Understatement:  Roses can be difficult to grow.

Fact:  a few simple tips have taken our personal rose garden from disappointing to very satisfying.  This success can be yours as well.

Tip#1:  Choose a location which is exposed to at least 6 hours of sunlight.

Tip #2:  Choose a location which is well drained.  In our Indiana Clay, this can mean planting your roses on a slight slope.  Drainage can be enhanced by overdigging the planting hole, adding pea gravel to the bottom, and by adding in a well-draining soil mix as your planting backfill.

Tip #3:  Plan to plant your roses about 2′ apart.  Even strong roses, (except the shrub forming roses), don’t need much space.  Planting farther apart than this will result in a sparse looking bed even if the roses are performing well.

Tip #4:  Roses benefit from LOTS of composted manure.  Dig your planting hole extra deep (at least as deep as the longest roots on your rose plant, if not a couple of inches deeper), and extra wide (12-18″ wide is helpful).  Get rid of any junky clay soil, replacing it with a composted manure for backfill.  We also add some composted manure each year, just to keep it fresh.  it can be added right over the top of the ground, due to Tip #5.

Tip #5:  This is the most counter-intuitive trick about growing roses.  Don’t hesitate to plant them deep.  Almost all ornamental plants are grown by grafting a stem of the prized plant with good genetics onto a cheap rootstock.  On most other plants, covering of this graft is death to the plant, so the planting line must be below the graft.  We kept planting our roses this way, and had weak plants with small flowers.  Then I happened into a J&P rose guy, who insisted that they should be planted with the graft BELOW the soil line.  I wrestled with this, but finally gave in and began planting in this manner.  This tip, along with the abundance of composted manure, has given us a rose garden with strong canes, lustrous blue-green leaves, and large, abundant flowers.  Wonderful!

Tip #6:  Use a compost mound as insulation through the winter.  We mound compost over the plant to a depth of 6-8″.  In the spring, we spread this compost out as part of our “extra compost”

Tip #7:  Even with all these tips, you should still plan to replace 10-20% of your roses each year.  We have about 20 plants, and lose 3 or 4 each year.  They can be short lived.  But don’t fret about it!  Plant new, and enjoy the blooms!