While roses of many colors ramble all along the journey from the house through the orchard to the walled garden, the palette for the roses within the walls is mostly white, with a slight flush of pink. The only exception is Rosa ‘Veilchenblau’, a once-blooming hardy rambler grown over a rustic tripod in one of the large perennial beds. Its generous clusters of magenta-purple flowers, fading to a grayish lilac, tangle with the nodding lilac-colored blooms of Clematis ‘Betty Corning’. On the back wall, pale pink ‘New Dawn’ blooms above Viburnum plicatum ‘Mary Milton’, whose blushing flowers accompany its rose companions. Nearby, the delicate gray-plum foliage of Rosa glauca is contrasted with the bold velvety chartreuse of Hydrangea aspera. The rambler ‘Rural England’ sends its masses of flowers cascading down the rock face, to be joined later by Rosa setigera, a late bloomer planted by the gardener Tony Bielaczyc.

In June the walled garden is a symphony of roses blazing, cherries ripening against the wall, allium seedheads tottering on long stems, meadow rue reaching for the sky, silver lamb’s ears jostling with golden lady’s mantle, bees buzzing among the flowers. All the elements conspire to keep the garden humming in harmony and looking just wild enough without tipping over into chaos.

The poetic beauty is tended by Bielaczyc’s careful hand and artful eye. The vigorous ‘New Dawn’ and ‘Constance Spry’, planted next to each other, require some vigilance to stay distinct, with just a gentle overlap. To keep Rosa setigera from taking over the path, Bielaczyc layered it into the rock face with pockets of soil and encouraged it to scramble upward. The tender ‘Blush Noisette’ is given winter protection. To prune ‘Veilchenblau’, he has to “take it off the tripod entirely, lay it on the ground and cut it back, and then put it back into place.” Such effort is worth it for the plum-toned roses, a riff on a scale of rich burgundy colors in the flowers and foliage and fruit of other plants in the garden: Hydrangea aspera ‘Plum Passion’, Angelica gigas, Physocarpus opulifolius ‘Monlo’, Geranium phaeum ‘Samobor’, Nicotiana ‘Chocolate Smoke’, Italian plum. Vertical plants—Verbascum chaixii ‘Wedding Candles’ and foxgloves—provide strong upright elements to counter all the rosy blowsiness.