First question...what zone are you in? :)

Zone 6a/5b. Used to be 5b but trending now more towards 6a with occasional weird bitter cold snaps and also out of season hot snaps, like we are having now, high 80s into 90s and no rain.

Where do you live? The difference between 5A and 6 6b is quite large.

I'm thinking you can't leave a potted Iceberg outside overwinter in your zone. I think that you should go to a rose at least a zone more winter hardy than your zone. Okay, I looked on hmf and Iceberg IS more winter hardy than your zone. There are people here (Sheila??) who overwinter their roses outside against the house covered with...darn can't remember. Guess I'm not much help. Sorry.

My bad, it's my number dyslexia! I live in the middle of the bottom of Michigan, ten miles from the OH/IN border. Michigan is famous for its spotty zones and weather, and if you look at the USDA plant zones, I'm in a little blip of 5b surrounded by 6a. If the winds blow in our favor, we are 5b, but sometimes the 6a Lake snow hits us. Sometimes it jumps right over us and hits the next county . . .
https://planthardiness.ars.usda.gov/PHZMWeb/#

Edited to add that it was covered in a sheltered spot next to my house. I'm wondering if a fungus got it too bad. It looked fine last fall, really blooming to beat the band. I covered it with a clear plastic wrapped around bamboo stakes. Maybe I fried it, but it was a very cold spring, we had freezing temps every night up until one week ago. I uncovered it about a month ago, gave it the Epsom salts (diluted as per directions) and hoped it would recover. Could not even manage a shoot from the roots, which is why I think the roots died, not the tops . . . that was the part in the pot above the ground. Maybe our wild weather was too much for the roots . . .

Right Seil!! Hmf says Iceberg is zone 4...so I guess it isn't zone 4 then. ???

Pinkmountains - if you want to be sure that it will survive...try a zone 2 or 3 rose in the pot. Morden Blush is a beautiful rose!

I've got such a fungus problem I was afraid of oak leaves. I have them in spades on my property since I have eleven mature oaks . . . trying to get them composting better this year. We try and keep them away from against the house . . . I have burlap too. Covered my in-ground ones with burlap. I thought though that the enemy was wind, not cold and figured burlap was pretty useless against that . . .

I could move the pot inside next winter, that would cover the wind aspect. Very little light in my garage though . . . a tiny bit from little windows atop the garage door.

Found this rose while looking up "Morden Blush." Earth angel. Perfect since my rose garden is in honor of my late mother. It's also a floribunda like Iceberg. I chose Iceberg because I found a little notepad on my Mom's desk after she died with a list titled, "Still Want" and "Iceberg rose" was on the list. Living in Mom's old house. She was very limited in flower garden space due to aforementioned trees everywhere, the yard is mostly shade. Roses were among her favorite flowers as it is part of her last name. I have a tiny rose collection in her honor outside the front door, basically three roses although room for a fourth. Two were inherited from her. Three more miniatures by the back porch steps, planted by Mom from a couple of Mother's Day gifts from me . . . If I'm going to add more, it's going to have to be in pots, because that's all that will work in my remaining sunny spots, they all have issues that preclude in-ground planting . . .

Both floribundas hardy to zone 5. Just wondering what did mine in . . . I can certainly try some of the Canadian northern roses. I bought one once, a mail order special, its performance was "meh." Can't remember which one it was, maybe Champlain or Simon Fraser? I planted it at work. I had it in a pot at my Dad's and it was "meh" so rather than throw it out I stuck it in the ground at the Arboretum where I used to work. It lived . . . never really thrived in either spot. My Dad has a window in his garage, he overwinters his potted roses in the garage but they still die. We did the one I mentioned and then replaced with a Knockout, that also died. That's why I'm thinking this "rose in a pot" is a lot trickier than it seems.

You can overwinter potted roses in garages. I did it for years until I got tired of the hauling. There are a couple of tricks to it.

• A dormant rose doesn't need light. However, most modern repeat bloomers don't really want to go dormant in response to cold, and will come out of dormancy if they get too warm. Ideally, they should be kept around freezing, but since they are usually in places that aren't climate controlled, they should be somewhere that tends to stay under around 40F. This may mean an unheated garage is too warm.
• Once they break dormancy in the spring, they do need light. This usually happens several weeks before the in-ground roses break dormancy. So they go out, and in, and in, and out depending on the temperatures for a few weeks.
• Because they should be moved around a fair amount, this limits the pot size. So occasional repotting back into the same pot is necessary.

