

Foundations and wall plantings can also be considered background, since the house often forms one side of the outdoor space. They give outdoor context to the wall and soften lines that might otherwise overpower the space. Mix plant varieties for a more interesting foundation. Climbers espaliered on a wall form a beautiful tapestry. Smaller shrub and miniature roses cover unsightly foundations with their full, mounded habits.

Accent plants. Nothing is more showy and commanding than hybrid tea roses. Their tall, upright habit with large, bold flowers work well as garden room focal points. With blooms
usually at about eye level (4-6' tall) and vibrant colors such as the coral Spellbound or unusual Tahitian Sunset or Ronald Reagan immediately draw the eye.

Radiant Perfume, Melody Parfumee or Bella'roma are especially fragrant focal points.

Supporting cast. Not every plant in your garden should be a star. Select a blend of plants to fill in gaps and help support the focal-point plants. Filler plants don't have to be boring, just complementary in flower color or leaf. An en masse planting of floribunda roses, for example, keeps a Rose Room supplied with beautiful background color.

Pastels or shades of apricot work well for this purpose. Apricot-colored roses aren't visually overpowering in a garden, but their unique color reflects light. Sisters at Heart is an excellent filler plant because it easily blends in, but is radiantly hued in its own right.

Entrances and paths. Once your outdoor room has a foundation and gathering points,
it's time to plan entrances and exits. These transitional elements make the room functional. Channeler plants propel people through the garden like the channels of a river. An outdoor room becomes much more dramatic and inviting if the channels are as well thought out as the actual room itself. An arbor with climbing roses or groundcover roses edging a walkway narrows the field of vision, giving the visitor a sense of movement and the rose room entrance greater visual depth.

Rose Rooms for urban gardeners.
For large gardens with many "rooms," plant
pools (beds and borders) and channels tie them all together. But even with small gardens, this concept helps make them more functional and appealing. It can even be applied to apartments or townhouses where the garden consists of a balcony or patio.

Patio tree roses in decorative pots can shape entrances into balcony Rose Rooms.

Twilight in the Rose Room. One rose color that deserves special note is white. Since it's a blend of every color, it goes well with any hue. It's the lightest color in the gardener's palette and can work as a visual bull's eye. The best
time to enjoy the garden is often in the evening when summer heat subsides. White also glows in the twilight, making it the best choice for evening gardens.

White SimplicityŽ as a background, Sweet Freedom as a focal point, Fragrant Wave, Crystal Fairy and Blossom Blanket as fillers and Climbing Sombreuil as a channel or entry.