The best time to plant new roses

and grow in with the seasons of spring through summer. Any winter planting is always weather dependent, don’t try to plant in very wet conditions or if there is a frost or snow on the ground. Roses are long lived plants so good preparation is important.

Dig an area of soil at least 400mm deep and wide and incorporate plenty of manure and a good hand full of blood, fish and bone fertiliser. Most roses are T bud grafted, seen as a bump at the plants stem base, and this union point should be about 25mm below the soil level. T budded means that a slip of plant material with a bud attached is taken from a cultivated plant and via a T shaped incision [ T budding] is bound to a selected rootstock. This gives the plant the growing characteristics and health of the rootstock but the beauty of the cultivated roses flower. This said many roses can be grown from hardwood cuttings on their own rootstocks very successfully.

Firm your rose into the soil well after planting and mulch with another 25mm of manure. If you are planting many roses it is worth, certainly for the first year, to leave the label on so you remember what is where.

For those of you who think that roses are not for you think again. There is no group of plants that are more diverse in their flowering habits than roses. While I love roses myself, all roses, I do have a certain sympathy with those who find the blousy nature of some of the rose flowers around a little to saccharine for them. I suggest that they look a little harder at the genus where they will find simplicity in such roses as the seemingly erroneously named Rosa Complicata, Rosa mutablis, Rosa alba semi plena Rosa Sally Holmes and Rosa glauca.

Even if you are not planning planting any roses this year I hope the very thought of them will bring you a little beam of summer sunshine into a January day.