I'd go easy on the Epsom salts in the future. They aren't some magic mouse milk. They are a magnesium source for soils that are low in that mineral. That's it.

I went very easy on the Mg. Pretty much half what was recommended. I don't believe in over treating plants, too much of a good thing is not good, I know that. I have pretty poor soil though. Have not had much time and right conditions to build it yet. Trying to get up to speed with composting on our new site.

We had such a spotty temperature regime this winter. One minute bitter cold, then the next unseasonably warm, then unseasonably cold. Not slow and steady changes by any means. Murder for something in a pot. Murder for a lot of stuff, but maybe the in ground stuff had more root reserves to deal with it. I dunno, I was worried about how the wildly fluctuating temperatures would affect that pot. My worst fears probably realized . . .

Everything Mad said. I wouldn't give up on iceberg though. I do appreciate the sentiment with your mother. It is for that reason that I grow a few yellow roses as they were my mom's favorite. Another thing I've noticed with my roses that I have over winter inside is that they do not like a very heavy soil. Many times I grow cuttings and I put them in increasingly heavier soil so when I plant them in the ground they acclimate better, but those that I've had to over winter in the heavy soil have done more poorly as I think the Soil can get drenched and say cold and route the roots. On the other hand, too free draining soil means you need to water them much more often.

That's a wonderful tribute to your mom...so I can see why it's extra disheartening to have a rose die that you've dedicated to her.

I overwintered a mature Iceberg for a few seasons before rehab on my new house was over and it was safe to plant.. I’m in Rhode Island which is listed as 6 with 7 down along the coast. (Is 6a warmer, or 6b? I can’t ever keep it straight). anyway—we get some solid z6 winters, and some very gentle ones. The winters in question were cold, with late deep freezes, below zero in late feb and maybe even March!

what I do, and have had success with, is to take old decorative straw bales after thanksgiving and stuff the straw between the planter and the wall, or wrap the planter in burlap w 3-4” of straw packed tightly around the container. Not only is this good insulation, but as the straw decomposes it will actually generate heat in the deep winter. Just be sure it’s straw and not hay, or you’ll be pulling grass seedlings all summer!

I think with the fluctuating winter conditions I get here, it's difficult to find a way to keep the rose "just right." What would work for warming then a week later becomes too warm, but then how to put it back again when the temp drops wildly again . . . I'm thinking maybe keep outside with some type of protective cover that easily pops off if it starts to get too warm, (maybe something styrofoam??) and then if it gets really really ridiculously cold I can move it to the garage for a while. I hate styro, maybe I can fashion a "quilt" stuffed with straw somehow that I can wrap around but take off it its getting too warm . . .

Maybe I can invent one and become rich and famous . . . I already can envision the marketing campaign. "For your Goldilocks roses, that need to be kept JUST RIGHT!"

Welcome, Conor to the rose forum!!! Is this your first post? :) :)

I forgot to welcome you, Pink Mountain! Welsome!!! I hear a patent coming! LOL

Thanks RC. I've been a bad rose mama for the past couple of years but I'm trying to make up for lost time . . .

:) :)

Do you have a lot of roses or are you just starting out?

As per the earlier part of my post, we've had roses all my life, and I've always had a few in my various gardens. I've inherited a small rose garden from my late mother and it isn't doing very well, but neither are many other parts of the grounds of the home, so I've been working pretty steadily to improve all the areas, so they compete for my attention. Some of the roses have been easier to manage than others. I work in the horticulture field, so theoretically I get the science of caring for plants, but I don't have extensive experience with any one particular plant. My specialty if it would be anything, is natives but even there, I have limited experience with native plant propagation. Some. Kind of jack of all trades master of none, which is why I love these discussion boards and sharing and learning from others. Right now I am doing mostly financial management at work, so doing my "field" work at home . . .

Edited to add that I've always wanted a big garden filled with roses, but my current home is mostly shade from massive hardwood trees so I have to curb my expectations. That's why the whole pot issue came up. I have a few sunny spots but they all have issues that won't work with "in-ground" plants. Our back deck for example, is a small sunny island in a sea of shaded hardwood forest. The area in the front of our home is covered with rock mulch so not conducive to growing "in ground" roses. I inherited the plastic covered, rock mulched areas all over the grounds from both my parents and the original owners of the home who started the whole mess. I am slowly removing it, but it isn't easy. The soil under is is AWFUL, which is why the rock mulch was such a bad idea. Soil covered with plastic and a layer of rocks is not going to nurture life. That's another area that I'm landscaping with pots for now. I've reclaimed and restored a small area of the front too, but as I mentioned, very slow going. Not just removing all the rocks, but making the underlying soil fit to grow much of anything.

