Great Underplants for roses

Old roses combine particularly well with other flowering perennials and herbs. In fact I often grow all my vegetables for the year amongst the roses, tomatoes, broccoli, garlic, silverbeet, capsicums,lettuces, chives, thyme. All members of the onion, allium family also make good rose companions dettering other pests, even if they don't, the mauve flowers look nice amongst the roses and are good to eat. Being less disease prone old roses can handle being planted up close with other plants and these others keep on flowering after the roses have stopped or are taking a break. The underplants cover the ground making black spot (which comes from bare soil) less of an issue. Plus they keep the rose roots moist and stop the weeds, with 700 roses to weed myself I need all the help I can get.
The following are ones I use in my garden in a hot dry climate :
Scabiosas, evening primrose pink (be careful this can take over the garden), seaside daisy, erodiums, thymes, lamb's ear, santolinas, anthemis tinctoria, felicias, marguerite daisies, osteospermums, dianthus, carnations, arctotis, salvias, statice annual and perennial varieties, irises, daylilies, verbenas, gazanias, nemesia foetens, perennial wallflowers, diascias, wormwoods, perovskia, feverfew, chrysamthemums and nepetas.
Great old rose annuals flower companions I use are :
Shirley poppies, alyssum, lobelias, bellis perennis, violas, pansies, hollyhocks, larkspurs, wallflowers, nemesia, and cornflowers to name a few.

OPEN ROSE GARDEN
Our Heritage Rose Gardens are open for the whole month of November, cost $5 per person (there is parking space for buses and cars). See hundreds of different heritage roses in a large garden setting. Stepping into the garden their heavenly fragrances and sumptuous forms can be appreciated up close. The roses are underplanted with hundreds of complimentary Mediterranean climate perennials that are also in flower at this time. November is high-spring for us when every rose bush is covered in fragrant blooms. As our climate is hot and dry, many varieties that aren't available in other countries grow here out in the open in their full glory. Our sunlight is bright and clear which brings out the colours of the blooms particularly in the Tea and China roses.
Potted heritage roses and dry-climate perennials ar available to purchase on site.

A Holistic Garden
The rose garden is not a pile of bushes out in a field but a living working breathing garden, with pets running through it. It supplies us with cut flowers, herbs and vegetables all year. Owls, magpies, echidnas, honeyeaters and many other birds use our garden as a source of food, shelter and water (birdbaths). They in turn clean up the excess bugs around the roses. Our garden is stricly organic. We maintain there is no garden on earth that needs to use poisonous insecticides or weedkillers, poisoning our waterways and ecosystems.

Organic Care of Roses
- Accept that nature does not always aim for perfection, but it gets pretty close.
- Let nature take its course, wait for the ladybirds to take care of the aphids.
- Use organic mulches (straw, lucerne etc) & fertilizers (cow and chicken manures etc)
every year to protect the roses from soil-bourne diseases and to insulate the roots from extreme temperatures.
- Plant up corners of your garden with native trees, shrubs and groundcovers to encourage native wildlife to use and clean up your roses.
- Keep your roses healthy with lots of light, water, mulch, manure and allow air space around the bushes for air-circulation, to ward off fungal conditions. Healthy roses do not come down with diseases or chronic pest attack and if they do, they recover from them quickly and healthily.