When I gardened in zone 4/5 Wisconsin I had all sorts of problems getting yellows to survive even WITH protection. When Graham Thomas first came on the market I didn't give it any winter cover and I lost it that first winter. I got anther one but it would not survive without HT-like protection. St. Patrick gave up the ghost after 2 pitiful seasons. Gold Medal barely survived and became a one cane wonder. I placed it in a pot and it did much better (I over wintered it and Sunsprite - also in a pot - in our unheated attached garage). I had better luck overwintering own root yellow minis like Rise n' Shine.

Glad this post has been helpful and thanks to folks for filling in points that I'd missed. Michael and Kate are right that burying the graft (the knobby part) of a rose is one of the better winter survival strategies for a rose, since the couple of inches that need to survive are under the ground, and the ground protects that graft. A little leaf coverage around the base, including well-shredded miscellaneous leaves as Seil says, can add all the protection many of us need. Since that leaf coverage also provides spring mulch around the rose, it's a terrific strategy for lazy gardeners like me! Jim, you are indeed cruel, but not necessarily too early in your post. We had 3 feet of snow in western Nebraska last week, and parts of the Dakotas and Colorado are still digging out. Toolbelt - don't waste any time kicking yourself over missed insights in past years of not knowing about GW. Just keep joining in the fun of the discussions, and sharing what you've learned with your friends and neighbors, so they get hooked on the rose bug too! Zaphod, all of these principles apply to band roses as much as any other type of rose, with the added caution that the tender canes are more susceptible to things like moisture and critter gnawing. I plant all my bands in the ground too, though I try not to buy them too late in the summer, and any relatively scrawny plant is going to benefit more from winter protection than a well-established rooted plant. However, even a little canker or squashing from your protection methods can be enough to make it give up, if it doesn't have much of a root system. My method stays the same, to put protection around but not touching the rose, and one-twig wonders, I may make that protection as high as the rose (not usually a problem for scrawny runts) but make sure nothing is touching the base. Beyond that, I keep track of how poor the growth is in its first year, and I might try a more substantial plant (or heaven help me, keeping in a pot over winter like Seil suggests) if it doesn't grow fast enough to survive as a band. Bottom line is give some basic protection a try, but don't kill baby bands with too much material over their little heads. Cynthia

I turned on the heat and the zone valve on my baseboard heater is warm but my baseboard heater is not getting any heat, it's ice cold. I can move the lever at the bottom of the valve (I'm guessing it's the end switch?) freely. I think there's a problem with the motor in the valve but I'm not sure. Does anyone know? Is there anything I can do to get heat to flow into the heater right now?

I really have mixed feedback on this issue. I totally agree that the robust growers in cold zones do fine on their own roots and you don't have to worry about suckers from the graft. Too robust growers (like gallicas) can be better grafted so that you can plant the graft ABOVE the soil (only) for those super-hardy roses and avoid the gallica taking over the garden bed. I also agree that grafted roses of the wimpier varieties of HTs and floris are more robust in their first year or two and tend to grow bushy faster than own root versions of those plants. However, I've recently started to experience the down side of grafted HTs in a cold climate. First of all, virtually all of the grafted HTs and floris that I've planted with the graft properly buried have gone own root over time if they've survived. For instance, I bought In the Mood grafted from a local nursery and it was fabulous and bushy in its first year. The second year and for every year after that, it was a knee high one-cane wonder until it finally gave up the ghost and died after about 6 years. The same process has been happening more gradually with my grafted Savoy Hotel. It was lush (maybe 4.5' by 4.5') and incredible in its first year or two, ranking in my top 20 of roses. Every year since then it has declined and come back from the winter more slowly. By August this year, my plant in optimum sun and soil conditions has just now reached almost 3 feet with 3 canes on it and a couple of blooms here and there for the first time all season (nothing at all in June). Here's a contrast picture to show that effect - this is 2013 in June for Savoy Hotel at its full 4.5'x4.5' glory. Savoy Hotel is at the bottom right corner keeping up with Madame Isaac Periere in the back of it with no trouble. Granted, this was a particularly good rose year, but you can see the relative sizes. Now just one year later in 2014, here's Savoy Hotel in front of MIP (bottom center) also in June, and this was an average rose year for me. It's too late for MIP on the shepherd's hook to be blooming, but you can see MIP's height by the purple clematis. Notice that she's now in 2014 only 3' high and has about 4 blooms every couple of weeks. She has declined from that since, even though she's still a very nice rose. I don't have any more recent bush pictures for her since I only get the scattered blooms any more, and only late in the season to boot. One other effect I'm seeing in my older grafted roses this spring in particular is graft failure for a lot of my well-established roses with the graft well buried. Even under the soil, it seems like a grafted rose starts running out of places to grow new basal shoots after a while. For instance, this spring I lost an 8 year old Dream Come True (the tall rose at the left of the first picture) for no good reason that I could see, and it was a mild winter. Sure, you see pictures of 50 year old grafted HTs in warm climates, but those are warm climates. I suspect that if we have a 50 year old HT rose in cold climates that started out grafted and is still alive, it has gone own root in that time and is a robust rose on its own roots. My reluctant conclusions are that if a rose is going to be a wimp, it will reach that state on its own whether own root or grafted. If I get an own root HT rose through its first winter it will increase in size to its sustainable height and vigor and more or less stay there for the duration. If I get a grafted HT rose through its first winter, it will decrease in size to its sustainable height and vigor and stay there till the graft fails or it goes completely own root. There are only a few roses where I think the graft did give the rose a little boost in survival over that first winter, Memorial Day and Oklahoma come to mind, but for the most part I don't think it buys me anything in either survivability or vigor after the first year. That's why I tend to grow my HTs and floris on their own roots. I want to know the long-term height it's really going to be in its early years, I get reliable winter survival of the original rose from own roots if they get to a good size in their first year, and I don't have to dig up a massive root system when it dies or deal with suckers. Just my two cents Cynthia