Jeri & Deron: I got on a rose rooting site now & made a feeble try at rooting some of the tips of GOTW .... maybe I will have beginner's luck?!Do you have a tried & true method that maybe I could understand? I also dug & transplanted the puny 'Scentimental' rose bush to a better area with more sun & better soil so hope it survives & does better! After pruning nearly 30 rose bushes, my arms look like I had a fight with a mountain lion ... scratches,blood all over & big bruises up & down the arms!! No, I have tried using long gloves but with arthritic fingers I can't work with gloves on. But then, what would a rose be without thorns?! The very old ? 'Seven Sisters' rose is by far the very worst to prune & I have at times had my whole body stuck in those canes!!

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

I would remove a lot of the old gray wood next March--cut the canes at the ground or at the graft if one is visible. Hopefully it will respond by making some strong shoots from the ground. It looks like this rose is best grown as a climber with all the strong shoots fastened to the fence. Tie them rather than weaving through the lattice. Create a fan pattern by leading the first canes low and almost horizontal, the next in a low arc above the first, etc. Having lots of cane nearly horizontal (or 45 degrees) will greatly increase the amount of bloom. Most roses have canes that are best trained after they have grown well out and become fibrous. Then they will bend without breaking. After it begins to get crowded again, remove a fraction of the oldest canes each year at the base, Do the main pruning in June after blooming to maximize the amount of bloom. You can also remove the stronger laterals (strong secondary shoots off the main canes) unless you need them to fill in. Cut the shorter laterals back to 2-3 leaves after blooming. The spots visible in pics 6 and 7 are blackspot disease, but the plant must be somewhat resistant or it would be defoliated by now. The foliage appears to be of modern type. The hooked thorns suggest the parentage includes climbing species. You can show us blooms and buds next May.

Hmmm, actually the pale pink is the only one that is NOT a climber if the base of the plant is any judge. It is a really stout and sturdy rose "bush," and has sent arms up and over an old rickety arbor and re-rerooted itself on the other side. Some of the stems on that one are as big around as my pinkie finger. But I will look up the two names you gave me and see what I can see. Thank you!!