"Due to the horrendous weather we had, here in the UK, it grew so many blind shoots. And for the newbies like me, one thing you should never do is feel remorse for these stems! They do not flower nor do they grow anymore. They keep taking up food and energy that the plant needs in order to produce flowers so you should snip there off." Your understanding of how and why the plant works is a bit "skewed". Foliage does require some nutrients and energy to be produced, but it also creates food. Foliage exists for three main reasons: 1. To create the "siphon" through transpiration (sweating) which draws water and absorbed raw nutrients from the root tips to the growing cane tips. As the canes lengthen, they taper. The adhesion factor of water is that it is sticky, it sticks to the capillary sides, causing it to rise above its own level in tapered tubes. Combine the draw from the stomata (pores) transpiration on the leaf reverses with the adhesion factor of water and you have sap pressure, drawing dissolved nutrients in the water (sap) from the roots to the tops, pushing growth. Apical Dominance. 2. To provide sun shade against the extremes of sun and heat. This prevents the canes from sun scalding, sun burning. Once the cane is sufficiently sun burned, the cambium layer (the plant's circulatory system) right under the bark, is killed. Nothing flows through dead cambium, leading to die back of the tissues above the scalded area. 3. Probably one of the most important, photosynthesis. Green leaves produce food. If they are healthy green, they are producing MORE food than they are requiring. Once they begin requiring more food than they produce, the plant begins taking sap from them, causing them to yellow and usually become diseased due to reduced immune response, before the plant sheds them. The foliage on your "blind shoots" appear healthy, not diseased and appropriately green from your photos. They are producing food for the plant, contributing to its overall support. The smaller buds produced in their area are likely due to the fact they were formed during the period when the plant didn't have as much food production being performed, rather than the "blind shoots" robbing food from the flowering shoots. Once the total photosynthesis area became sufficient to produce the quantity of nutrition for the whole plant, it began producing the expected flower bud sizes and quantities. Removing the "blind shoots" while that foliage is healthy and producing food doesn't prevent it from "robbing" nutrients from flowering shoots. It DOES prevent it from producing and contributing food to the whole plant, leading to it flowering sooner. The only reason the rose flowers is to ovulate, reproduce. It is not going to flower if it doesn't have enough food yet. As the food levels approach that threshold, smaller flowering shoots are produced, carrying smaller flowers. As the food levels continue increasing to higher levels, more growth, more flowering shoots, more buds of larger size are produced. ANY green, healthy leaf on the plant contributes to that food production. Remove them if you wish, but you will actually be reducing the plant's food producing abilities by the percent that total foliage area contributes to the whole plant's foliage area. If half the plant is "blind shoot" and you cut it off, you will be reducing the plant's food production abilities by half. Once that foliage is shaded by new growth (or other plants), its food production efficiency is reduced. More shade reduces the efficiency further. Damage from disease also reduces the leaf's ability to produce food. Once the tipping point where its production is less than its use, the plant will shed it. To you, your weather has been "horrendous", but to your roses, it has been an opportunity to set the stage for future reproduction. Obviously, there was sufficient heat, light, water and other resources required to produce foliage. A successful plant will not expend that energy ovulating, in hopes of attracting a pollinator when the weather doesn't encourage pollinator activity. If it is too rainy, too cold for the pollinators to be active, ovulating would be a waste of energy. The plant "knows" this genetically. There wasn't sufficient heat or light to push flowers, but there WAS enough to encourage it to increase its food producing and storage capacities, which it did by producing the "blind growth". The only way you could honestly consider those blind shoots as having "robbed" the plant of its flowering ability is by the amount of raw materials the plant used to create them. But, the plant would not have created them unless it required the extra food production ability to enable it to flower. Kim

Since I usually order roses for delivery last week of March, and zone 6 should be running a bit earlier than me, it doesn't really have to be held all that long. If it is dormant, then keeping it in a cold place for a week or two is all that is necessary. A bucket of water in the garage usually works. If it is leafed out, then potting it up may be necessary. However, if it goes in a pot, then it should stay in the pot until it develops a good enough root system that it can be unpotted without the whole rootball falling apart. That's usually about two or three months. Leafed out body bag roses are notoriously difficult to handle. They don't really have the resources to handle root growth and maintaining the leaves at the same time. Dormant ones are only trying to grow roots.

Oh yes!! The Japanese garden is fabulous in fall and winter!!! I believe the Chinese garden downtown is open through all seasons as well. I looked at the Rose test garden website to check for you and it seems like they leave the roses un-pruned through October, but that doesn't guarantee they will be flowering nicely. It's free and you can just park and pop out to see it. So, if there are roses, great, if no, no big loss. There is also a lovely, small neighborhood rose garden in Ladd's Addition that is a nice hidden gem

It's the same here also, some roses have gone to sleep but others still have healthy leaves, I don't have many border line hardy roses so I'm just going to leave them as is.