I am in zone 7, we have heavy clay soil. It is very fertile. My husband has tilled the soil with our large tractor, built raised beds by throwing the soil up with a disk and running a "planting seam' with a subsoiler.. I plant directly in to the ground, I dig a hole a little larger than the pot and deep enough to plant just below the graft. I wait approx. 2 weeks to fert. w/ 10/10/10 (our farm type fertilizer.. I spray my roses and will catch the new rose w/ the next scheduled spray..I use rabbit manure w/pine shavings as mulch.. It will be fun to compare how people plant theirs.

I have been trying to dig the hole about 24" wide and 15-18" deep, kind of depends on how hard that lower layer is. I mix the soil 4:1 with the EB Stone rose mix and then put some of the SB Stone Sure Start in the hole under the rose.

We have some pretty heavy clay, but some has had composted horse manure added to it the past couple of years and turned over.

Most of my garden space is pure sand. From the horses I always have huge mounds of mostly manure/some hay compost composting. Also have an area of clay ground. I use about 50% well composted manure, 1/4 clay, 1/4 sand for fill, and dig hole about 18" wide (or larger) and about same depth. Then fill, for my area leave the graft about 1" above the soil line, leave entire hole about 2" lower than surrounding so water will pool when I'm watering (sand does NOT retain water). Then I cover with about 2" manure mulch (the not composted to dirt stuff, fairly thick with hay to hold/retain moisture). Fertilizing is new for me this year, not part of my planting (yet).

My subdivision is built on reclaimed lake bed. Who knows what they used for fill. I dig up bricks and junk that was in the fill dirt all the time. There is a thick layer of clay down at about 18 or 20 inches deep. Sometimes that's a problem and I have to break it up. I usually add some sand and try and work it in. But normally I just dig a hole in the ground, whatever ground it is, and plant. I don't make special soils or amend everything. The front bed did get raised a few years back for landscaping purposes and we ordered top soil for that one so it's better now. However, Mom grew roses in the that soil for decades and they were always healthy and beautiful.

Our ground is heavy gray clay, and we've tried various planting procedures, including having the ground plowed. Most recently I've just been digging a hole, adding compost, and planting in that, then mulching on top. Because the soil is so very poor in organic matter, pottery quality in places, I like to terrace the ground around the rose, digging up the ground and layering it with hay, to help with drainage as well as fertility. After the initial planting I encourage a living mulch of small plants under and around the roses, and as thick planting as I can achieve. Results are mixed, but promising enough I plan on continuing with my current methods, at least until something better occurs to me.

My soil is sugar sand. For own-root roses, I dig a hole 3 feet by knee deep and pour clay kitty litter in to cover the bottom. Then I add horse manure that's been composted down to basically rich dirt and mix in more kitty litter, alfalfa pellets and cotton seed meal. I let this sit for several days and then if necessary add more horse manure. After the rose is planted, I heavily mulch with aged horse manure and wood shavings from the stalls. The beds themselves also have horse manure mixed in with a thick layer of newspaper and then heavy mulch on top of the newspaper. If the rose is grafted on Fortuniana, the hole doesn't have to be as big, and I put some of the native sand back in the hole since I don't have to worry about nematodes. The graft is planted above ground here. Oh, I forgot, I line the bottom of the hole with newspaper and soak it thoroughly before I add the kitty litter. If I could figure out how, I would also line the sides with newspaper. I read on another thread where someone always puts the rose in a cardboard box in the planting hole. Maybe I'll try that. I also wish it wasn't so complicated, but if I didn't do this, the nematodes would have all my roses.

I've always been good to my worms so my Mississippi river clay is so nice and mellow now. I never use worm-harming chemicals or anything that could hurt my worms and I have a ton of them after 11 years of growing roses. It's so much better than the gummy stuff we had in the beginning. I had to amend the heck out of that! Doesn't hurt to feed some coffee grounds to the worms occasionally either!

When I plant roses, I dig a hole the correct size (I don't go overboard on the hole size...I personally don't think it's necessary but that's just me...it just has to be deep enough to bury the bud union a couple inches deep and maybe a couple inches bigger all the way around than the roots spread out). I make a up-side-down cone shape of dirt in the bottom of the hole, spread the rose roots over the cone, just to be sure they are filled in all round with dirt and fill the hole half full with the soil I just took out of the hole. Water well to settle the soil, then fill the rest of the way. Water again and fashion a cup around the rose to catch and hold water.

