Container-grown roses in Winter

by Marie
(Waterford VA)

My garden is in northern Virginia, 40 miles west of Washington DC. Is it possible to winter-over roses in large containers left outside? They are very large and would be hard to move.

Doug says that anything is possible. The information you're probably lacking is that a rose top/graft is likely going to die if the temperature gets to 5F (give or take a few degrees).

So - your task is to protect those plants from that freezing temperature. If you can do this by providing heat (such as against a building) - by insulating heavily, then yes you can overwinter your roses. But if you can't - then you treat your roses as annuals.

It depends a great deal on the soils you have in the pot (dry a rose out in the middle of winter in a container and it will die as surely as if you dried it out in the middle of summer). Keep it too wet and it will drown. So - it's a bit tricky to leave them out there alone for the winter.

You're going to have to experiment with protecting it (or move it to a heated/protected garage).

Good luck and let us know how it worked out (or whether you tried) :-)