Rose bushes are British gardeners’ favourite plant. In this complete guide to planting rose bushes, find out the best conditions for roses, how to plant them in borders or in pots, and avoid rose replant sickness.
Roses are cheap and easy to buy bareroot in Winter season, looking like this:
So these are the roses that you’ll get from us at Ashridge. So, these are bareroot roses. Basically they’ve just been dug up out of the ground from the fields, the rose fields, at the back end of the year. We leave them in the cold store, and then we send them out. If you want to trim the roots, just grab the roots, just take a little bit off just to tidy it up, mainly just to get it into the pot as well, really, or into the ground. But it’s the fibrous roots that you need to keep an eye on, and don’t let these dry out. The top part, just have a look for any dead pieces on them on the top growth, or any snapped pieces, or any thin pieces really. And you can kind of take them out, just prune them out. Prune these thin pieces out. And then you’ll get little snags like that, just pull them off. And then once they’re planted, then you can give it a good prune. Once the bud starts to break here, in the ground, prune them down to the buds. And always choose an outward facing bud. And you can thin some of this out as well. So this middle piece, about there, let’s take it out. So it gets a bit of a more of an open bush in the middle, and then all the flowers will be on the outside and grow straight up.
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Table of Contents
Best Conditions for Growing Roses
Roses are long-suffering plants and will grow in most gardens.
Whichever type of rose you’re planting, first consider Soil, Wind, and Sun.
Best Soil for Roses
- Roses like a moisture retentive, but well drained soil. No rose likes growing in a bog.
- Digging masses of well rotted organic matter into the soil before planting makes a big difference.
- Mulching around your roses is key: every year, in Spring when the soil has warmed up.
Some Wind is Better than None
- When roses get sick, it’s principally a fungal disease like mildew, black spot, or rust.
- The basis of rose health is good soil, cleaning up dead rose bits, pruning congested or rubbing stems, and mulch every Spring.
- As with humans, a good air flow really helps to prevent fungal attacks!
- In exposed, windy places, varieties that flower once in Summer are popular; when autumn winds gust, they’re covered in rose hips, not late flowers.
As long as you plant bush roses the shelter of hedges and other, taller shrubs, they should be fine.
Sunlight
- Roses need light, ideally half a day of sun in the Summer at least. You can grow climbing roses through a shady area to reach the sun.
Rose varieties for shade have more tolerance, especially when you compensate with good soil and air flow.
How to Plant Bareroot Roses Outside in Your Border
Soil Preparation
It is well worth covering the bed in a layer 3-4″ deep of well rotted compost or horse manure, and digging it over thoroughly to the depth of a spade.
Your roses will be growing there and flowering hard for the next 30+ years, so this preparation will pay huge dividends.
When to Plant Bareroot Roses
Bareroot roses, like all bareroot plants, are delivered from November to the end of March.
Planting Bareroot Bush Roses
This advice applies to any bush rose, whether it’s a Shrub, Hybrid Tea, Floribunda, Patio, or a Rambler when planted out in the open.
- Choose a spot in the border with good light
- Dig a hole large enough so your rose will be planted with the graft union at soil level and with plenty of room for its roots around the sides: trim off whipply long root ends
- Improve the soil from the hole by removing weeds, large stones, rubbish and roots and adding a shovel full of compost or well rotted manure
- Position your rose so its roots are spread out
- Sprinkle Rootgrow mycorrhizal fungi onto the roots in the hole so it makes contact, unless you’ve opted to use the dipping gel
- Backfill the hole with soil, firming it gently as you go
- Water in thoroughly
A standard stem “tree” rose will need a 120cm softwood stake for support.
Its bud union is at the top of the stem, so naturally it can’t go at or below ground level, as with other roses.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
Planting Bareroot Climbing Roses against a Fence
You will need your bareroot climbing rose, a spade, some rootgrow and a watering can filled with water.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
How Deep Should I Plant My Rose?
The short answer is that it really doesn’t make a huge difference in most cases: you can plant so that the graft union is above soil level, at soil level, or a couple of inches below soil level.
We recommend planting the graft union just an inch above soil level, which should give the best of both worlds.
The advantage of burying the graft union is that the rose will be very stable in the ground and won’t suffer from “wind rock”, which tends to affect taller shrub roses.
The advantage of keeping the graft union slightly above ground is that it will always be completely clear which shoot are root suckers that need to be removed.
How to Move and Replant a Rose Without Killing It
Moving and replanting roses is perfectly possible, and the younger the rose, the better it will transplant.
The big exception is if a rose is suffering from replant sickness, in which case it’s probably better to burn it and buy a new one.
