I'm sure it won't hurt, just build up your trough with the mulch and don't lay it too thick on the inside so water can easily get through it, maybe an inch or so? Mom always did that with hers, keeps the roots cool and wet. You can also find some type of ground cover to plant around it next season, or whenever you are done moving it around lol. Something that can handle being trimmed if necessary is and fast growing, but won't take all the food from the rose. There's this stuff here in Indiana that's got little yellow flowers and creeps over the ground, grows like a weed just about anywhere and can take over if you're not careful, really resistant to both wet and dry weather and can handle hard freezes and blaring sun with no worries; we put it in all of our empty-looking flower beds that have big, tall plants but it chokes out smaller things like hyacinth (don't know if I spelled that right... oops). After a quick Google search I found the name of it, Czar's Gold Sedum. The link is a place to buy it and the only one I could find that looks like ours, not sure if it will grow well where you're at but hopefully it will help give you a place to start looking if you want to give something like it a try. :3 Here is a link that might be useful: Czars Gold Sedum, takes a bit of scrolling down to find it This post was edited by SasorisPuppet on Fri, Apr 11, 14 at 11:15

Ani, leaves harbor pest eggs and disease spores. By removing the leaves you open the canes up so they can be sprayed with the Neem or a dormant oil spray. It really has nothing to do with hardiness or root growth, just the general health of the plant. Roses in our local climate start to drop their oldest leaves as a natural growth cycle. By removing the leaves, we're doing what nature is going to do for us anyway. The only spray I use in my garden is one round of Volck's Dormant Oil spray after I prune in January. When using any oil-based spray, the temperature has to be under 60F, including reflected heat coming off block walls, so it can be tough getting even one round sprayed. The dormant oil spray helps to suffocate eggs and spores and should only be sprayed when the roses have no leaves. Because I often have roses from other people's yards come through mine for raffles or trades, I'm also trying to keep a disease called San Jose Scale out of my garden. Some great nurseries to purchase roses from in the metro-Phoenix area are Berridges, 4600 block E Camelback, Bakers, 40th Str & Osborn and Harpers, Hayden, south of Thomas. These aren't the only nurseries, of course, but they're well-known for quality roses and knowledge of rose culture.

Pruning is not the problem. It's keeping it in the house that's causing them to die. Roses are not house plants...EVER! These little gift minis are grown and sold as florist roses and the growers actually mean for them to be disposable. That's not to say they need to be. They're regular roses and if planted out in the garden and given proper care can and do grow for many years. For right now you need to just remove all the spent blooms, nothing more. Put it in the most light you can find in your house. Find a tray of some kind (I've used cake pans) and fill the bottom with pebbles. Put water in the pebbles to just below their tops and place the pot on top of the pebbles. You do not want any water to be touching the bottom of the pot. This will raise the humidity around the rose without over watering it. Be careful to keep it just damp and never soggy wet. Hopefully you'll be able to keep it going this way until spring when you can get it outside. It will do so much better out there.

Hello Monica, Pruning when the forsythia blooms is a good guide. I usually prune early to mid April. You can also tell when the roses are ready to by the swelling of the buds on the stems. Hybrid teas and floribundas are usually pruned harder than shrub roses, which you can prune for shape. Your ground cover roses, may not need much pruning. If they were about the height I wanted, I would probably shear them with hedge shears and clean up with pruners. You can remove dead wood from your roses any time of year. If you have roses that are once blooming (June only), do not prune them in spring or you'll cut off the blooms. Once bloomers are pruned right after they finish blooming. I'm in the Utah Rose Society and would like to direct you to the URS website www.utah-rose.com. You can read some info about many rose topics there, and there is contact information for the number of local Consulting Rosarians. If you have specific questions you can call any of them on the phone and they'd be happy to answer your questions. If you email, Jerry and June are the ones that read their email most often. You can also check out Bob Bauer's website. He's a SLC rosarian who also is the URS webmaster, and has his own rose site www.rose-roses.com. Here's a quote from his site on fall pruning. Preventitive Fall Pruning For those areas with true winter seasons, you should get your roses ready for their winter sleep after the first killing frost or BEFORE the first big winter snowstorm. The reason you want to prune at this time is to prevent winter damage to the plant from the breaking off of large canes. Take a look at each bush and lop off all of the large candelabras on the end of tall canes. This is the point at which accumulating snow can breat the whole cane off. Also big crossing branches need to be removed so that they don't saw each other to death during winter wind storms. Any long whiplike canes that could cause damage to itself or other plants should be removed. DO NOT, however do your major pruning at this time. Your roses need to use the stored energy from the canes in order to survive winter in a health fashion. Major Pruning of modern recurrent varieties should only be done in the spring in areas with a true winter. If you find yourself interested in the Society, we meet the third Thursday of every month except January and I would encourage you to come check out a meeting. Here's a link to Bob's Spring pruning page. Barb Here is a link that might be useful: spring pruning