Many of mine do that every year. If you've planted the bud union below the soil surface that growth may be from it or portions of cane below the soil surface. Many of my roses pruned so far this year had to be pruned down to the soil surface. Further inspection shows they've all survived and none are root stock. When I come upon one that appears dead, I cut it back to three or four inches and wait until mid May. If nothing is showing by then, chances are it's dead. If fast growing long canes with small leave grow on the few budded roses I have, I search for the source. If below below the bud union, it's root stock, If above it, it's good growth. All may not be lost yet. Wait a while to see what happens and don't disturb the plants. Digging them up often stresses the new growth and causes the bush to die.

I'm through with David Austins, except for Evelyn, which is tough and a good bloomer. A nurseryman I know put it best: in this area, Austins get twice as big and bloom half as much as they are predicted to do. The Jackson-Perkins roses rapidly die of homesickness for the Pacific northwest, so I don't buy those any more. I live ten minutes away from the Antique Rose Emporium, but it seems like they're always out of whatever it is I'm after. Leonidas is on the counting-down to shovel time list. I sure like Weeks roses for this area, though. I don't know where they're grown, but that is probably a big factor.

Joey: Very good questions. Here are what I learn about own-root roses: 1) Where they are bred and the TYPE OF SOIL & weather predicts where they will be successful. Roses bred in acidic & rainy & less sun England will be successful in acidic & high rain East coast. But roses bred in alkaline & hot & sunny Southern France will be successful in alkaline clay & sunny garden. 2) How vigorous the root is? The newly bred roses ARE VERY VIGOROUS as own-roots, and can survive BOTH Pakistan 113 F hot summer and my zone 5a winter of -20 below zero. Vigorous roots are both long (at least 2 feet deep) and spreading wide. Vigorous roots are also THICK to store water in dry summer/winter. Dee-lish can die to the crown, but the root is so deep that it can go for 1 month without watering, either through a cold & dry winter or hot summer. Dee-lish has a climber as a parent (Graham Thomas). If a rose is bred with a climber in its genetics, it will have deeper root. 3) It's the selection of the fittest. In breeding roses, there will be many seeds ... and only the fittest seed sprout up to be the most vigorous root or to be disease-resistant. The other dozen to 100 seeds either don't germinate, or sprout some wimpy plants that black-spot & less petals, or can only bloom once a year. This answer your question directly, breed roses in your cold zone and see which seed can sprout in extreme cold temp., and which seed has the deepest root to survive the winter. English roses, bred in a colder climate than France: most have climber-heritage or Old Garden Roses' genetics, and English roses are actually favored by hot climate folks in Pakistan due to the vigor of their roots. Deeper root = more weather resistant. I hang out in Facebook Fragrant Rose Lovers group, where most Pakistan posters are. English roses are favored in both extreme hot and extreme cold climate due to the toughness of their roots to survive long periods of drought.

I really have mixed feedback on this issue. I totally agree that the robust growers in cold zones do fine on their own roots and you don't have to worry about suckers from the graft. Too robust growers (like gallicas) can be better grafted so that you can plant the graft ABOVE the soil (only) for those super-hardy roses and avoid the gallica taking over the garden bed. I also agree that grafted roses of the wimpier varieties of HTs and floris are more robust in their first year or two and tend to grow bushy faster than own root versions of those plants. However, I've recently started to experience the down side of grafted HTs in a cold climate. First of all, virtually all of the grafted HTs and floris that I've planted with the graft properly buried have gone own root over time if they've survived. For instance, I bought In the Mood grafted from a local nursery and it was fabulous and bushy in its first year. The second year and for every year after that, it was a knee high one-cane wonder until it finally gave up the ghost and died after about 6 years. The same process has been happening more gradually with my grafted Savoy Hotel. It was lush (maybe 4.5' by 4.5') and incredible in its first year or two, ranking in my top 20 of roses. Every year since then it has declined and come back from the winter more slowly. By August this year, my plant in optimum sun and soil conditions has just now reached almost 3 feet with 3 canes on it and a couple of blooms here and there for the first time all season (nothing at all in June). Here's a contrast picture to show that effect - this is 2013 in June for Savoy Hotel at its full 4.5'x4.5' glory. Savoy Hotel is at the bottom right corner keeping up with Madame Isaac Periere in the back of it with no trouble. Granted, this was a particularly good rose year, but you can see the relative sizes. Now just one year later in 2014, here's Savoy Hotel in front of MIP (bottom center) also in June, and this was an average rose year for me. It's too late for MIP on the shepherd's hook to be blooming, but you can see MIP's height by the purple clematis. Notice that she's now in 2014 only 3' high and has about 4 blooms every couple of weeks. She has declined from that since, even though she's still a very nice rose. I don't have any more recent bush pictures for her since I only get the scattered blooms any more, and only late in the season to boot. One other effect I'm seeing in my older grafted roses this spring in particular is graft failure for a lot of my well-established roses with the graft well buried. Even under the soil, it seems like a grafted rose starts running out of places to grow new basal shoots after a while. For instance, this spring I lost an 8 year old Dream Come True (the tall rose at the left of the first picture) for no good reason that I could see, and it was a mild winter. Sure, you see pictures of 50 year old grafted HTs in warm climates, but those are warm climates. I suspect that if we have a 50 year old HT rose in cold climates that started out grafted and is still alive, it has gone own root in that time and is a robust rose on its own roots. My reluctant conclusions are that if a rose is going to be a wimp, it will reach that state on its own whether own root or grafted. If I get an own root HT rose through its first winter it will increase in size to its sustainable height and vigor and more or less stay there for the duration. If I get a grafted HT rose through its first winter, it will decrease in size to its sustainable height and vigor and stay there till the graft fails or it goes completely own root. There are only a few roses where I think the graft did give the rose a little boost in survival over that first winter, Memorial Day and Oklahoma come to mind, but for the most part I don't think it buys me anything in either survivability or vigor after the first year. That's why I tend to grow my HTs and floris on their own roots. I want to know the long-term height it's really going to be in its early years, I get reliable winter survival of the original rose from own roots if they get to a good size in their first year, and I don't have to dig up a massive root system when it dies or deal with suckers. Just my two cents Cynthia