Rose Garden- Gravel Mulch

I examine any and all junk mail magazines for landscaping. Pottery Barn, FrontGate, Ballard Designs and Anthropologie are a few of my favorites. 

A year ago, I came across a rose garden with beautifully defined borders and pea gravel ground cover and couldn't get it out of my head. The pea gravel ground cover attracted me because it seems like a good way to keep weeds down and keep the rose garden low maintenance. I was advised against it by a reliable source, but I don't remember why. 

I researched rose gardens and gravel, but didn't find anyone who has actually done this. Out of sheer desperation I asked google "can I cover rose garden with gravel" and it led me to GardenKnowHow and this bit of information:

Gravel Mulch For Roses
I use ¾ inch gravel mulch called Colorado Rose Stone around nearly all of my rose bushes. The gravel mulch is knocked by some as they say it will make the root zone too hot and kill off the plant of bush. I have not found that to be the case in my climate here in Northern Colorado at all.
I like the gravel as I can fertilize all of my rose bushes and plants by sprinkling the fertilizer over the gravel around the bushes, rock the gravel back and forth a bit with a hard tooth rake and then water it in well. I can add some organic matter as well by sprinkling some bagged Top Dressing over the gravel and water it down in well. The zone under my gravel is then a very good soils zone and the organics do their thing to mix further down into the actual root zone. 

Well, that's good enough for me! I cleared the area, added the weed barrier (harder than it looks) and tossed what pea gravel I had around, on top.

Baby's napping. Time to get to work!

"Before" with the weeds, including evil Horse Tails popping up for spring.

After I cleared the surface of the bed, I tossed some Casoron weed killer around and then fed the rose bushes.

Laying the weed barrier down around the thorny rose bushes was harder than it looks.

I'm done for today. After I buy some pea gravel, I'll post the "ok, I'm really done now" photos below.

Because of this graveling-the-roses project, I had to define the little space around my chives. I used rocks dug up from the yard to separate the bed from the flagstone path.

I'm finished for today, but I still need about 10 more bags of pea gravel and a little more weed barrier until this project is complete. A trip to Home Depot is in my future.

The gravel mulch has been over the rose bed for two months and the mature roses are ready to pop!