I've heard that pots drying out in winter kills more plants than the cold. Even though the top of the plant is dormant, the roots are still growing and need to not dry out. If you have a lot of wind and covered the top with plastic, you wouldn't have been able to tell if the soil was totally dry.

I would definitely try again, but however you treat the top of the rose make sure you can check that the soil isn't dry and can add water as needed. If you have wildly fluctuating temperatures you water when they swing above freezing.

Pink Mountain - you do have a LOT of work to do. My goodness! The yard isn't very plant friendly. Good luck. :)

@l pinkmountain, I feel you! Your rock mulch and plastic! My property is similar, 1/3 acre of mature trees and the bare ground covered with layers of rock and plastic since 1962. The prior owner (the only other owner besides me) dealt with weeds growing in the rocks by dumping MORE rocks. As I'm removing it, slowly, I'm discovering original flagstone stepping stones covered up by 6 inches of rock, and the flagstone itself is in the original rock, which was just gravel and would have been so much better to deal with than the heavier river stones.

The prior owner loved roses, and grew them by digging many very deep holes for big plastic buckets that stuck out of the ground a bit. I am trying to remove them, it is not the look I want, but they just break off in bits so I think I'm going to have to dig up the whole area to get them out. The property was an estate sale so it came "as is" and most of the roses had been dead for awhile but the buckets remain. It's all so much work!

At the moment, where I want to put a rose, I scrape away the rocks and make a raised bed, the bottom, in contact with the native soil, lined with wood chips. Right now I'm using what I have. I just today made a raised bed for a miniature rose (Bees Knees) with logs from a tree I removed. Eventually I will replace the logs with nice larger desert rocks. I am planting many native perennials and cactus and yuccas, these do go into the native soil, and I buy small plants so I don't have to injure the extensive tree roots with a big hole. My goal is a desert cottage garden, where there is little need for mulch because native plants cover and shade the ground. And I'm finding I can use some of the rocks as paths.

I also just remove the rock and plastic little by little, and any place I do, I mulch heavily with wood chips that I keep damp. This starts to improve the dead soil almost immediately!

I do have a lot of pots, although this year I transitioned some of them to a raised bed (new retaining wall). My "secret sauce" to pots is to use the root pouch bags. Sometimes just alone but most of the time, I put the bag inside a pot as a liner. Sometimes if the pot is deep I cut out the bottom of the root pouch bag. I buy them from Greenhousemegastore.

The roses don't ever get root bound and their roots stay an even temperature. I had a Julie Child rose in a pot for 4 years, which I just transplanted to the retaining wall, and the root system was amazing, and transplanted incredible easy without breaking a single root, because of how the plant grows in the bag.

What I love about the bags is that it also can give you a temporary raised bed! Even just sitting on your rock mulch. But If you scrape away a bag-size area of the rock and plastic, put some organic matter on the soil, and then a bag, with the bottom cut out or intact, depending on your goals, you will already be nurturing soil life with the watering and nutrients that you provide the rose. You can disguise the bag with stacked rocks if you have them, or if you're like me and want something temporary and cheap, just cut bamboo fencing to the right height and cover it. I'm sure there's lots of ways to disguise it.

But it will let you easily, temporarily, or somewhat permanently, enjoy a rose even while your property floor is so imperfect per your aesthetic and dreams.. If not roses now, then when?! :D

This is the rose area. You can't really see the roses, they are in the rock mulch area behind the peonies. The front garden is a small area I've so far managed to reclaim from the rock mulch and begin to restore with compost and topsoil added. It used to be overgrown dwarf arborvitae in a sea of rock. I have moved most of Mom's favorit perennials to that spot, this is her memorial garden. I inherited three roses there, one a struggling rugosa, and two Walmart specials that I always thought were hybrid teas, Dad got them and planted them. One died. In the hole it was in, instead of consigning yet another tea rose to rock purgatory, that's where I put the big planter with the Iceberg in it.

I"m so glad you're making redeeming this wonderful heirloom property! I love the photos of the roses by the house, there is something so perfect about brick and roses together. I'm in awe of how much you've accomplished, your narrative has made me feel inspired to go out and scrape some more rocks, I try to do some every day but sometimes I just lack the spirit. I really like your idea of three pots, that's excellent intuition. My favorite cafe here has roses in gorgeous pots in the dining courtyard. It definitely makes the place more magical.

