Hi Jameya You ask good questions and you have a good garden sense. Even though body bags are not usually the healthiest options for buying roses, you've been able to pick some good ones and they're clearly thriving under your care. Part of gardening is learning to trust your sense of what's needed, and being willing to do some trial and error, while still avoiding the bigger errors as you can (like the catnip). Picking roses that you see in stores usually comes down to body bags and potted roses. In both cases, I judge a rose plant from the bottom up. Does it have a good established root system (if potted), do the canes look healthy (no splits, canker, damage), are the canes ready to grow if not already leafing out (green rather than brown canes, hints of growth nodules). Once you see what your own roses look like when they're ready to start growing, you'll get a better sense of what a healthy rose looks like that you purchase. I tend to buy most of mine through mail-order companies, since stores don't carry what I want, but those recommendations are a topic of another discussion (though you could google Chamblees Nursery as a place to start). With the catnip, I really wouldn't plant it anywhere in my garden, even in a pot. If you miss a single flower and it goes to seed and blows into the yard, all of a sudden you have the potential for an invasive thug for life. Some things aren't worth risking, and the seeds are a cheap thing to redirect. If you want to use them, put together some pots of catnip as indoor plants as presents for cat-owning friends of yours, or to sell at a local benefit or garage sale or something. A rule of thumb is any plant that's advertised as "vigorous" or "spreading" or "fills in empty space" is probably a potential thug and something to consider very carefully before you plant it. Mint is another plant you need to keep out of the ground and in pots, for similar thuggish reasons. As for watering, Jim is right that it's another thing you get a feel for as you watch your plants in your conditions. The rule of thumb is that most plants (including lawns, BTW) do better with deep watering less frequently than frequent smaller watering. Deep watering with breaks forces the rose to put its roots deeper into the ground to dig for water residuals, and in a cold zone that is totally a good thing for winter survival too. My roses never actually get the inch of water a week they're "supposed" to get, since we're a pretty dry region - I want them to adapt to the local conditions so I don't have to baby them all their lives. Still, you're right that new plantings want more water than more established ones. The more you mulch (within reason), the more the soil retains the water and provides a consistent environment for the new plantings. I would increase the depth of your mulch to at least 2-3 inches, and you can draw it up closer to the base of the rose. You'd like some of the root zone of the rose to have mulch so there's more water retained for the roots, you just don't want to have the mulch nestled up against the canes and cause canker from too much moisture on the wood of the canes (though I violate this frequently). In your wetter climate, caution is a good thing, but I think you could leave a 2-3 inch distance of the mulch away from the canes and be fine. Jim's soil and climate is more similar to yours than mine, so start with his recommendations. If the roses start to droop and look stressed, water earlier than expected and deeply, then adjust accordingly. You can always stick your finger into the soil to at least the middle knuckle to see if you can detect moisture - if it's too dry at that distance it's time to water. As for the milky spore, I've never used it but it's apparently a lawn treatment kind of like the crabgrass prevention. It's sold at most garden stores and has instructions, and pay attention to the timing of when to put it on (it's later than crabgrass prevention). If you still have more questions on those issues, you might start a new thread. Bottom line is to trust your sense of your own garden as you go. If something's working for you, go with it. The older plants that are buried with the graft higher than I'd recommend look like they're doing fine, so I wouldn't do any serious messing with them. If you add some lovely compost around all the roses for 2 inches or so of depth, then mulch on top of it and add some extra compost/soil around the base of the existing roses, I think that's a simple addition to an already working system. All of that helps with water retention, and makes for less work and happier roses in the long run. Have fun Cynthia

Hot Lips is going to be a really cute one Brenda! I planted mine out already, and it's got flower buds, so hopefully in a week or two it'll have some blooms. I know I put a pic of Sarastro(aka Sarasota) on the weekly thread, but here's one from today. It's about 2 feet tall, and I'm wondering how well the stems will be able to take the weight of all those flowers when they all open up. I've got Peachleaf White. Do you want to do a trade with the Peachleafs? Laurie

The roots spread far and wide and deep. So do the runners. So do the seeds, but it's the runners which seek out the light, so they're likely to go further than the roots (but not quite as far as the wind-blown seeds). Runners can be above ground, or below ground. As long as the roots are alive and reasonably healthy, the plant will regenerate, grow and spread. The pic at the link below shows how the runners form roots and frequent at regular intervals. Any piece of runner with roots on it will grow. Roots on their own may or may not grow, but it's unlikely - depends if there's a stem which will form leaves growing from them, in which case it will. If you had runners like the ones in the pic, you could remove the stems with the leaves on, and a plant would grow from each runner - but most people leave stems on when they look like that, just to give the plant a head start. You could actually get 4 plants from the centre starter (possibly 5 if you count the tiny roots at the top of the picture). Here is a link that might be useful: mint runners

Rugosa's are a good example (not all of them). Much like the invasive orange daylily they send roots that roots that are thick and can go far from the original plant to come up and start a new plant. Had one that in its second year I noticed little rugosa's coming up some 5 feet from the mother I pulled and dug a little and it ran back to the mother plant. Mom was removed along with all the babies. Ramblers do this also by increasing quickly closer to the plant ( I think ).