Hello! This is my first post here and I was looking for some advice on ensuring my roses stay healthy. I recently purchased several roses and planted two of them in my garden (Pope John Paul II and Memorial Day). I have heavy clay soil that does have a lot of organic matter since I mulch with pine straw every year. Well, my Memorial Day rose is doing quite well in its new home, but the other rose is not. It had rained every day last week with several bad storms. I was afraid it would get root rot as it was starting to wilt, so I dug it up and the hole was extremely wet. The root system looked okay, but just in case I sprayed the roots with Daconil and placed it in a very large pot with excellent drainage. How do I improve the drainage of that area of my garden? It’s like a small area that is about 3 feet that seems to hold onto more water than the other areas. My other roses are 3ft and 6ft away from that area and do excellent. I would really like to place the rose there, but I don’t want it to drown. Are there any remedies that I could add to the soil to improve drainage and the quality of the soil? I don’t mind doing hard work to improve the soil even if that means digging 50% of the soil and mixing it with garden soil.

One more question. One of the newly bought roses, Rio Samba, recently died of what I think was rose canker. It was already a bit small when I got it and I had a funny feeling something wasn’t right after I brought it home. The stems turned black and when I rubbed my nail on the stem it was like it was almost wet. Well, I’ve been spraying my other roses Daconil to try and prevent them from getting the disease. So far, they look okay, but I’m just worried. I read that you prune the stem until it‘s to a disease free area and then spray it with fungicide and make sure to disonfect the pruning shears. Is that all I need to do right now? The company is replacing the dead rose and I’m checking them daily for any signs of disease. Sorry for such a long post.