How to Winterize Your Rose Garden

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Things have slowed considerably in the rose garden this season. We return to Standard Time tomorrow and POOF! Our growing period here is pretty much finished. You know what that means: time to winterize.

Garden walks for me have shrunk from daily to every few days, and I usually bring in some blooms with me when I come back into the house. The temperatures have been slowly moderating and getting cooler daily. My roses that I have been bringing in to enjoy have especially wonderful color, substance, and fragrance as it takes them so much longer to develop.

I’m most impressed, I think, with my orange roses in October and early November.

‘Hot Cocoa’ is a deep, dark rust right now, and planted close by, ‘Bronze Star’ complements it really well… it truly is a deep bronze this time of year!

‘Pumpkin Patch,’ a pumpkin-colored floribunda, is covered with lovely sprays. ‘Tuscan Sun’ is every shade of the orange spectrum, from deep gold to brilliant sunset colors.

Looking out my pantry window, just behind ‘Hot Cocoa,’ is ‘Habitat for Humanity 2003’. With all her coral-y splendor, this rose practically calls out, ‘Look at me!’. ‘Over the Moon’ has become a deep, rich caramel-y apricot. ‘Fireworks’ is a miniature rose that is gloriously rich in yellows, golds, and oranges, just like its namesake.

Steps for Winterizing the Rose Garden

I am thankful for these blooms this time of year. Fall roses are amazing, and as their blossoms fade, I’ll be venturing back out into the garden to help them fall asleep safely for the winter. I used to wait until after Thanksgiving to winterize my gardens, but now I like to cut things back earlier. I find as I grow older my hands and feet get really cold when I’m crawling around the cold garden soil. BRRR! I’m always good to my roses, but now I try to be nicer to myself, too.

You can wait to winterize until after Thanksgiving if that’s what you’d like to do, but here’s how I wrap up my gardening season these days.

Prune Roses

Hybrid Teas, Grandifloras, and Floribundas can be whacked back about knee-high. This is what I call ‘gross pruning,’ just make sure your pruners are nice and sharp and cut them down.

You don’t have to worry about pruning to outward-facing buds…we’ll do that in the springtime. Wear protective gauntlet gloves to pick up the mounds of canes you will have. They can be sent to the dump, or dragged out to the woods and left, but don’t put them in your usable compost pile just in case there are any fungus spores around.

When you are finished cutting your roses back, pull off any leaves that are still on the canes. You will have naked, green canes left and your stripped roses are now dormant. Miniature and Miniflora roses can be cut back in the same manner.

Shrub roses can be cut back as much as you like. The reason we cut back is to keep big roses from getting crushed in our famous New England weather events.

Apply Winter Protection

Finally, rake out all the leaves from your beds as this will help to keep fungus spores at bay, too.

Stop watering, and kiss these babies good night. After there is frost in the ground, especially if your roses are not planted deeply, you can dump soil or compost or mulch over the dormant roses to protect the canes and keep them in the dark for the winter to come. This winter protection will freeze to the canes and protect them all winter. The reason we want to wait awhile before applying this winter protection is to keep little critters like voles out of our rosebeds.

Protect Climbing Roses with String or Burlap

Climbing roses usually put out a lot of growth in the fall. These long canes should be tied to their structures to keep them from whipping around in the winter winds. Any growth that is too long can be cut back to a manageable length.

If it is the first winter for your climber, especially if it is a yellow rose, you may wish to wrap the plant in burlap. Most climbers are pretty hardy and won’t require wrapping in ensuing winters.

And, always remember, when bedding down our roses, the idea is to get them dormant and cold and keep them that way all winter so they won’t be tempted to sprout in a possible lengthy thaw in the mid-winter…and the best winter protection? Three feet of snow all winter long!

Meet Marci Martin

Marci Martin has loved roses for as long as she can remember. From the time she was a little girl, she was fascinated with how…

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