Roses & Dahlias

Our garden is an invertebrate oasis and I find roses and dahlias to be a lovely addition to our diverse backyard habitat. Roses have attracted unique crab spiders and cool assassin bugs to the garden that I haven’t seen on any other plants, and open-centered dahlia varieties really delight the pollinators!

Some Rose & Dahlia Visitors! (1) a Black-tailed Bumble Bee (Bombus melanopygus) visiting a dahlia (2) a Crab Spider (Misumena vatia) camping on a rose (3) a Bald-faced Hornet (Dolichovespula maculata) visiting a dahlia with a Bombus vosnesenskii behind (4) two Bombus species (flavifrons and vosnesenskii) competing for dahlia pollen.

Our Rose Varieties

I admit, I wasn’t a huge fan of roses when I was younger, opting for other flowers in bouquets or for special events. But with a large home garden in the Pacific Northwest, I have fallen in love with roses and dedicated ample space in our garden, as well as along the sidewalk out front for passersby. However, the rose plants out front are subject to grazing by deer and struggle to reach the showy volume of our roses in the garden.

Our Dahlia Varieties

It takes more effort, but I dig up my dahlia tubers each year and store them over winter in a special box and system I created. Finding unique varieties you love can be a real investment! And I don’t want to risk my tubers rotting or freezing in unpredictable Portland winters. I make sure to add open-centered varieties to our garden, which really delight the pollinators..

Roses & Dahlias

Our Rose Varieties

Our Dahlia Varieties

Erin Forrester