Progress in the rose garden, part 2

Peony

Now that I've pinned down the three areas that I want to focus on this year, I suppose I should plan on regular updates. Perhaps monthly for each area?

Since I last posted pictures of the rose garden, I've pruned the roses and planted a few groundcover plants:

• 3x Stachys byzantina 'Silky Fleece' - a very short Lamb's Ear 
• 3x Erodium x 'Bishop's Form' - Heron's Bill, which I actually thought was Crane's Bill, it's very similar
• 1x Phlox subulata 'Crimson Beauty' - pink creeping Phlox 
• 2x Phlox subulata 'Emerald Blue' - blue creeping Phlox 
• 3x Ranunculus asiaticus 'Mache' - mixed ranunculus, but these three are all red 

Clockwise from upper left: Creeping phlox, Heron's Bill, Ranunculus, Lamb's Ear

I'll need more plants, just trying a few of each to get a better sense of how they'll look (and how many I will need!). I  think just these few plants make the rose garden look nicer already though. The peonies that I planted in the fall are coming up too, I'm excited to see how much they will grow this year.

West fence on the left, north fence on the right; the colored flags in the middle mark the peonies

I dug out a section of grass above the juniper, where I had tulips planted years ago but then the grass took it back - and found some baby tulips coming up, which I transplanted to the front fence.

Then dug out another section of grass, from below the juniper down to meet the edge of the retaining wall. Seen from below, there's now a straight line from the side retaining wall to the juniper. That should be all the heavy digging in this area, just the fun digging of more planting to come. 

A lot of digging

The bottom section of the roses is an experiment in doing nothing, I'm letting geranium come up from seed here. I can't tell yet if it's the same geranium that I have growing in the garden bed below the retaining wall (seen on the left side of the photo below), which is probably 'Rozanne', or if it's a more wild pink flowered version. I've seen both in this area in past years and pulled them out along with other weeds. I've just done a little weeding to keep out the bittercress and dandelions and now will see how the geraniums look by summer. 

Lower section, looking up (west)

There is a fabric layer buried somewhere under all the mulch, which I don't want to pull out this year but I also don't want to plant anything permanent on top of it. I pulled a strip of it out last year along the side retaining wall to plant gladiolus bulbs and a few transplanted pieces of vinca and creeping phlox. I also planted gladiolus and transplanted vinca behind the roses, against the rock and concrete wall (almost visible on the right side of the photo above). I'm having second thoughts about the vinca now because it can spread a lot, but it didn't grow much last year so I'll wait and see.