Back Issue
November/December 1995

Winter Protect Your Roses
Donna J. Fuss

Winter protection is part of a process that begins in April when you uncover your roses. Maintaining a healthy, clean, disease free garden is the first step in insuring that your roses will survive the winter successfully. As cold weather approaches, those of us who garden in Connecticut are faced with the issue of how and when to winter protect our roses.

The purpose of winter protection is actually two-fold. The first is to protect the plant's bud union (the graft) from severe cold and freezing. The second is to make sure that the rose goes dormant and stays that way until it wakes up in the spring. This can be quite a challenge in Connecticut where the winter is unpredictable (actually all of our seasons are unpredictable). Instead of a nice even temperature curve, we get a lot of blips and dips.

So let's meet the challenge. The timing is extremely important. You want to catch the roses when they are dormant, but before they freeze. In Connecticut, this is usually Thanksgiving weekend. While the rest of your friends and family are busily preparing for the Thanksgiving holiday, you'll be outside playing with your roses.

If you protect your roses too early, that is before the first inch of ground is frozen, you will create a nice, cozy home for rodents and give them a tender, succulent food supply — namely your bushes. So, this is one case where getting your work done early doesn't pay off. Your reward may be that your roses become mouse food. After several hard freezes, mice and other rodents have found other homes and your roses will be safe.

The timing is about the same for everyone in the state. However, the method that you choose will depend upon your individual weather conditions. How cold is your garden? What exposure is it? How much wind does it get? These are the questions to ask yourself before you decide what form of winter protection will be most effective for you.

I'll describe four different ways to winter protect, beginning with the method that provides the least amount of protection and ending with the method that provides the most winter protection.

If you live on the coast
If you live on the coast, and have your roses close to your house, with a south or west exposure, your task is easy. Cover the bud union with six to eight inches of loose sandy loam from some other part of your garden. Then rake some oak leaves over the soil. You many need to build some kind of cage to keep the leaves in place for the winter, because leaves help keep the soil in place during winter rains. Oak leaves work best because they have a tough cuticle and take longer to break down.

Don't use maple leaves, which will decompose quickly and rot out the roses underneath them. If you don't have any oak trees on your property, remember that a neighbor never minds you raking their leaves. I barter with my neighbors: cut roses all season in exchange for bags of oak leaves in the fall.

If you are a town or two in
If you are a town or two in from Long Island Sound, the common method of winter protection is hilling. Mound your roses with ten to twelve inches of soil and something to keep the soil in place for the season. The purpose of the mound of soil is to keep the bud union at a more constant temperature, and keep the canes from alternate freezing and thawing, as well as to protect them from the cold drying winds.
When you mound your roses with soil, the soil should be loose, but not too light and airy. It should always be taken from some other source than around your roses, because roses have shallow feeder roots that are near the surface, and these can easily be disturbed or frozen. There are plastic rose collars available in nurseries and garden centers that you snap into place and fill with soil. Buy one collar for a smaller bush, fit two together for a larger bush. You can also make collars out of roofing paper or newspaper. Fill these collars with soil and top off with leaves. Another method is to hold the mound of soil in place with pine boughs.

You may have noticed that I never said anything about cutting your roses down in the fall. That is because April is the time to prune. In the fall, the bushes should be cut back to about three feet. Just enough to prevent the wind from whipping them around, and loosening the roots in the soil. If you don't want to cut your tall bushes back at all, you can drive a 4 to 5 foot stake into the ground and tie the bush to it with butcher's twine. Roses die back from the top down, so leaving a good amount of canes gives you a better chance of more live canes to start with in the spring.

For a cold garden protected from the wind
The next method is appropriate for a rose bed in a colder garden that has some protection from the wind. It is called the box or crib method. You literally enclose your entire rose bed with a Styrofoam box. Don't use this method if you have moles or voles, because this will become a nice winter home for them and your bushes will be eaten by spring. Don't use this method if your garden is in a windy location, because it does not provide enough protection from cold winter winds.

This method requires a little (but only a little) carpentry. You'll need 1 inch by 3 inch by 30 inch stakes and builders Styrofoam insulation, which is sold in panels two feet high by about 2 inches thick. You're going to build a little house around your rose bed with Styrofoam walls and a Styrofoam roof.

Place sets of stakes into the ground about two inches apart so that the Styrofoam panel can slip in between them. These stakes should be set at four foot intervals for stability against the wind. Before you finish enclosing the garden, you should cut the roses down so that they will fit inside this box. Then strip off all the leaves and clean the ground of all debris.

The conditions inside of the box are perfect for fungal disease to grow over the winter, so it is also a good idea to give the bushes a final spraying with a fungicide. Now place the stakes and side pieces of the Styrofoam around the garden to completely enclose it. The top piece(s) of Styrofoam should not go on until the weather is cold, usually this is around Christmas. (Roses love holidays, too.) Don't forget to weight down the top of the crib with logs or bricks. They make fine sails if the wind gets under them.

For a cold, windy garden
The last method that I recommend is the rose cone. This is for the cold, windy garden. I use them and they work great for me. They are not right for every garden. If you have a warmer garden, or are in a sheltered area, the cones act like a greenhouse, and the roses can start to break dormancy too soon. This new growth will freeze and damage the bush.

The cone looks like an inverted Styrofoam wastebasket. You use the same preparation method as for the cribs — cut the canes down, strip the leaves, clean the ground, spray with fungicide — but add one more job of tying the rose canes together to fit under the cone. We use butcher's twine for the job.

These cones should have air holes near the top for air circulation. There should be four about the size of a dime. The cones come two ways. One with removable tops and one with solid tops. If you buy the kind with solid tops you need to cut the top open. I suggest that you mark the top so that you know which direction it goes on, and mark the cone so you know which top it belongs to. You won't put the tops on until Christmas, when it is really cold and you want to be inside. You don't want to be playing jigsaw puzzle with your cone tops.

Place the cone over the tied-together rose bush. The cone has a lip at soil level. It is important that you cover this with something that will freeze. This serves two purposes. One is to bond the cone to the soil and the other is to act as a seal against the winds. You can bring in other soil, compost or manure for this purpose. Wait until it is really cold (Christmas) before placing the tops on the cones, and weight each top down with a log or two bricks.

Your next job is to get cozy in a nice, warm house with a good supply of garden books and rose catalogs and dream of spring. I find a pad and pen are useful tools to write down all of the things that I vow to do better next year. Next year I will....

Donna J. Fuss is the co-founder of the Connecticut Rose Society, the consultant to the Rose Garden in Elizabeth Park for Friends of Elizabeth Park and a Test Garden Judge for the All-America Rose Selections, Inc.

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