In early August, when I wrote about sustainable roses, I mentioned the Flower Carpet® series. Several years ago, when they were first introduced, I planted one in my east bed. For the first few years, I was thrilled with it. It bloomed nonstop all summer and into the fall. In succeeding years, however, my enthusiasm started to wane as the canes grew longer and longer and higher than I wanted. I tried pruning it to keep it in check but I finally decided to remove it. Too much time and energy was needed to take care of it.

In August, I attended the annual conference of Garden Writers of America and had the above conversation with a sales rep at the Anthony Tessalar booth because they were touting and giving away samples of Flower Carpet®Amber. She assured me that the newer introductions were much more compact and urged me to try one. Well, you know that I’m always ready to trial plants so, of course, I brought one home. Now I need a space in which to put it.

That brings me to another problematic rose. I love the Oso Easy™ series as mentioned previously with the exception of one and only because it gets too sprawly for my space. ‘Fragrant Spreader’ stays quite low but the canes are very long and need much more room than I can give them. Therefore, next week, I am going to dig it up and pot it. As a bonus, it does have excellent hips in the fall. One of you reading this post will be the lucky recipient. It is basically a groundcover rose so make sure you have a space that needs to be filled. Once it is out of my garden, I am going to plant Flower Carpet®Amber. I saw a mass planting of it at Floriade in 2012 and it was lovely, especially planted with a butterscotch Heuchera. I think it will blend well with my existing Geranium ‘Rozanne’ and some new Echinacea ‘Salsa Red’ for which I have been pulling out some Origanum vulgare ‘Aureum’, another aggressive spreader.

If my garden were ever finished, I don’t know what I’d do with myself. But we all know that, unlike paintings, gardens are never finished.