Planting as a ‘Living Green Mulch’

In a recent garden, an elderly client had a large Rose garden with a substantial collection of varieties. The garden was his pride & joy and he spent large amounts of time keeping the area immaculate and dead headed. Lately he had undergone some health issues that meant that the garden had gotten a bit overgrown and shabby looking. I spent a bit of time in the garden to get on top of the weeds & deadheading. After the clean up had been done, he said that he wasn’t sure that he would be able to manage such a high maintenance garden going forward and was looking for ideas to help reduce the workload of the garden.

After seeing how much the Roses meant to him, I was loathed to advise that he should remove any. I suggested underplanting a Living Green Mulch to help reduce the work needed in weeding the garden. Geranium ‘Rozanne’ is a vigorous Geranium that is useful for filling in areas & will also scramble up through the Roses without smothering them or out competing them. As there was such a large collection of Roses in all colours & flower types, I decided that a blanket underplanting would act as a canvas for the Roses to shine. There is also the added bonus of a second flush of growth & flowers if the Geraniums are cut back in Mid summer.

The plants were planted earlier this year and I saw the garden recently, the owner is delighted with the result & is looking to expand the underplanting into more of his Rose beds. The simple underplanting has allowed him to enjoy the garden without having to spend as much time weeding & risk getting cuts on his arms from the roses (an issue related to medication) and he didn’t need to remove any of his much beloved Roses

Rose collection underplanted with Geranium ‘Rozanne’ as a living green mulch