It’s best to prepare the soil you’re moving the rose to in advance, as described above.
Moving a rose works best in winter, when it’s dormant.
- Prune the rose before lifting to make your job easier.
- Use a sharp spade to cut straight down in a 50cm wide circle around the base of the rose
- Go round the circle again, this time angling your spade in at 45 degrees and wiggling it to loosen the soil
- Then go round with a fork, trying to lift the roots. If there is strong resistance from a root, try to slice it with the spade again, don’t try to pull it up, which can cracking and twist the roots much higher up.
- Once it’s free, clean all the soil off the roots, and wrap the roots in plastic for the time being to keep them moist.
- Check the root-to-growth ratio. If there are masses of branches on a small root system, prune the rose so that the roots can support the growth in Spring.
- If there will be some weeks between lifting and replanting, then store the rose with its in a pot of fresh compost with a sprinkle of Rootgrow.
At the new site, Apply some Rootgrow or other microrrhizal fungi, and plant the rose into the soil – taking care not to plant it deeper than it had been before. Water, prune and mulch as necessary.
Moving a Rose in Summer is Riskier
If you absolutely have to move a rose in Summer, the chance of failure is higher.
Instead of making the rose you want to move bareroot as you would when it’s dormant in Winter (see above), the aim is to lift it with a decent rootball
Preparation: A week or two before moving it, hard prune the rose, giving the cuts time to seal up, and feed it with Rootgrow Afterplant
- On moving day, dig a circle around the rose one and a half times the size of the rootball you intend to move. This giving you room to get under the rootball, and allows you to remove slices of the sides until it’s manageable.
- Try to keep as much of the rootball intact as possible by putting it temporarily into a plastic nursery pot
- Move the rootballed rose to the prepared hole, sprinkle root grow on the bottom, and put the rootball directly on top.
- Backfill with improved soil, water well, feed with Rootgrow Afterplant, and then mulch around it.
- If the Summer is scorching hot and the rose is in full sun, protect it with a single layer of horticultural fleece. This is especially good if you are moving the rose from a shadier and/or more sheltered location.
Can I plant a rose where a rose was growing before?
Not really: rose replant disease stunts the growth of roses planted into soil where one was growing before, but there are things you can do about it.
Growing Roses in Pots
Bearing in mind all the above, it’s probably clear that roses in pots will need long term attention in order to thrive!
Rose breeders have been working for generations to create miniature and patio rose varieties, and tough, low, sprawling “ground cover” varieties like the Flower Carpet series that are smaller and less demanding, well suited for growing in pots with less work.
Potting up a Bareroot Rose
A 5 to 7 litre pot will do nicely for potting up a bareroot rose.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
The importance of potting up
To grow rose bushes in pots, especially larger varieties, it pays to “pot them them” several times.
Meaning you repot them yearly in progressively bigger pots, instead of planting straight into the big pot where you eventually plan to grow them.
Potting up has several tasty advantages, it’s the wise way to begin growing roses in pots; if the practice of potting up is new for you, Mr Fraser Valley Rose Farm walks you through it:
Note that when you buy a pot-grown rose from a nursery, that nursery pot is only good for one growing season at most: your rose wants to be in a bigger pot, or planted out in the soil promptly.
- Use a good soil based compost (John Innes No 3 is the best) and then enrich it with about 20% multipurpose compost or some well-rotted manure.
- Optional: before you put the compost in the pot, put a buffer of gravel in the bottom that won’t hold water. At the yearly repotting, tip out the gravel and replace with compost, thus getting “two repots from one pot”.
- Put the pot up on bricks or tiles for drainage. Only use a saucer underneath the pot in Summer, remove it in Autumn.
- Full sun is great for flowering, and it dries out your pots, stressing the roots and encouraging mildew.
- Shade the pot, while the rose itself is in sunlight where possible.
- Feed your roses in Spring with Rootgrow Afterplant, following the instructions.
- Avoid feeding after August, not to encourage soft green growth that is easily damaged in winter.
Growing A Climbing Rose in a Pot
If you are keen to grow a climbing rose in a pot, place the early pots on top of something to hold them up at the final pot’s soil level.
- So if the final pot will be 60cm tall, leave a 10 rim for watering, and set the first small pot up so that its soil level is 50cm above the ground.
- As you pot the rose up into taller pots, reduce the height of whatever the pot is sitting on until it’s on the ground, or its drainage feet.
Choose one of the less vigorous climbers, less than 4 metres.
Your final pot size should be at least 45cm tall; the larger, the better.