I don't have a feel for what Iowa winters are like, so I'll simply relate my experiences.

Here, in an area with very unstable winters with a fair amount of all known forms of precipitation, putting anything around a rose for 'winter protection' is a bad idea. You are playing the odds that we will get significant cold without snow (a rare occurance) versus the odds that there will be a significant warm spell with a lot of moisture (something that happens at least once every winter). Wet winter protection kills.

In a former life, on the very, very eastern edge of what my DH calls The Flat, winters were cold, but dry. The Alberta Clippers had dropped all their moisture hundreds of miles before they ever got to us, and we were south of the Erie snowbelt. There winter protection did nothing, as far as I could tell. If I protected them, the roses died back. If I didn't protect them, the roses died back. The winter protection wasn't an obvious hindrance, like it is here, but it also wasn't worth the effort. That has been the general consensus here, also. There have been a fair number of people in the Midwest who routinely winterized roses, but then had a winter when for various reasons, they couldn't. To their surprise, the roses did just the same as they always had.

So if you want larger roses in the spring, plant hardier types. That's really all you can do. If you have dry falls, you can try cutting back on the watering in fall. A common problem with marginally hardy modern roses is that they are much quicker to go dormant from drought than from cold. So here, where fall is what passes for our rainy season, it can be very, very hard to get modern roses to shut down.

The truly hardy plants for your zone will do better in the long run. Cornhill in Canada ships in Spring and has some really great roses. High Country Roses too.

Agree with the above. I live in NE Colorado and I don't winter protect. I have plenty of roses that don't die back, or die back only a bit. I've only had one rose really struggle with the winter here and as a result I shovel pruned it. This June I visited the botanical gardens in Denver to get a feel for which roses they had that were able to grow huge, as that's what I like. You might want to do the same. You can see what specific varieties of roses grow to the proportions you want, and if you don't love those exact ones you can still research what class of roses they are from and do a little experimenting within that class.

I agree with all the above, especially visiting local or regional gardens to see what does well. While public garden may spray for disease, there are always some that still look forlorn and Im sure to avoid those. I also like to visit in early spring to see what has surviving cane and even after the first flush to see what looks ratty and NEEDS dead-heading. Hopefully, you have at least one nearby.

I'm southern IA. I dump bark mulch on the roses I care alot about or that I think might be weaker or not as hardy. Last year most of my roses (40 some) died back to the mulch line, but they all pulled out of it and I had zero that didn't revive. We did not have snow cover for much of the winter. We also live on a hill with not much wind break and my theory is that the wind is worse than actual cold. We can get wind chills of -40. I'm not willing to do more than piling a mound of mulch on my roses, but I figure that protects them from some wind, as long as the mulch doesn't blow away too much.

I agree with Mad Gallica who essentially promotes applying no winter protection at all because as I have learned, it creates more problems than it remedies.

First of all, select roses that your thorough research shows are hardy for your winters. Give such roses a trial in your garden. Your research made prior to making purchases will save you a lot of money and angst. There's nothing worse than planting a new rose that you are smitten with, knowing that it is considered tender for you, but forging ahead attempting to grow it, only to have a continuous losing battle go on until one winter, the rose finally dies.

Keepers are roses that are tip hardy at best, and minimally, ones that have winter kill/die back only to the point that what succumbed to the winter is growth that would have been pruned away, anyway, at spring pruning. If such bushes put on size every year until they reach their mature proportions, and do not grow backwards, their lack of tip hardiness is irrelevant.

Kordes Roses has introduced a large amount of winter hardy roses, and Meilland is not far behind Kordes in this regard. Austin roses vary considerably in their winter hardiness, and just a handful of them among 100+ Austin varieties are black spot resistant. J & P and Weeks Roses (Christian Bedard), vary considerably for winter hardiness, and just about all their roses black spot, as lovely in bloom and vigorous growing as they are. It really hurt to have to shovel prune my Pretty Lady Rose. It bloomed prolifically with fragrant, strong necked blooms, but black spotted with the best of them.

Moses

Our fall routine consists of stopping dead heading so that the roses start to shut down. But most seem to get a bunch of new blooms frozen on the bushes anyways. We don't do any winter protection.

After the first couple of years I learned that picking hardier roses was key to not having a mess of dead cane in the spring. But it is hard to know what will do well since the zone info doesn't always guarantee what is hardy.

My best roses are:

Winnipeg Parks - no die back, prolific bloomer and great bush shape.

Iceberg - little to no die back and a nice bush form.

Easy on the Eyes - little to no die back, pretty flowers.

Candy Land is my best climber but need a few more years to tell if it is cane hardy. Seemed to be this last year but alot of mine survived well this last year.

Pretty Lady Rose also seems to be cane hardy for me.

Thank you all very much for the comments. I appreciate the conversation and gives me points to consider.

I have only been growing roses here for about 8 years and very slowly worked up to the 20 or so i have. I am now at rose capacity since they must be fenced from deer and I do not have plans to add fencing. So I am trying to come up with a good routine for keeping the ones I have as happy as possible.

I have not had problems losing roses over winter, but some of my favorite ones just do not grow very large. Tamora and Boscobel top out about 2ft, but they are perfectly beautiful flowers when I can stoop down to appreciate them (jokingly said).

I know in the past I have read someone's comments about a rose being tip hardy in zone 5, while for me that rose is definitely not tip hardy. at all. I think Teasing GA is one I have read that about. For me it had considerable die back this spring ( its third year). I understand regional and weather differences can account for this. But was hoping there might be additional steps I could take to reach that. We do often have warm spells over winter and also really erratic dips. Wind could be a factor too as the spot they are growing I think gets the brunt of our eastward winds. I will be sure everything is fully mulched, try to halt deadheading, and accept the roses as is.

In the beginning I did a lot of work to protect roses. But I soon realized it was too much work for nothing, puls made me resentful. And gardening like that it's not gardening is it? It's not the rose fault, to be forced to grow someplace it can't.

The only protection I do for my two tender roses is simply flatten the stems close to the ground and prune off the thin stems. That's all...