About how big was it when you planted it last spring? I had a Fragrant Cloud & Paul Shirville from Roses Unlimited that I planted as one gallons and about a year and a half later they died completely to the ground during a freaky winter. I didn't see them again until the following July, but they both came back.

Bart ... A couple of random thoughts. I am not certain about what you mean by "poor soil". Is the ph too high or too low to grow healthy roses ? Is it because it is not "fluffy" or friable ? Or what ? When I first started my rose garden, my soil was dead. The house pad and gardening area had been cut out of a slope. There was no plant organic material in the soil. After I scraped off all of the decorative rock and weed barrier covering the gardening area that the previous owner of my home had put down, it wouldn't even grow weeds ! If I had it to do over again, I would approach preparing the planting areas differently than I did, but I was a novice at having an in-ground garden. My previous garden was a container garden, so to be blunt, I didn't know what I was doing. Instead of preparing a whole bed, I dug rose holes. I am gardening in what we call glacier slurry/subsoil. It is tightly compressed small stones with clay and silt gluing them together and cannot be dug with a shovel. It's truly lousy soil, but does have excellent drainage. I compensated for the lack of natural organic materials in the soil by feeding the roses with chemical food and mulching the whole bed with any organic materials I could glean that would decompose and feed the soil twice a year. Over the years, the soil has become friable, but it still cannot promote vigorous growth with only organics and I still have to rely on chemical fertilizers to supply the nutrient needs of the plants along with some organics. (The ratio is changing over time.) I have a no-till garden and everything goes on top of the soil in the beds. It takes years to improve soil this way, but it has worked for me. I agree that it takes at least 4 years before a rose really has it's feet under it and comes into its own. I think of younger roses as juvenile plants. Kind of like young trees and have different expectations for them. btw ... every time you or I move a rose, I think that plant is starting over and think of the rose as a new plant and needs time in the new location to settle in. There are other variables that can impact the viability of your roses other than soil. Drainage is a big one. Root competition plays a role. The quality of the light and more. A couple of years ago, I moved two roses that had been in place for 3 years because they were just sitting there and not growing. In the next season, both of them tripled in size. My guess is that they were fighting with a shrub on the other side of the fence and not getting the nutrients and water that they needed to thrive. I have found other variables in this garden that has made a huge difference in the viability of the roses. Some roses are more thirsty than others and need to be watered more often. Some roses hate hard pruning while others truly need the stimulation of harder pruning. Some roses seem to need heavier feeding than others. The roses are the real teachers there. I started taking notes as I worked and it really helped me find out what roses like what. Last thought ... roses like other plants have a mandate to grow. In our third year of extreme drought, I saw the roses abandon growth they could not support. This summer, it was kind of like they just hunkered down and survived. They did not put on a lot of new growth or bloom well at all this season. In my part of California we are now getting regular rain. The high temps dropped and the roses started putting on new growth and blooms at a time of year when they are generally slowing down for winter. We have had a "warm" fall and have yet to have our first hard freeze. The roses look better than they have for a couple of years. The weeds are jumping out of the ground, too. I am thinking that even tho' they have been horribly stressed, the roses are going to be OK, but it may take a couple of seasons for them to become as strong and viable as they were before the drought. This is one of those times when patience is the most important thing I can give the roses. Smiles, Lyn

Jeff - If you cut the older plants off at the stem, you can plant near them by digging small holes. You obviously can't do any tilling, but you can definitely add a layer of compost and scatter fertilizer and "scratch it in" (raking lightly into the top inch or two). You need to plant them earlier, yes ... like in August or September. That gives them the long, coolish winter to do their thing.

I could probably have a lot more success in butterfly gardening if I devoted my whole yard to it. I have so many diverse interests, it's extremely difficult for me to choose between them, lol! Herbs are great because they do double or triple duty--butterfly food, pretty flowers, edible or drinkable products from them. I'm always looking for plants that have multiple good qualities. Originally I wanted to do edible landscaping, but I have found that the squirrels are quite a formidable obstacle. Not only do they tear up my tomatoes, etc, but they drag them around the neighborhood and leave the remains on my neighbors porches and lawns. My edibles are relegated to a few closely guarded pots by the back door. Just yesterday I caught a squirrel eyeing my cherry toms! Anyway, initially due to my experience at other sites, I thought the buddleia would be an easy thing to draw in the butterflies, but you can't draw in something that just isn't there. I had a large butterfly garden at one arboretum where I worked, we had all kinds of supposed butterfly plants in the garden and inevitably they would be ignored in favor of the buddleia. But that place was loaded with wildflower meadows, woods, etc. That's what originally gave me the idea of planting buddleia in my yard, I thought it would be an easy way to watch butterflies and only necessitate one plant's worth of space devoted to it. Other than the butterfly qualities it has, I am not a fan of the plant, up here it is invasive as my neighbor is proving. Although the fact that her above ground pool is a weedy mess in this urban situation I doubt is threatening critical habitat. We had all kinds of natives in the butterfly garden I mentioned above, and we were dilligent about removing the buddleia flowers before they set seed. But like I said, inevitably the natives would be ignored. It could be in that situation the buddleia was like candy, the cats had plenty of other sources of nectar, and most importantly, they were there in the first place because of all the larval habitat. Yesterday I was out on the front porch and I saw a monarch flying along the street. Perhaps I shall plant some milkweed. I like the plant, it does look kind of cool and smells heavanly. They have a good selection of varieties at the native plant nursery I frequent. I'm not that crazy about the orange variety, but I like swamp milkweed's flowers. On a serious note, if one was to design a butterfly garden for an urban site, it would probably be best to figure out what butterflies one could even remotely expect to foster in an urban situation, and then plant larval foods for those species. Frankly I could care less what those cabbage butterflies like, they seem to be quite able to fend for themselves without my help, :) Swallowtails might be easier to please, I like the plants in the umbelliferea family (dill and the like) I already have two plants in that family in my yard, dill and bishop's weed (although I hate the bishop's weed). I love fennel so that would be easy enough to stick in a pot. I've already mentioned monarchs. Not sure what else. There is a lot of grass and common weeds around there but I don't seem to see meadow or woods loving species. A meadow-type garden is not feasible for me due to the space competition. No room for willows, (love the corkscrew variety but I love my other shrubs and trees more) but I have wanted to try lupines. Even if they don't draw in the butterflies. Hard to grow in this zone though.