After I'm sure the rose has plenty of leaves, I use 10-10-10 around the dripline. I may fertilize a couple times during the rose season.

Florida:
My mom had nematodes that made a chumk of her rose gardem unusable so I dug it out and filled the hole with good nematodes liquid mixture, put the dirt back in and that area is now one of the best for roses.

As far as planting I have two spots; one with sandy loam and one in black-gumbo.
I actually do them fairly similar as I dig a hole, depending ns the size of the rose, from twelve to sixteen inches wide and sixteen to two-feet deep.(when I did potted roses some holes were wider)
After mixing potting soil, bagged manure and original soil together (Using different compounds at times multi-roses are planted to see if one makes a difference) I fill the hole to the depth that the rose will sit on top of,fill it with water; with water that has liquid iron, Superthrive and Serenade that the rose had soaked in, plus other possible items depending on the needs or concerns, and let it settle a bit. I then put the rose in, fill with dirt and fill the hole with the water again.
After that water has settled I finish the hole for mulching it in the future after I am sure all is well.

In the black-gumob one I will always dig the deeper hole, and mix some sort of mulch, or possibly put a sand bottom, into the bottom before I refill the hole with a mixture that contains zero gumbo.
I am also far more attentive to drainage rate there as in in the sandly loam the water is gone in seconds whereas in the gumbo it varies by minutes in holes only a few feet apart.
I used to mulch with Eucalyptus but now use Cocaa Bean Hulls as Eucalyptus got too expensive.
I have the bud union at many different depths due to the fact I now have buried roses and the higher the union the easier to tip the rose to bury, but as burying has become a bit annoying, two I just planted were planted with bud unions actually slightly below surface level.

When I helped a friend, her soil is a mixture of sand and basic dirt which we enriched with Miracle Grow Rose Garden Soil and dug the whole as big/wide as pot and then mulched with some red mulch. Water once to every other day and fertilize once a week.

For my potted minis, miracle grow potting soil (basic) and perlite. Will see how they do. :)

That was supposed to be thin layer of newspaper in my post above.

Is your mom in Florida, RpR, and was her soil amended?

Up here in N.GA I dig a hole about 24"x18". Get my potting soil (black magic) from Big Lots. Fill 1/2 the hole with 3/4 potting soil, 1/4 back fill clay and a 5 gal pot of oak leafs and mix good. Water everything down and let it sit for 10/15 minutes. Sprinkle 1/4 cup of Milorganite on top of mix. Plant my rose using same mix to fill in around bush. Everything is happy and growing like weeds. No supper special formula. Also used this method in Central and S.E. Florida for 15 years with great results. I exhibit so my bush's and blooms have to be good. Happy roots usually mean happy bush's and great blooms.

No I am up in Minn.
Hers is the black-gumbo I inherited when she no longer could work it.
The soil is actually very fertile but I have altered it, or tried to, to try to reduce how very hard it is; although drainage has only been a concern in one or two small spots.
My brick making soil would probably just what you need down there.

An aside:
Due to the type of soil I have, when I put the nematode solution in the hole, the water stands for some time allowing me to replace the dirt thusly making sure all the bad soil was thoroughly wetted by the solution.
Not the most professional way to do it but it worked.
this was an area of only about four by four by two or so. The bottom was very uneven.

The top three inches or so were replaced with fresh soil out of the veg. garden to sop up excess water.
Nematodes were applied in five gallon buckets.
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Ken:
Black Magic--just what I used last week.
Seems to be good stuff.
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Springtime;
Is the Miracle Grow soil still available?
I have not seen it here in for several years.

I just posted an answer a few minutes ago, but it seems to have disappeared in cyberspace. So let me try again.

I keep things simple. Dig a hole about 18 x 18 in, mix a shovelful of manure/humus in with the dirt, refill (graft a couple inches below surface), water twice really well (like flood it twice), and don't feed until it finishes its first bloom.

When I feed the rose, I use RoseTone. If I'm feeling ambitious, I might add a mulch of manure/humus. Occasionally I may add some alfalfa cubes. I definitely do add a thick layer of pine bark mulch to all the beds--when I get around to it.

I avoid spraying whenever possible, but usually have to spray 2-3 times in the spring and maybe once or twice in the fall.

I'm kinda a lazy gardener, but my roses still bloom beautifully without a great deal of help from me. Now that I will be retiring in a couple weeks, we'll see if that changes any of my gardening practices or not.

Kate