The whole heavy rock mulch thing is just so weird to me. A thin layer to help hold dampness in soil from sparse desert rain, or keep down mud in a wetter climate, sure. 8 inches to deal with WEEDS? Wrapping the living soil in PLASTIC? The rocks eventually fill in with soil and fill up with...weeds. I don't think people really understand that, or maybe they just consider it a future problem and so not worth contemplating beforehand. Or just not a problem for them. Around here, there are lots of people with zeroscaping but they have landscaping workers come every two weeks or monthly and pull all the weeds. (Not all of them, some just have weedy rocks.) I'm not sure how many of the people put in the zeroscaping or just inherited it when they purchased the homes. Any flipped home seems to be sold with zeroscaping.

My adjacent neighbors had a slightly weedy natural desert front yard since I moved here 5 years ago (the backyard area is magazine-stunning: very lush grass and fruit trees and water fountains and fancy rock outdoor kitchen). Then they got divorced last year, and so landscaped the yard to sell the home. Rolls of black plastic, dump truck loads of boring rock. A gasping tiny yucca in the middle, with what I THINK is supposed to a dry river bed, meandering by the sickly yucca, except that it's not concave in the soil, like a wash, instead, the rock is piled up so it's essentially a long, serpentine pile of rocks. The new owners are not gardeners so I guess it suits them, I hope so because it will be a lot of work to redo it, but I do fear for their established trees now that they won't be getting the rain they've had their whole existence.

Oh well. The Zeroscapers probably walk by my wood mulched yard and think "What a freaking hippie, living with nature like that! Learn to CONTROL and SUPPRESS it, don't you know?" :D

Well, in my case it wasn't even the porous plastic like they use now. I like it directly around the house, maybe 3 feet out, in my climate it keeps dampness away, unlike organic mulches which can also harbor a lot more bugs, not that stones are bug-free. But the original landscaping of my home way overused the rock, set it up improperly, and then added insult to injury by planting moisture holding vegetation way too close to the house . . . and then more injury by piling rocks on top of rocks. Too often landscapes don't accommodate for natural and inevitable change . . . also folks are so surprised how quickly rock areas have weeds growing in them. Any rock areas I intend on keeping we blow out debris from and weed and pick up stuff from regularly.

The plastic has its upside, it does help some with weed management, but the downside is it is static. As the landscape grows and evolves, adjustments aren't easy, so I would only use the plastic in situations where I knew I would not be fiddling with it much. Like a traffic median for example, or around a place of business. But even then, sometimes change happens. Up the street from me a business has been re-landscaping for a year, because of the effort and time involved in removing the rock mulch. I see that they are replacing most of it with bark . . .heck of a lot easier to transport out the bark to find and tear out the plastic below . . .

Not sure about the desert, obviously there are fire concerns . . .

Speaking of that, off topic, here's what we did with the rocks from that tree area, created a dry well for roof drainage that also serves as a fire resistant area for us to set up our fire pit. Its also a work in progress. I keep meaning to put some light potted plants in the middle for times when we are not using it as a fire pit, but I'm not there yet . . .

@l pinkmountain, you're so right to point out that there are really good reasons to choose rock sometimes, it's good for me to be reminded of that and not question so deeply the choices of others, we all make the choices we feel are right at the time! I feel "softer" towards rocks this morning, I must have needed to vent to you to work through it, so thank you for listening! I thought of you yesterday evening when after I filled a large area in front with wood chips and raked and smoothed them, I dragged a big pot with a blooming Julia Child over onto the wood chips and it looked so nice! Pots of roses class up anything, Your fire pit is wonderful!

Looking at the above photo, to the right of the ugly pile of wood, you can sort of make out a pile of sawdust from where we removed a Bradford pear last year. It was planted way too close to the house, dropped branches on the roof and also held moisture up against the house. No one could see it when it was in its short lived bloom period anyway, so we took advantage of being in quarantine to hire a tree guy to take it out. That spot is the gateway between the walk along the west side of the house, and our backyard. Someday, but not soon unfortunately due to many other projects ahead of it, I would love to install a rose arbor there, it is a tiny patch of sun now. But not this year, because you can't see it, but to the left is our deck that needs rebuilding and refinishing. And that rock pile under the oak which is supposed to eventually become a shade viewing garden from the deck and back windows of the house . . .

If I can replace my one dead Iceberg in the pot I will be lucky this year with a new rose project. I still have the miniatures in the back and a rugosa and an unknown in-ground one in the front to keep going . . .