Winter Care for Roses
You can do this by any combination of the techniques below:
Hilling
Hilling involves piling a material (mostly garden soil) up around the rose canes to protect both the canes and the bud union from winter damage.Generally two things are important. That you cut the canes back to 12-18” long and then pile the soil up around the canes so only the tips are showing.
If you use garden soil, do not dig it from around the base of the rose. Doing so will expose the roots and there’s little sense protecting the tops if you expose the bottoms. Bring garden soil from another different rose-less part of the garden.
Some gardeners swear by peat moss as a hilling material when they care for roses in the winter. It gives good insulation and it doesn’t get wet very easily but it does blow around when dry so it can tend to disappear over the winter (unless it gets wet).
Some gardeners in zone 6-7 use leaves to pile up over the roses instead of soil and claim it works well for them. Leaves have the same advantages and disadvantages as peat moss (good insulation but tend to blow away)
Frost Cloth
There are flexible stryrofoam covers on the market and the intent is to lay these foam blankets over your cut-back roses to give them protection and care for roses this way.
These cloths work nicely in USDA zone 5-6 by themselves and give an extra measure of protection in colder climates. I used to hill and then cover with foam when I tried to grow roses in conventional ways.
Foam Enclosures.
There are some gardeners who either buy foam “caps” or make their own that claim this rigid foam construction works quite well for them.
The colder your gardens gets, the more you’re going to want to combine these techniques with the same rose.
Or you can use the deep Northern planting system of putting the bud union down 6 inches deep. See the page on planting northern tea roses for directions on this.
Click here if you have a question about winter care for roses
