Roses need your help during winter! Here are some things you should do for your roses to help them through the winter months:
- Continue tidying rose beds. Cut back any ground-covering herbaceous perennials and edging plants around the roses, clear weeds and pick up all fallen rose leaves.
- Give plants a final spray of fungicide if black spot, rust or mildew have been serious that year. Choose a mild December day, drenching all stems to the point of run-off.
- Check recently-planted roses after frost and tread firm any that have lifted from the ground. If it gets very cold, cover young plants with straw.
- Continue preparing the ground for new roses. In January, break down with a fork heavy soil roughly dug in autumn, ready for planting in late winter.
- Plant new roses as they arrive, or heel them into some vacant ground until you are ready. Plant only when the soil breaks up easily and is not frozen or waterlogged.
- Protect roses of borderline hardiness with two or three layers of fleece. Varieties sensitive to frost include the banksian roses (R. banksiae cultivars), R. x odorata ‘Mutabilis’ and, in exposed positions, the yellow climber ‘Mermaid.’
- Inspect supports and ties, especially after high winds, and readjust where necessary.
- Start pruning climbing roses during February, but delay the work until March in a cold or frosty season.
- Move potted roses into the greenhouse during January for forcing early blooms.
Andreas Kaspar/iStockphoto
Climbing roses should be pruned in February or March.
