The title is an old saying that should be adjusted for inflation, but the principle is still true.
There was a recent thread where someone reported that in that particular garden synthetic fertilizer was needed to grow good roses. It turned out that only the top 3 or 4 inches of the soil were what would be considered as healthy soil.

The following 2 links may be useful to prevent a similar situation from developing when someone you know wants to prepare a rose garden from poor land.

When preparing a rose bed on poor soil, the initial focus should be on the dead soil that must be reactivated in order to successfully grow roses. Obviously this is the soil in the root zone of the roses. For roses there is normally a tap root (which is not considered to be very involved in the feeding process) for which 2 feet deep may be needed (some/many articles suggest 18 inches is sufficient). The critical depth is the 12 inches normally considered sufficient for a healthy feeder root system.
-----------------------------
The following link, in my opinion, presents the solution in a particularly clear writting style.

http://onestrawrob.com/?page_id=287

-------------------------------------

Some of the highlights are:

"I also got a denuded yard with no topsoil. I am no different than hundreds of thousands of households out there. Growing things organically on what starts as essentially subsoil takes some doing, but it is very possible. Here are some of the things I learned in the past 3 years getting my gardens to produce 500#�s + on 500 sq ft in Zone 5 on what what started as soil that not even weeds grew on."

" To make Top Soil from the Subsoil (or dead denuded soils post industrial Ag) you will need to restore both Organic Matter and foster a thriving soil ecosystem."

"To fight compaction, I double dug the beds to aerate them down 18�� which opens the soil to air and water passages. Adding the organic matter gets food into the cycle. But you still really don�ft have many critters at this point. Given time, simply having air, water, and food will be enough to attract a thriving soil system, but we are a frenetic society and have issues even waiting for a You Tube movie to start let alone giving our soil 2-3 years to begin to wake up."

"So to speed things up: innoculate the soil. If you noticed above, I added compost�c alot. In fact I added about 3�� of compost per sq ft per year for 3 years now. That is about a cubic yard of compost annually per 100sq ft. That may seem excessive, and I have toned it down now as it served its purpose. See, compost is alive. That is not some Earthy Granola Get-in-touch-with-your-Mother talk �cit is literally true. When your compost heats up it is due to the metabolic heat from bacteria reaching critical mass. In the cooler sections of the pile are billions of protozoa, fungi, and thousands and thousands of larger critters like pill bugs, worms, millipededs, etc that are all doing their part to decompose your kitchen and yard wastes. When you load your finished pile into your barrow and trundle it into your beds, all those buggers come with and they will continue to decompose the wastes of your garden soil and multiply in the process. Congratulations! Your soil is now alive! Now lets keep it that way:"

---------------------------------------------
This second link is more general, but I feel it is worth reading (and it is the source for the title).

http://www.agardenforthehouse.com/2012/04/organic-rose-care/

"Plant in a big, big hole. �gA one-dollar rose deserves a ten-dollar hole�h is bit of old gardening wisdom which still rings true today. Dig the hole three times the diameter of the container the rose came in, and about 12 inches deep. Then fill the hole with water to test drainage. If the water drains within an hour, all is well. Otherwise, dig deeper. Roses want plenty of moisture, but they will not tolerate a pool at their feet."